Wednesday, 30 August 2023

Multicultural communities

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (18:20): (447) My adjournment tonight is seeking action of the Minister for Multicultural Affairs, and the action I seek is an explanation of whether the government takes engagement with multicultural communities seriously. On Friday evening last week we saw the Victorian ALP win the gold medal for taking out the trash. They love sending media releases out late on Fridays. They, like most Victorians, really love footy finals and really love the Melbourne Cup, not for the reasons that we do but for the reasons of sending out media releases with bad news the night before so no-one will see them and they miss the 6 o’clock news programs.

Party monitor John Thwaites was unable to identify who was responsible for breaches of the rules relating to the renewal of memberships of deceased members – absolutely astonishing. Tom Donato, whose father Antonio’s membership was renewed in 2018 and 2019, after his death, said it was completely inadequate. You have got to remember Antonio Donato had been diagnosed with dementia about seven years earlier. That makes the act of what has happened here even more disgusting. Are we seriously meant to believe that no-one knew who was forging the signatures of dead people? I tell you what: there are definitely a fair few on that side that know who it was, because they are busy briefing exactly who it was. Are we seriously meant to believe this? Forging signatures is a serious crime. I know Tom Donato, the son of the deceased, is heavily considering a police investigation into this, and I think that is a good course of action because forging signatures is a serious crime and we need to get to the bottom of what happened here, not some two-week review.

But this is how they treat multicultural communities. I see it for myself. This is how they treat multicultural communities in my community in the north, signing up memberships for dead people in my electorate and signing up lists, which they must have got from somewhere, of people in my electorate without their permission. It goes to show their disdain for multicultural communities. I read with interest an article in the Age where ALP member and mayor of Hume City Council Joseph Haweil said:

Internally within the Labor Party, multicultural communities have been used as electoral fodder for decades and for factional reasons …

That is what they do on that side of the house. They use and abuse multicultural communities for factional reasons. I would like to send a message to this government and the ALP that I am not going to let this go.