MELBOURNE, 1 March, 2025: Victoria’s Multicultural Minister Ingridd Stitt has said the former VMC commissioner George Lekakis final report into a number of our multicultural policies, institutions and settings, is aimed to strengthen social cohesion in the state. The Minister said this while answering for an update asked by the opposition on Victoria’s multicultural policies.
“We live in one of the most culturally diverse places in the world, but there is no question that we have seen our social cohesion come under significant pressure as a result of events a long way away from here but events that all the same have had a really distressing and devastating impact on many in the community, including our Jewish community and including our Palestinian community and the broader Muslim community,” the Minister Ingrid Stitt said.
The Minister further said, ” The VMC, the Ethnic Communities Council of Victoria and indeed many other community organisations that do incredibly important work with our diverse communities, many of them newly arrived communities, are really important institutions in Victoria. I am not going to preempt what Mr Lekakis’s final report will say, but this is not about singling out individual organisations, this is about providing broad recommendations to the government about how we can actually strengthen those institutions and strengthen our social cohesion here in Victoria. Mr Lekakis’s work will be supported by a reference group that will be made up of highly respected Victorians, and I look forward to receiving his report in due course.”
Earlier, Leader of opposition Evan Mulholland in a statement emailed to the media said the Minister had failed to rule out cuts to Victoria’s multicultural communities .
