Mayor’s Message - Friday 21 June 2024

This week we’ve celebrated National Refugee Week to acknowledge the contributions of refugees in our community.  

It’s a chance to learn about the experiences of people escaping oppression and seeking asylum.  

On World Refugee Day, 20 June we acknowledge refugees in Ballarat at a flag raising at Queen Victoria Square, followed by a morning tea at Town Hall.

The event was coordinated by the City of Ballarat, alongside the Ballarat Regional Multicultural Centre, Ballarat Community Health and the Rural Australia for Refugees Ballarat.  

We are so very proud to support Refugee Week, and we recognise the importance of promoting and celebrating such events within our community.

For those refugees who find their way to Ballarat, it is important that we provide them with safety, friendship and a city that they can proudly call their new home.  

The theme for this year’s Refugee Week is ‘Finding freedom’, and freedom is something that many of us take for granted.

It is imperative we embrace and support refugees and people seeking asylum in our community.  

Ballarat is proud to be a Refugee Welcome Zone and we support the Refugee Council of Australia. We are also an Intercultural City, a Welcoming City and a member of Mayors for Peace.

We may all come from different backgrounds and cultures but as a community, we share the same schools, businesses, workplaces, public spaces and much more.

Our city is all the richer for the advantages this diversity brings, and it is essential that we embrace those who have gone through such hard times – as they have embraced us.

- Mayor Cr Des Hudson