Multicultural Affairs Newsletter - June 2023

Community consultation on Multicultural Infrastructure Plan

The Office of Multicultural Affairs is developing a Multicultural Infrastructure Plan to inform government decision making about multicultural infrastructure.

We want to better understand the wishes of the multicultural community to inform development of the plan.

We want to hear your views if you are part of a multicultural community organisation that:

• owns community facilities or centres
• is in a sharing arrangement scheme with facility or centre owners
• does not own community facilities or centres, and is not in a sharing arrangement scheme

Surveys close 18 June 2023.

If you have any questions, please contact the Office of Multicultural Affairs at tfhc.multiculturalaffairs@nt.gov.au or 08 8999 3894.

Minister’s Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs (MACMA) Meeting

Members of the Minister’s Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs (MACMA) met on 30 May 2023 to discuss issues impacting the lives of migrant and multicultural communities in the Northern Territory.

Highlights of the discussion included:

• Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Reduction measures in Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CaLD) communities
• potential linking of MACMA with other advisory boards (seniors, disabilities and youth) within the Community Participation and Inclusion division
• multicultural broadcasting and grant writing workshop
• updates from the service providers such as Multicultural Council of the Northern Territory and Multicultural Community Services of Central Australia.

There were 9 new members in the meeting who were recently appointed to the MACMA for a two year term through an expression of interest process.

The Minister’s Advisory Council on Multicultural Affairs (MACMA) was established to provide high level and strategic advice from the community to government on matters pertaining to multicultural affairs. MACMA provides formal, ongoing and effective linkages between government and the multicultural community in order to improve policy and service delivery outcomes.

Australian Taxation Office support and resources

Below are some popular resources that will assist in getting ready for tax time.

• Tax time resources in up to 18 languages
• Help for your first tax time audio guide – in Arabic, Cantonese, Dari, Farsi, Filipino, Khmer, Korean, Mandarin, Nepali, Spanish, Thai and Vietnamese
• Our Community Voices video series
• Tax Help program helps eligible people earning $60,000 or less to lodge their tax return online.
• National Tax Clinic program is a government-funded initiative to help eligible people with their tax affairs.

Updates to contacts in multicultural community associations

The Office of Multicultural Affairs encourages all multicultural community organisations and associations to create a generic email address (if not yet created) for their organisation instead of using private email addresses of presidents and other board members.

If there have been changes to committee members in your multicultural community association, please advise the Office of Multicultural Affairs by emailing the updated contact details to tfhc.multiculturalaffairs@nt.gov.au