I also stand to support, give my commitment to and talk to this motion about a safe and united multicultural Victoria. I particularly would like to talk a little bit about how this relates to the Bellarine electorate. I was born and bred on the Bellarine.
I have always found the Bellarine a very caring, thoughtful and deeply respectful community – and various communities across the Bellarine that have little pockets of their own suburbs. We are certainly, though, united in looking after each other. We are very good at listening to each other and checking in on our neighbours. We do not approach challenges that we have in our community with anger or with suspicion. We use empathy, and we use common sense, really, across the Bellarine. I think that that is what is very unique and very special about the electorate that I very proudly represent.
We are certainly small communities across the Bellarine that are very connected and very much have a genuine commitment to each other’s wellbeing. That is why attempts to provoke fear or fuel division have no home and no place on the Bellarine. For our communities, we do not fall for those, I suppose, rage-bait politics and the loud tactics that thrive on conflict. We do not allow ourselves to be dragged into the noise of this manufactured outrage that we see sometimes.
The Bellarine has been built on many generations of families who have come to Australia seeking a better life, and that life has been defined by having a safe life and an opportunity to thrive and come with hope. They come to raise children in small country towns, where it is very much hard work that is valued and our freedoms are protected and every person has a chance, regardless of their background and regardless of where their story has begun, to thrive. They have enriched our communities across the Bellarine. Those journeys, though, obviously can be marked with sacrifice and courage and belief in a brighter future. As this house has remarked today, we have seen some people in this community attempt to use fear as a tool to divide communities, to pit our neighbours against each other and turn that into this fuelling of anger and fear. But that is not leadership. Leadership is not about stoking fear. It is not about exploiting tensions. It is about resolving issues. It is not about creating enemies but building communities.
We cannot ignore, though, that across the world and indeed here in Victoria we have seen a troubling rise in vilification. Most of the time it is being fuelled by misinformation, maybe global conflicts, polarising commentary and online spaces that reward outrage over truth. Obviously, Victoria has not been immune to this, and we have seen attempts to inflame those tensions. But it just reminds us that cohesion is not automatic and that it must be protected. It calls on our leaders and our community groups and government and places like this to stand firmly against any of that form of discrimination, reject extremism in all its forms and actively build a society where each person is safe and valued.
It is about having leaders that bring people together. They listen before they speak. They seek solutions, not headlines. They take responsibility for calming a community, not inflaming it. And they stand with those who feel isolated or targeted and remind everyone that our strength comes from unity. In every moment we are tested. And when we have seen protests in the streets – I never thought I would see what I have seen in my lifetime in this state – many community leaders have stood up to show strength and compassion and courage by calling that out.
We certainly, today with this motion, thank those leaders. We thank our faith leaders, our cultural organisations, our community volunteers, teachers, local advocates and everyday residents particularly who simply refuse to look away. We thank them today with this motion. It reminds us that leadership does not come with a badge or a title. Leadership is sometimes shown in the quietest of acts of solidarity and public statements of support and maybe calm voices of reason. It is a willingness to say in this state and in this community when we see these examples of vilification that we will not have that in our communities; we will not stand for that.
As we have noted, this work is not finished, and to maintain a united, multicultural community requires ongoing effort. In speaking to this motion, I commit to working on that for the Bellarine community, where our diversity is celebrated, where racism is rejected and where division will not take hold. The Bellarine community knows that unity is not an aspiration, it is actually an action. I thank the leaders, and I thank the Minister for Health for her motion today to thank our leaders for standing up.
