Hansard debates

Ann-Marie HERMANS (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (16:19): I too rise to speak on the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill 2026, and I also wish to give a shout-out to the number of multicultural groups in my region. There are so many that it is difficult to actually go through them all. I have spent the last 3½ years enjoying many feasts, many community events and many cultural opportunities to learn and to grow – not just cultural but also multifaith events. I feel like I have developed a whole lot of extended family members from around the world, and it has been an absolute joy. I want to shout out to a few of them actually today as we look at this bill, because at many of these events I have had the privilege of being there when the government have had their multicultural commissioners. It is not going to be possible to shout out to everybody, so I apologise in advance for anyone that has missed out. But I want to acknowledge, for instance, the Australian-Filipino Community Services and the Filipino Community Council of Victoria. I acknowledge at the Australian-Filipino Community Services the great work that Corina Dutlow has been doing. She is a Casey award winner, and she has done an incredible job with the social workers and with the community in helping these Filipina women that have become Australians, married into Australian families and then sometimes found themselves no longer with their husband, and it has been a real struggle for them. She also helps them with issues within the family – any domestic violence issues or any situations where families need additional support. It has been great to see the work of the Australian-Filipino Community Services and great to be able to meet someone that has won many awards in the City of Casey. It was also amazing to meet Gerry Ocampo, who has been the president there, and Ruby. We met them years ago, my husband and I, when they used to live in Rowville, so that was just a joy to see that they are still very active, now living in the west, and still very involved in the Filipino community.

Of course the Armenian National Committee of Australia used to be headed up by Michael Kolokossian in the area out here, with the chairperson Mr Vache Kahramanian. The ANC have been very active. I have had the opportunity to go to some of their benevolent societies, to visit their language school, to see the great work that they are actually doing in the community and to also visit Armenia alongside Armenians from my region. That was a tremendous privilege that has impacted my life, and I have a real heart for the people there and for their culture and for their desire to be able to live peacefully with the rest of the world. I have also had the opportunity to meet, along with my colleague Mr Mulholland, the Chaldean community, another amazing community, and the Assyrian community – wonderful people who have made Australia their home, made it their life ambition to become proficient in English, to get an education here and to give back to the community. It is so great to see the efforts that they go to when they get the opportunity to come to Australia. Many of them have come out of very difficult refugee camps and situations, and they are just so grateful to be here. Some of them have left family behind, so to be able to come here and participate and yet bring their rich cultural heritage has been a joy. I also think of the Bangladeshi community. I have been to quite a few Bangladeshi events, and it has been great to actually attend iftar dinners. I remember one with the chamber of commerce in Dandenong this year that was very memorable. I wish to make a shout-out to Mohammed Murad Yousaf and the team from the Australia Bangladesh Chamber of Commerce & Industry. They were just amazing to meet.

Tamil festivals: I have always attended Tamil festivals. It has been fantastic to go there. Of course my father was born in Sri Lanka, and his side of the family have been in Sri Lanka and miss Sri Lanka greatly. I have had the great opportunity to travel there and to see the nation and to meet with family that still live in Sri Lanka. So it has been wonderful to be around the Tamil organisation. There are so many groups that are Tamil that continue to have events in my region, with their headquarters there in Dandenong, and also throughout our community. Indian communities are numerous, and there are too many to mention. But I know that we had them up here only yesterday, and I have met them several times at many different events. The BAPS: I particularly want to shout-out to Deepali. I have known her now for years. I think I met her in 2018. It has been wonderful to attend community outreaches there and to go to some of the things, like the Bakhtar community events, as well. Those are just two different groups that I have mentioned now. There is the Cambodian society. There are the Afghan societies and the different groups that they have. There is the youth group that they have. A shout-out to Hafiz Asadi, the president of the Victorian Afghan Associations’ Network. There is the Cambodian Association of Victoria. It has been great to meet with presidents there. There is the Hindu Society of Victoria, and there is the Ukrainian one.

As was mentioned, I have been to a couple of Ukrainian events just recently to mark the 35th anniversary. The Ukrainian people had Latvian people and Lithuanian people also as part of some of their celebrations, so it was wonderful to be able to engage and to enjoy time with them. The Vietnamese community, of course, is massive in the Springvale area. They have a lot of temples as well in the area, and the Vietnamese and Chinese make Springvale a very, very vibrant community. There is the Chinese community, and we actually have a very small Jewish population as well. I am just so grateful to live in a community with such a rich cultural heritage. We have the Irish, the Dutch and the Italians. There are so many events and so many things that I get to go to. I am so grateful that the south-east is full of people that want to celebrate their cultural heritage but also want to embrace Australia as home.

We are looking at this particular bill. It is really interesting that the Multicultural Victoria Amendment Bill 2026 includes changes to how the government goes about getting representation from the multicultural community. In this way it is actually going to have a lot of control. It is going to be looked at and controlled through the actual cabinet. I have mixed feelings about that, because I already feel that when we have had the multicultural commissioners come they have been very, very tied to the government. I must say, though, I have enjoyed their company at different events. They have always been very pleasant, but it does bother me that the three positions in particular that are going to be affected by this bill have been advertised and actually closed before the bill even came before the house. They were advertised in July and they closed by early August. I think it was 1 August that they closed. We have got this bill. We are at the end of August, and the bill has not even been passed, and they have already gone and done the advertising and probably already earmarked who they want for these positions.

The difficulty we have of course is that we have a government that likes to control everybody and everything and have the narrative all for themselves. As has been mentioned already by some of my colleagues, events have taken place where it has been all the multicultural groups coming together and there was no opportunity for the Liberals and Nationals to have a voice, to have a presentation, to give a speech or to be part of it. That has happened also in multifaith meetings and gatherings. Those have been enormous and obviously used taxpayers money but just so that the Labor Party would have the only voice at the table. That is really inappropriate. When we come into multifaith and multicultural communities, we should be sharing this space and coming together in a unified way, in a multipartisan presentation. Everyone should be able to be present and have a voice and be able to present themselves to these communities, because at the end of the day there are different members of Parliament from all sides that are representing some of these electorates, and they need to also know that they are going to be able to be present for the multicultural communities.

I have not even mentioned the South Pacific Islanders – the Samoans, the Fijians. Gosh, I am going to forget someone. There are so many people – the Kiwis, the Māori. There are a lot of different multicultural groups that I have actually not listed, and I have not listed some of the community leaders that I have had the great privilege and pleasure of spending time with. I cannot tell you all the number of dances and songs that I have had the opportunity to learn – and the amazing food. I think in my first couple of years in this place I put on maybe 20 kilos from doing sometimes five or six meals in a day at different multicultural events. Each Saturday and Sunday was just spent eating, eating, eating, and then during the week eating, eating, eating. Everybody was wanting me to try some particular dish that was theirs. I am very thankful that I think I have just about tried everything now so nobody is offended when I say I really need to pass this time because I put on too much weight. It has been great to be able to do that.

In looking at what this bill is going to mean for us, it is going to bring a different sense of representation for multicultural groups. It used to be that this was not political. We started this representation. I know that Labor likes to take all the credit for it, but we actually started the representation, with multifaith people too, with a great number of Liberal communities. Now we are looking at abolishing the Victorian Multicultural Commission and replacing the chair and commissioner model with a coordinator general model. We are going to be abolishing the existing regional advisory councils. The bill is also going to amend the principles of multiculturalism, noting the addition of the recognition of First Peoples as original custodians, according to the Statewide Treaty Act 2025. It is also going to change reporting requirements, replacing the old commission reporting model with a new ‘state of Multicultural Victoria’ annual report. I have to say that reports are great, but if it is not going to be done in a way that actually allows everyone to understand and celebrate all of the multiculturalism that takes place – and it is going to have this level of control – that is going to be a concern.

Under this particular government this is not going to be a shared experience. It is going to be a very political experience, and I do not think that it is healthy to bring that level of politics. It is already too political. Labor has tried to dominate the multicultural space for years, and it has been my great privilege and pleasure to make sure that the Liberals have had a very strong representation in the multicultural communities of the south-east and beyond, because I have been happy to travel beyond my borders, as have many of my colleagues, and we have really enjoyed being able to be part of multicultural communities. I know that they have embraced us, and they do not want to be controlled by one party. They want to be able to have a voice. They should have a voice. They are communities, but they are communities of individuals and individuals that must be able to have the same democratic processes as everybody else in this nation and to be able to have a voice. Just thinking that we can put something together that can be fully controlled by the government, especially if it is under a Labor government, is going to be very problematic for all Victorians.