MELBOURNE – For Julian Hill, the Labor MP for the Victorian seat of Bruce, his new role as Deputy Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs is the ideal position.
“My community in Southeast Melbourne is one of the most multicultural communities in the country,” said Hill during his interview with Riccardo Schirru on Il Globo TV.
“I now am engaging right across Australia with communities to see what people need and what the government can do better.
“Modern Multicultural Australia is a miracle,” he continued. “We’ve got people from all over the world, but Australia’s always been a multicultural continent.
“Our First Nations Australians spoke more than 250 different languages. European settlement then gave us our system of government and democratic traditions.
“But now, with one of the most diverse populations on Earth, the primary issue for me is making sure that all Australians get a fair go no matter where they were born, no matter their religion, no matter their first language.
“That doesn’t just happen by accident, though. It’s deliberate government policy.
“The secret, the magic ingredient that I see all over the country is community leadership. It’s the people who step up to be on the church committee, to be present at the local Italian senior Citizens group … community media and so on.”
Hill, a single parent (he has an adult daughter), grew up in a single-parent family after his father’s death when he was very young.
He believes the government needs to reduce net immigration and return it to pre-pandemic levels to ease pressure on housing.
“In relation to international education, Australia should be really proud that so many young people have chosen to come and study in Australia, they could choose somewhere else,” he said.
“It’s great for our economy, it’s great for our universities. It’s great for our cities and we also get a small number of those students who stay and become highly valued, skilled migrants and grow our economy.
“It’s also a fact, and I think every everyone listening would agree, that there’s always going to be more people who want to come and study in Australia than Australia can accommodate.
“The levels the government is seeking is to return to about what they were before the pandemic.
“Unfortunately, there’s been some institutions that have profiteered and recruited far too many students. We need to make sure that the sector is sustainable.
The newly appointed deputy minister, who was the youngest mayor of Port Phillip, responded to the opposition leader’s claims that the government was endangering national security by welcoming refugees from Gaza.
“Peter Dutton, the leader of the Liberal Party who claims to be the alternative prime minister of our country, is one of the most nasty and divisive political leaders this country has ever seen,” said Hill.
“You’re right, he chose to politicise a small number of people. 1300 people who’ve come to Australia fleeing death and war in Gaza, many of whom have family members in Australia.
“That’s a matter for him. But the point which I would make … [is that] Prime Minister Albanese from day one has made it a focus … to try and bring Australians together.
“Peter Dutton at every point wants to divide the country to try and get some votes. It’s not his first time either.
“Melburnians would remember he said that people were scared to go out because of all these ‘African gangs’.
“He’s never apologised for saying that Lebanese people should not have come to Australia in the 1970s fleeing war.
“We know the game he was playing.”
Hill, a proud member of the ‘Rainbow’ Labor faction, also commented on the census question regarding the LGBTQI+ community that was promised by the government but shelved before being reinstated by the Prime Minister upon his return to Australia from the Pacific Forum.
“The first point is the census is not until 2026,” he said.
“There’s been a lot of work going on for some years about making sure that the census always reflects the data and the information which governments need.
“I’ve been advocating for something else on the census myself, actually for a while, which is about multilingualism.
“We don’t measure … how many people might speak two or three or four languages and that would be terrific to [know].
“[But] you can’t just add lots of questions or it gets too long and people won’t complete it and it loses its integrity.”
After eight years in Parliament, the deputy minister is a seasoned politician.
Commenting on the latest polls showing the government at a disadvantage, he said, “I think we’re both old enough to remember that polls go up, polls go down.
“And if you look through modern Australian history, federal governments are very often behind in the polls. And that’s actually not where we are.
“It’s a trite saying, but it’s true: There’s only one poll that matters, which is on Election Day.
“Polls between elections are often a way for people to express a feeling at that moment.
“We’ve run the first two surplus budgets that the country has seen back to back for nearly 20 years.
“I do not buy that brand propaganda that the Liberals are better at the economy. The data simply does not support that.
“We’ve got the budget in better shape. Our debt forecasts are $150 billion lower than under the Liberals budget has been. Inflation’s coming down. That’s a good trend and a good set of numbers to talk to people [about].”
