Blow the Truth

Nominations are now open for the 2021 Victorian Refugee Awards, which recognise the achievements and contributions of Victorians from refugee and asylum seeker backgrounds.   The annual awards honour people, businesses and organisations who have excelled through study, work, entrepreneurial or volunteer efforts in Victoria. Multiple awards will be presented across four categories – Young Leader, Achievement, Leadership and Business.   The awards will be a key part of Refugee Week, which will run from Sunday 20 June to Saturday 26 June this year. Refugee Week raises awareness about issues affecting refugees and celebrates their contribution to our county and our community. The theme for this year is Unity – The Way Forward, which calls for the spirit of unity as communities recover from the isolation endured in 2020.   In addition to the Awards, the Victorian Multicultural Commission (VMC) is supporting a series of community events over the week to share refugee experiences, delivered b

Dan Andrews Photo facebook Andrews: I won’t waste words: today hurts.  Victorians know, better than anyone, just how deeply.  But as we’ve seen – here in Australia and around the world – we are facing a new kind of enemy. A virus that is smarter, and faster, and more infectious.  And until we have a vaccine, we need to do everything we can to keep this virus at bay. In the past 24 hours, five new cases have been identified. It shows just how incredibly infectious this virus is. And our public health team tell us it’s only getting faster. Right now, we are reaching close contacts well within the 48-hour benchmark. But the time between exposure, incubation, symptoms and testing positive is rapidly shortening.  So much so, that even secondary close contacts are potentially infectious within that 48-hour window. In short: this hyper-infectious variant is moving at hyper-speed. It’s why on the advice of our public health experts, the whole of Victoria will move to circuit-breaker action fro

Victorian school students will learn about the impact of violence and coward punches through a series of  Be Wise Education  presentations, supported by the Andrews Labor Government. Minister for Education James Merlino today announced a $150,000 investment to support the Pat Cronin Foundation to expand its  Be Wise   Education  program. The funding will help deliver 200 presentations to government and non-government schools in 2021. The Pat Cronin Foundation was established by Matt and Robyn Cronin in memory of their 19-year-old son who died from a coward punch on a night out in Diamond Creek in 2016. The Pat Cronin Foundation and the  Be Wise Education  program were established to help end the coward punch by helping young people to make wise decisions. The program complements the Victorian Curriculum F–10 delivery of personal and social capability curriculum and provides students with resources and presentations to raise awareness about the drivers and consequences of social violenc

Applications are now open for grants under the Andrews Labor Government’s Building Safer Communities Program. There are three categories of grants available which cover a wide range of sectors and projects, with each focused on delivering grassroots and community focused projects to prevent crime. The Creating Safer Places category offers grants of $25,000 to $300,000 for councils to fund urban design projects that apply an inclusive environmental design approach to deter crime, increase safety and activate public places. The Crime Prevention Innovation Fund awards grants of $25,000 to $300,000 for councils and not-for-profit organisations to deliver and evaluate innovative community safety and crime prevention initiatives. This can include projects that engage diverse communities or specific groups, or which establish or strengthen partnerships across community, business, sport and other sectors to address causes of crime. A third grant category, Empowering Communities, will also supp

The Andrews Labor Government is helping diverse communities come together in a COVIDSafe way to celebrate their culture and traditions. Acting Minister for Multicultural Affairs Shaun Leane today opened the Multicultural Festivals and Events Program, inviting organisations to apply for funding for events to be held between March and June this year. The funding recognises the important role of community connection and celebration and will support events held either in person or in a digital format. Any in-person event must adhere to the COVIDSafe Public Events Framework. With the entertainment and events industry one of the hardest hit because of the pandemic, this funding will help bring more life and colour to the state, celebrating our vibrant cultural diversity, whilst ensuring the health and safety of all Multicultural Festivals. In March, Victoria’s Greek community will celebrate the 200 th  anniversary of Greek independence – a significant occasion on the cultural calendar. Deliv

The Andrews Labor Government is ensuring Victorians struggling with anxiety and distress get the support they need. Anxiety Recovery Centre Victoria will receive an extra $200,000 to provide surge capacity for their specialist OCD and anxiety helpline, which has experienced a 232 percent rise in demand this year. This comes following a $250,000 investment to ARCVic earlier this year, to improve access to support and ongoing care for people with obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD) and other anxiety conditions.   Since the start of the pandemic, the service has recruited 70 more volunteers and extended its operating hours, so more Victorians can access the support they need, when they need it.  This funding will deliver the new CARES 4ME program to be run by ARCVic, that caters to those who require ongoing support.  CARES 4ME program matches clients to trained volunteers with lived experience of anxiety. Volunteers provide emotional support and practical guidance to help people work thro

Dan Andrews Media Release: The Victorian Government will today enact new measures to protect our state from the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19). Based on the most up-to-date information available, the current outbreak in New South Wales is linked to a returned traveller in that state's Hotel Quarantine program. However, concerningly, there remain missing links in the chains of transmission and case numbers and exposure sites continue to grow. Without mandatory mask rules and stay at home orders across Sydney, our Government and state's health authorities do not have confidence that the situation remains safe. It's why from 11:59 pm tonight, the Greater Sydney area and the Central Coast will be designated as a ‘red zone’. That means people who live in these communities, or have visited these communities since 11 December 2020, cannot enter Victoria. Anyone from this zone found trying to enter Victoria in breach of this order will be subject to 14-day mandatory hotel quarant

Dan Andrews Labor Government is speeding up its removal of 75 dangerous and congested level crossings, preparing to award $1.5 billion in contracts for nine level crossings and fast-track a further seven to remove them ahead of schedule. Premier Daniel Andrews and Minister for Transport Infrastructure Jacinta Allan today visited the site of the Union Road level crossing removal in Surrey Hills, which is being fast-tracked for removal along with the nearby level crossing at Mont Albert. Level crossings in Surrey Hills, Mont Albert, Pakenham, and Glen Huntly will now be gone for good earlier, as part of an accelerated delivery program which will see one level crossing removed every four weeks on average in 2021. With two fatalities at Union Road in 2016 when a train and car collided – and a further eight near misses in recent years – the Surrey Hills and Mont Albert communities will be safer when the boom gates are removed and a rail trench dug to separate the road and tracks by 2023. Ex

The biggest cultural infrastructure project in Australia will transform Melbourne’s creative precinct – attracting visitors, creating jobs and establishing vibrant new gardens and creative space in the heart of our city. Premier Daniel Andrews and Minister for Creative Industries Danny Pearson visited the NGV today, whose grounds will be opened up to the public as part of the $1.4 billion Melbourne Arts Precinct Transformation project Stage 1 – fully funded in yesterday’s  Victorian Budget 2020/21. A landmark new Gallery – NGV Contemporary – will be built behind the existing NGV on Southbank Boulevard, amidst a new 18,000 square-metre public garden in the heart of Melbourne Arts Precinct. Melbourne architects HASSELL and New York practice SO-IL won the tender to design the new public garden and this work is well underway.  The garden will be vibrant, immersive and ever-changing, not only with the seasons but week-by-week as new plants bloom and cycle. While the design is not yet comple

The Melbourne Airport Rail Link route will take travellers into the heart of the CBD in less than 30 minutes following an historic agreement announced today between the Australian and Victorian governments  Prime Minister Scott Morrison joined Premier Daniel Andrews to announce the route for the project, which will connect Victoria’s regional and metropolitan rail networks to the airport for the first time. From 2029, Victorians will be able to catch a train directly from the CBD to the airport. “The airport link is a nationally significant project and Victorians have been waiting a long time for it to become a reality. With construction to start in 2022, the agreement will support up to 8,000 jobs during construction,” the Prime Minister said. “When complete, the link will slash travel times, bust congestion and be a major boost to the economy.” Airport trains will run through the Metro Tunnel, meaning families in the booming south-eastern suburbs can get to the airport without changi

Victoria Government Media Release: This has been the most challenging experience many of us will have ever lived through. We’ve had to stay home and spend time away from those we love the most in order to stay safe. But supporting us the whole way through – our mental health professionals, family violence specialists and child support workers – professionals that were there for us every day, wherever and whenever we needed them. This year’s Budget is dedicated to increasing support for these hardworking Victorians, creating better pathways to roles in these vital sectors and recruiting more positions, part of Victoria’s Recovery Workforce. The Andrews Labor Government will invest $235 million to build our Recovery Workforce to create 500 new jobs across mental health, family violence, health and child protection. We will also generate new accelerated training pathways and internships for around 875 people, growing the pipeline of workers so Victorians have access to the support they ne

Statement From The Premier: The last time Victoria had zero cases was 9 June, 139 days ago. Even more incredibly, it’s zero cases off the back of a huge testing drive. Over the course of this weekend, we asked Victorians living in our northern suburbs to get tested. They did just that. In 24 hours, we have been able to process an additional 14,024 tests – 3196 of them from these communities. This morning we’ve processed an extra 1157. And not a single new case has been found. I want to thank everyone who did the right thing by their community and our state in getting tested. I also want to thank the nurses, lab technicians, collectors, couriers – everyone who has been working around the clock to process these tests. Because of that effort, we’ve been able to get the results faster than we thought. These results give us confidence – confidence that even if we do identify positive cases in any further tests – we are firmly on top of this virus. It’s why today I can confirm what we’ve lon

Dan Andrews: I know plenty of people were looking forward to some good news today. And soon, very soon, we’ll have some. But for now, we need to do again what we’ve done throughout this pandemic: follow the advice of our public health experts. That means there can be no changes to restrictions in Melbourne today. As we know, today 6 new cases have been identified in our northern suburbs, meaning there have so far been 39 cases spread across 11 households. Concerningly, while these cases have locations in common it is not yet clear how they link together. It means we may still have transmission happening where we can’t see it. The local community, working alongside our public health team, are doing everything they can to stop this spread.  In the last 24 hours, over 3,000 Victorians from our northern suburbs did a profoundly powerful thing and got tested. With thousands of tests comes thousands of results. We have around 1,000 swabs currently being processed – and we’re expecting even m