Premier Jacinta Allan’s personal staff decide whether non-government politicians are seen and heard at taxpayer-funded, multicultural events, government communications reveal.
On Wednesday night in Melbourne, about 2000 people will gather at the Centrepiece venue overlooking Rod Laver Arena for the inaugural Victorian Christian Communities Dinner, an election-year addition to the state’s already jammed multicultural and multifaith events calendar.
Once seated and fed, the invited guests from ethnically diverse Christian sects including Assyrians, Chaldeans from Iraq and Orthodox Serbs will hear from Allan but not Opposition Leader Jess Wilson, who declined to attend the taxpayer-funded event after being refused an opportunity to address the room.
The Christian communities invited to the dinner tend to live near their churches in Labor-held, battleground electorates in Melbourne’s north, west and south-east and hold socially conservative views. Australia’s highest-ranking Catholic, Ukrainian-born Cardinal Mykola Bychok, is expected to attend.
Government communications seen by The Age show that when Wilson requested to speak at the dinner earlier this month, she was told that although the event is hosted by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the Premier’s Private Office has the final say over who gets to speak.
“This event is being delivered by the Department of Premier and Cabinet on behalf of the Premier, and the order of proceedings and speaking roles have been determined through the Premier’s Office,” a departmental bureaucrat responsible for protocol told Wilson.
“For this event, the Premier and Minister will provide formal remarks. The Leader of the Opposition or their nominee are warmly invited to participate in the proceedings by being present on stage during the candle-lighting component.”
Opposition spokesman for multicultural and multifaith affairs Evan Mulholland said this was “blatantly political”.
Wilson, who received an invitation to the dinner with only two weeks’ notice, confirmed she would not attend. It continues a pattern in Victoria, previously reported by this masthead, in which nominally, apolitical community events are resembling Labor Party promotions, according to the opposition and governance experts.
Previous government communications released under freedom of information to the opposition showed that at last year’s Premier’s Multicultural Gala Dinner, which cost taxpayers $438,000, nearly 200 seats were set aside for Labor MPs, their staff and their guests. The opposition, by contrast, was given one table.
The issue flared in budget estimates this week in a testy exchange between Minister for Multicultural Affairs Ingrid Stitt and former Liberal leader John Pesutto.
Stitt rejected accusations that dinners to celebrate ethnic and religious minorities were being stacked with Labor MPs.
“I think there is a perception that your government favours government MPs over non-government MPs to be able to support multicultural communities at these important events,” Pesutto said. “Are these Labor Party events, effectively at the exclusion of all other MPs?”
“That’s nonsense,” Stitt said. “They’re celebrations of our diversity as a state, which we take very seriously.”
“So do we,” replied Pesutto. “That’s why we want to support them, and that’s why all non-government members want to support them.”
Vivienne Nguyen, who has served as Victorian Multicultural Commissioner for the past seven years, confirmed there were more, large-scale, publicly funded multicultural events planned for this year in Victoria than ever before.
Wednesday night’s Christian community dinner will be followed on Monday by a Vesak dinner for the Buddhist community. The election year kicked off with another new event targeting Chinese voters – the Premier’s Year of the Fire Horse gala dinner to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
When asked whether these events were at risk of becoming partisan promotions, Nguyen was diplomatic.
“You can look at it in a number of ways. It may well be that, where the government wants to hold seats and communities are diverse, they want to amplify that,” she said. “If the Coalition was to win the election, they would probably do the same.”
Mulholland said the government’s own communications confirmed the events were being politicised. While the Department of Premier and Cabinet is staffed by public servants, the Premier’s Private Office works to further the government’s political interests.
“It is blatantly political to be doing this in an election year,” Mulholland said. “They are hosting more of these events this year than previous years at a cost of over $1 million. It is a baked-in electoral advantage using taxpayer money.
“The real shame is that these events should be an opportunity to publicly demonstrate bipartisan support for our multicultural and multifaith communities. Unfortunately, it is not politically convenient for an unpopular premier to showcase that bipartisan support.”
Stitt, responding to questions this week in parliament, said invitation lists to publicly funded dinners were put together by government departments through “ordinary processes” and it was customary for opposition MPs and the opposition leader to be invited as guests.
She said this was consistent with the approach of previous governments.
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Chip Le Grand leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper’s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years’ experience.Connect via email.From our partners
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