Community safety
Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (12:32): My question is to the Minister for Multicultural Affairs. Minister, Victoria continues to see racially motivated hate and violence against our diverse communities: this past year two Muslim women assaulted while shopping; a Sikh security guard beaten while at work; and temples, mosques and synagogues targeted in racist attacks. Most recently, right-wing neo-Nazis assaulted First Nations women at Camp Sovereignty, a sacred Indigenous burial site. We know this is not an isolated series of events. It is a persistent pattern of harm directed at black and brown First Nations communities. It is clear that your government’s anti-racism strategy action plan 2024–29 is failing to deliver needed outcomes. Minister, what social cohesion initiatives will you be undertaking right now to ensure that racist attitudes, behaviours and beliefs are recognised, challenged and rejected?
Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:33): While I thank the member for that question, I do not agree with the premise of the question, and I reject the assertion that the anti-racism strategy is not an effective way in which we can provide support to our diverse communities. But it is not the only thing that the government is doing, in any event. We are conducting a range of work, including the fact that we have brought legislation to this place to strengthen our anti-vilification laws through the anti-vilification and social cohesion bill. We are of course in receipt now of the Lekakis review, the Victorian multicultural review, for which we asked George Lekakis, a highly respected Victorian, to go out and engage deeply with the community about what supports they need in order to not only feel safe and feel that they belong but also enable them and their communities to thrive. I look forward to sharing more with the house soon on the government’s response to that important review.
The anti-racism strategy is a significant piece of work over a number of years, and it is already providing support to local groups in a practical way, including through the LARI grants, which are the local anti-racism grants for communities. There are a number of wonderful programs that are being funded through that program. We have important work that is underway with a number of different parts of our diverse community to tackle Islamophobia and to tackle the scourge of antisemitism, and that work does not have an end date because it is going to need to be constant. A number of these issues will form part of the ongoing work for me as the minister and of my portfolio.
But I think really what is most important here is that we are listening carefully to communities about what they need in order for them to be able to build their capacity, particularly those communities that are more newly arrived in Victoria, who do need additional support to be able to provide their communities with all of the access and support that they deserve. So we will continue to work hard at this. I am very happy to regularly update the house about the work that we are doing in this regard, but we have been very clear that there is no place in Victoria for hate and extremism, and we will continue to stand up and champion our diverse communities right across the state.
Anasina GRAY-BARBERIO (Northern Metropolitan) (12:36): Thank you, Minister. Just to put it on the record, I did not say your anti-racism strategy action plan was ineffective, I said it was failing to deliver the needed outcomes for multicultural communities. They are having to wake up every morning and think about their safety. This is happening. It is real, what is going on for black and brown communities.
I note that the funding under the anti-racism strategy action plan that you speak about – ‘Goal 1: Racist attitudes, behaviours and beliefs are recognised, challenged and rejected’ – only mentions a one-off funding allocation of $150,000 to be shared among multicultural and multifaith organisations. Surely you do not agree that that is an adequate amount of funding, given the heightened spate of race and hate violence targeted towards multicultural communities. Minister, will you commit to ongoing funding so that you are not just listening, you are putting action behind your words?
Ingrid STITT (Western Metropolitan – Minister for Mental Health, Minister for Ageing, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:37): Thank you for the supplementary question. I have got to say that it is disappointing, the tone of the question. What I would say to the member and to everyone in the house is that the entire multicultural affairs portfolio is focused on supporting communities, and the entire output funding year on year is unashamedly focused on what it is we need to do to continue to support communities, whether that is through our grants stream for infrastructure, so that they can have places where they can feel safe and belong and come together to celebrate their culture and their diversity and their background, or whether it is through our festival and events grants. All of this output funding actually goes to supporting our diverse communities. The anti-racism strategy is but one.