{"id":680907,"date":"2026-05-19T14:03:17","date_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:03:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/680907\/"},"modified":"2026-05-19T14:03:17","modified_gmt":"2026-05-19T14:03:17","slug":"victrorian-opposition-says-taxpayer-funded-dinners-have-become-blatantly-political","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/680907\/","title":{"rendered":"Victrorian opposition says taxpayer-funded dinners have become \u2018blatantly political\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Premier Jacinta Allan\u2019s personal staff decide whether non-government politicians are seen and heard at taxpayer-funded multicultural events, government communications reveal.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s already jammed multicultural and multi-faith events calendar.<\/p>\n

\"JacintaJacinta Allan\u2019s personal staff decide who will speak at government events.Ruby Alexander<\/p>\n

Once seated and fed, the invited guests from ethnically diverse Christian groups 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.<\/p>\n

The Christian communities invited to the dinner tend to live near their churches in Labor-held battleground electorates in Melbourne\u2019s north, west and south-east and hold socially conservative views. Australia\u2019s highest-ranking Catholic, Ukrainian-born Cardinal Mykola Bychok, is expected to attend.<\/p>\n

Government communications seen by this masthead show that when Wilson requested to speak at the dinner earlier this month, she was told that although the event was hosted by the Department of Premier and Cabinet, the Premier\u2019s Private Office had the final say over who gets to speak.<\/p>\n

\"Ukrainian-bornUkrainian-born Cardinal Mykola Bychok is expected to attend a multi-faith dinner with Premier Jacinta Allan.Flavio Brancaleone<\/p>\n

\u201cThis 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\u2019s Office,\u201d a departmental bureaucrat responsible for protocol told Wilson.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor 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.\u201d<\/p>\n

Opposition spokesman for multicultural and multi-faith affairs Evan Mulholland said this was \u201cblatantly political\u201d.<\/p>\n

Wilson, who received an invitation to the dinner with only two weeks\u2019 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.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Victorian<\/a><\/p>\n

Previous government communications <\/a>released under freedom-of-information laws to the opposition showed that at last year\u2019s Premier\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

The issue flared in budget estimates this week in a testy exchange between Multicultural Affairs Minister Ingrid Stitt and former Liberal leader John Pesutto.<\/p>\n

Stitt rejected accusations that dinners to celebrate ethnic and religious minorities were being stacked with Labor MPs.<\/p>\n

\u201cI 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,\u201d Pesutto said. \u201cAre these Labor Party events, effectively at the exclusion of all other MPs?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s nonsense,\u201d Stitt said. \u201cThey\u2019re celebrations of our diversity as a state, which we take very seriously.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"MulticulturalMulticultural Affairs Minister Ingrid Stitt.Jason South<\/p>\n

\u201cSo do we,\u201d replied Pesutto. \u201cThat\u2019s why we want to support them, and that\u2019s why all non-government members want to support them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Wednesday night\u2019s 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 \u2013 the Premier\u2019s Year of the Fire Horse gala dinner to celebrate the Lunar New Year.<\/p>\n

Related Article\"Premier<\/a><\/p>\n

When asked whether these events were at risk of becoming partisan promotions, Nguyen was diplomatic.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou can look at it in a number of ways,\u201d she said. \u201cIt may well be that where the government wants to hold seats and communities are diverse, they want to amplify that. If the Coalition was to win the election, they would probably do the same.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mulholland said the government\u2019s own communications confirmed the events were being politicised. While the Department of Premier and Cabinet is staffed by public servants, the Premier\u2019s Private Office works to further the government\u2019s political interests.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is blatantly political to be doing this in an election year,\u201d Mulholland said. \u201cThey 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.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe real shame is that these events should be an opportunity to publicly demonstrate bipartisan support for our multicultural and multi-faith communities. Unfortunately, it is not politically convenient for an unpopular premier to showcase that bipartisan support.\u201d<\/p>\n

Stitt, responding to questions this week in parliament, said invitation lists to publicly funded dinners were put together by government departments through \u201cordinary processes\u201d, and it was customary for opposition MPs and the opposition leader to be invited as guests.<\/p>\n

She said this was consistent with the approach of previous governments.<\/p>\n

Start the day with a summary of the day\u2019s most important and interesting stories, analysis and insights. Sign up for our Morning Edition newsletter<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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\"ChipChip Le Grand<\/a> leads our state politics reporting team. He previously served as the paper\u2019s chief reporter and is a journalist of 30 years\u2019 experience.Connect via email<\/a>.From our partners<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Save You have reached your maximum number of saved items. Remove items from your saved list to add…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":680908,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-680907","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680907","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=680907"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/680907\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/680908"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=680907"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=680907"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=680907"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}