Multicultural Minister Anne Aly and Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke jointly announced the initiative on June 3, calling multiculturalism “a fundamental aspect of our identity.”
The office will oversee services such as settlement support, migrant English programs, and interpreting services, while also revamping grant programs to better reflect modern multicultural needs.
Modern Australia is a Multicultural Australia: Minister
Burke and Aly said the new office would consolidate key responsibilities within Home Affairs, to allow for a more cohesive national strategy to deal with social cohesion.
“The new Office will drive a national approach to a multicultural Australia, providing leadership across the three tiers of government,” they said in a joint statement.
“Modern Australia and multicultural Australia are the same thing,” Burke declared, highlighting the importance of embedding multicultural values across the Australian Public Service.
The Epoch Times has contacted the Home Affairs Department on further details regarding how the body will operate alongside the existing multicultural minister’s office.
The announcement also comes amid Labor’s pre-election pledge to invest $25 million in more than 600 community language schools across Australia, supporting over 90,000 students studying 84 languages.
As part of the same pledge, $5 million was earmarked for a specialised Asian languages stream to help students—regardless of background—learn Asian languages through to Year 12.
The move comes amid an ongoing spate of major anti-Semitic issues stemming from the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel.Last year saw the firebombing of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne, vandalism, and an arson attack on a Jewish childcare centre in Sydney.
At the same time, Palestinian advocates also reported an uptick of incidents targeting them.
Meanwhile, the government’s July 2024 report, Towards Fairness: A Multicultural Australia for All, received 796 submissions from multicultural groups reporting racism as a major issue.
