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Well, good morning, everyone. It’s an incredible pleasure to join you here this morning for the National Multicultural Health and Wellbeing Conference. Can I also begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the lands on which we meet today, the Wurundjeri and Woiwurrung peoples of the Kulin nation, and I pay my deepest respects to their elders past and present and acknowledge First Nations people with us here today.

I just want to take a moment to extend and acknowledge my colleagues and partners here today. Obviously, you’ve just heard the incredible Mark Butler, Minister for Health, speak. He is an incredible representative for the people that he represents in his local electorate, but also more broadly in pushing the health and ageing agenda within our cabinet as well. Mary Ann Baquero Geronimo, can I acknowledge you? Can I acknowledge Mary Patetsos, Padma Raman, the executive director from the Office for Women, Violet Roumeliotis, the CEO at Settlement Services Australia, Professor Zoe Wainer, deputy secretary from the Department of Health Victoria, and, of course, my dear friend Peter Doukas, chair of FECCA.

And I do want to just give a big shout‑out to FECCA for your steadfastness, persistence, your resilience, over the years often in situations where, you know, we describe it as taking two steps forward and three steps back in the area of multiculturalism. One constant that’s been around in the 30 years or so that I’ve been involved in multicultural affairs in various ways and with various hats on, the one constant has been FECCA and the voice of FECCA and the advocacy of FECCA, so if I can just take the moment to thank FECCA for all the work that they’ve done.

So today we’re launching the Australian Multicultural Women’s Alliance, and I want to talk a little bit about migrant refugee women of colour and those kinds of intersectionalities with health in my speech today, but I also want to talk about multiculturalism and kind of bring all of those things together.

The alliance is actually a milestone in our national commitment to ensuring that every woman in Australia no matter her cultural background, her place of birth, country of origin, can thrive, can lead and can belong in Australia. And it’s, you know, often alliances like this or programs like this get considered to be a nice little add‑on but this alliance is not an add‑on. It sits at the heart, the very heart of what the Albanese government is working on with our women’s strategy. Our strategy, our women’s strategy, recognises gender equality as foundation of both social progress and economic strength, but today’s launch, importantly, takes an intersectional lens to gender equality and recognises that diversity is not just about gender.

Now, I don’t know if any of you are like me, but I get incredibly frustrated if every time people talk about diversity and then just show women in the complete absence of any migrant refugee women of colour when they talk about diversity. So, for me, it’s really exciting to be able to be a part of something that challenges that and that brings in intersectionality.

Today’s launch makes a clear statement that migrant women, refugee women, ethnic women and women of colour are not a footnote in the equality story. We are, my friends, central to it.

[Applause.]

Now, Angelica, I really appreciate you telling your story, because stories are indeed very powerful and when I stand here in front of you, I speak to you not as a politician, but as a fellow migrant woman. As some of you may know, I was two years old when my parents migrated from Egypt, arriving at the Bonegilla migrant training camp, as it was called in Albury–Wodonga. Some of you may know that camp had a bit of a notorious history before my parents arrived, particularly in health outcomes for children. About 10 years before my parents arrived in 1969, 13 children were killed at the Bonegilla migrant training camp due to malnutrition. It made world headlines. It made world headlines, and it prompted a government response at the Bonegilla mining training camp, but it is too often that kind of story where something makes the headlines before we recognise that there is a need to treat people equally.

So, when my family arrived in Bonegilla, it was a much different training camp then for the Germany – predominantly German and Italian migrants who had arrived in the years before. My father, an engineer by training, by then a university-qualified engineer, drove buses for a living. My mother, a nurse, worked in factories before then working in aged care. Over‑qualified, undervalued and they continued working hard to get their family ahead.

Later, myself, as a young single mum of two, I experienced firsthand the strain of caring, studying, working all at once, and faced unique experiences, expectations and barriers that women of colour combat that often no-one else sees. As I look back on my story and what this means but also think of the many migrant mothers who arrive in the country with similar hopes and similar determination that my parents did – women who know what it is to juggle children, work, societal pressures and, of course, cultural expectations as well. It means for them facing not just a glass ceiling, often also a bamboo ceiling, sometimes also called a brown ceiling. Sometimes it’s more than a ceiling; it’s a bloody hard cement brick wall. And a number of other barriers.

So, just like my own family story, we know that even migrants over the last 50 years – my family story was 50 years ago, but 50 years on, that story remains the same. Many migrants are chronically overqualified, undervalued, underemployed and underpaid, even if they have the same skills and experiences as their counterparts. But on top of this, they also face forms of discrimination, stereotypes and assumptions about who belongs. To give you a little bit of an example, I went for a mammogram last year and I went to one in Mirrabooka. I don’t know if anyone knows Mirrabooka in WA. Yeah, Mirrabooka in WA. It’s pretty – it’s probably the most culturally diverse suburb in all of WA. And I walked in to get the mammogram and the lady behind the counter said, “Right, now, where are you from because you’re not Australian?” That was last year. Last year. So, you know, recognising that assumptions about who we are based on how we look is actually a structural barrier to the access of services. And, you know, often it’s because we are women, perhaps because we speak another language, practice another religion or because of the cultural dress that we wear, we are often othered.

Now, earlier this week at Deakin University – I think it was earlier this week. I think it was yesterday! Was yesterday earlier this week? It was. Yes. Okay. So yesterday, at Deakin University I spoke about some of the challenges facing multiculturalism today and how multiculturalism today has moved from the multiculturalism that Mark spoke about when it was first introduced. Firstly, there are a number of limitations to the concept of multiculturalism as it was introduced in 1973. And the first of those is a temptation to reduce multiculturalism to tokenism, a celebration of food and festivals, as long as it tastes like chicken and is colourful. You all know what I’m talking about. The second is this idea of conditional belonging, a kind of like gritted teeth tolerance that you are welcome here as long as your food tastes like chicken, your celebrations are colourful and your music is pleasant to the ear, you’ll be accepted. And, finally, the structural barriers that migrants, refugees and people of colour in Australia face, both direct and institutionalised, gets sidelined or ignored when we only focus on the culture and the celebration and the festivals. Now, this means a number of things.

It means a lack of recognition of skills and qualifications, like my own father’s story. It also means the stark absence of representation, of ethnic people or people of colour, not just in positions of leadership, but also in just the spaces we all belong. These are spaces where we should be represented, but there is a clear absence of migrant refugee and people of colour and ethnic people in those spaces where we should be front and centre having a voice.

For migrant women, that’s compounded. That’s compounded. And I’m going to give you a few examples of where this, you know, kind of double disadvantage or this intersectionality compounds issues for women, and the first example I want to give you is in health care and it’s an example that I came across. This was a number of years ago, but it’s still a really relevant example of a woman who gave birth at King Edward Hospital and there were some complications with the birth, so she was in hospital for a number of days when the staff noticed that she wasn’t eating. She wasn’t eating any of the food. She was returning all the food that they gave. When they finally called in an interpreter for her, it was because she thought she had to pay for the food, and she couldn’t afford it. Right? Like, I’m getting emotional telling you this story because in 2025, and this happened like I said, a few years ago, but it shouldn’t happen. It shouldn’t happen. And it demonstrates just how serious it is when services are not responsive to individual needs. It demonstrates the real tangible results, the real tangible outcomes of inequality.

Another example: we know that reporting of sexual assault and harassment by black women and Hispanic women in the US is lower or, when they do report, they are most often not believed. But we don’t have any statistics for Australia. We don’t know that in Australia. Because we don’t collect the data. And when you don’t have the data, you don’t know the problem and when you don’t know the problem, the problem is invisible. Data collection is a big issue, is a big issue for migrant women in health care, but also in sexual assault and harassment as well.

A few years ago – everything was a few years ago, but actually this one was probably about 15 years ago. The Women’s Health Centre in WA – this was before I got distracted by a political career. The Women’s Health Centre in WA came and asked me about a project because they knew that they were getting migrant women coming in with dual diagnosis, but they couldn’t get any funding because they didn’t have the statistics because the data collection instruments that they were using did not account for ethnicity, language spoken at home, any kind of identifying factors that could allow them to present to government evidence that there were women from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds who needed to have tailored services.

So, we did a project where we developed a data collection tool to enable them to collect that data and be able to present it to government in order to get funding so they could have responsive services. But this is what we’re dealing with. We’re dealing with a time when, as much as multiculturalism is valued and as much as Australians say they welcome multiculturalism, we are still working in a time when multiculturalism is a ‘semicolon and’, a postscript, an afterthought, we’ll do this first and then we’ll get to you when we’re ready. Friends, I’m telling you, there is not a mainstream and a multicultural. Have a look around this room. Multicultural is the mainstream!

[Applause.]

And that is why this alliance matters and that is why FECCA matters and that is why your voice matters. Because we have to keep yelling it. Sorry, but we do. Okay, so we’re going to keep yelling for a little bit longer. As Mark mentioned, you know, as – sorry, Peter mentioned, the fact that we now have a standalone Multicultural Affairs minister in the cabinet was a very deliberate move by our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese. It really does demonstrate the fact that we are at a pretty pivotal point right now and that pivotal point is that we have a platform. We have a platform with a minister in cabinet. We have a platform with the creation of the Office of Multicultural Affairs. Let’s not waste this platform. I want every single person in here to be able to see that platform as their platform. Your platform. Right? And this is a moment for us to make that change. This is a moment for us to embed into practices, services, service delivery, equity, equitable outcomes, and embed multiculturalism as something that defines our character, defines our identity. This is our moment. I can feel it. I know I’ve said that before, but this time I mean it!

[Applause.]

And the way that we can do that is through alliances like this. By bringing together lived experience, research and data and community voices and pushing them into the centre of policymaking, putting them right there where they belong. And I know the alliance will be key to helping ensure that every part of our government’s working for women strategy includes every woman, every woman, every single woman, and I know that you will do this not just with the Office for Women, but also with the Office for Multicultural Affairs, so you have two platforms. And our alliance, and when I mean our alliance, I mean the alliance of our government, with all of you, represents a new way forward.

As I said, it’s a pretty momentous moment. We’ve got the momentum up. Let’s take advantage of it. I want to bring together research and advocacy to really make that difference. Because as you all know, when multicultural women succeed, when multicultural communities succeed, Australia succeeds. It’s a no‑brainer, right? When women of colour lead, our institutions become stronger, don’t they? And when we embed equality into everything that we do, we build a nation where everyone can participate fully and where everyone can feel that they belong. So, congratulations to everyone involved in establishing the Australian Multicultural Women’s Alliance. I look forward to working with the Alliance but also look forward to working with each one of you. Let’s raise our voices, people. Let’s go. Thank you.