Wednesday, 28 May 2025

Multicultural affairs

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:13): (928) My question is to the Treasurer. Minister, your budget speech says:

… around the world and here at home, families are making hard choices.

They’re weighing up what they can go without and holding tight to what matters most.

This budget meets them at that moment – with care, with discipline, and with determination.

Minister, the multicultural affairs policy and programs budget will be cut savagely by 25.4 per cent in 2025–26, from $60.5 million this year to a measly $48.2 million in 2025–26. Minister, this is the lowest budget allocation to the multicultural affairs portfolio since 2017–18. Were multicultural Victorians targeted because they did not matter?

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Treasurer, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Regional Development) (12:14): Mr Mulholland, we take a whole-of-government approach to our support for multicultural communities –

Members interjecting.

Jaclyn SYMES: and I think the interjections from my colleagues are a testament to that. When it comes to how the budget is formulated in relation to a number of programs that may have been completed and finished their task, whether there were programs where it was identified they could be performed either by another area of the department or indeed more of a collaborative approach across government, that was an opportunity to identify savings in relation to consolidation. It did not necessarily mean the end of programs. Some of them were moved around and the like. This is responsible, disciplined decision-making. It is about identifying your priorities and making sure you can continue to deliver them but also at the same time making sure that you can continue to deliver the services that Victorians rely on. I would also like to say that the multi stakeholders have actually come out and supported the Victorian budget. I am not sure if you are talking to them, but I would take my advice from them and their views and what they think is important, rather than you being the stakeholder on their behalf.

Evan MULHOLLAND (Northern Metropolitan) (12:16): Treasurer, why did you allow such a savage budget cut to the very programs that support policy advice on multicultural affairs and social cohesion at a time of increasing global and local tension and unrest?

Jaclyn SYMES (Northern Victoria – Treasurer, Minister for Industrial Relations, Minister for Regional Development) (12:16): We will continue to support multicultural communities at every juncture. The anti-vilification legislation was all about social cohesion. The minister, who is absent from the chamber today, has her strategy, which has been fed in, in conjunction with those multi communities and various faith organisations. We will always stand up for multicultural Victorians as a government. As I said, in relation to the number of initiatives, we take a whole-of-government approach, and I reject the premise of your question.