Countless moments make up Australia’s national story. Some of these moments have the potential to be epoch marking. They have the capacity to profoundly change our story; to move us in a new direction or to transform the way we…

Mental health, disability and employment are just some of the challenges facing Victoria’s ethnic communities, according to the Ethnic Communities’ Council of Victoria (ECCV). In an interview to mark 40 years of the organisation’s existence, ECCV Chairperson Eddie Micallef told…

Twelve-year-old Maryam Sathat Sobhani has been in Australia just a year and first encountered the English language just two years ago. But this week the daughter of asylum seekers from Iran won a major national poetry prize. Maryam’s poem “Me”…

Refugee advocates will set up a “refugee embassy” outside the office of the Immigration Department in Belconnen on Tuesday to protest against Australia’s treatment of asylum seekers. Organisers say they will not criticise public servants during the late afternoon rally…

Youth from Culturally and Linguistically Diverse (CALD) communities appear to value education more than their Australian-born counterparts but are less likely to secure employment as a result of study, new research has found. The CALD Youth Census Report also identified…

Victorians speak more languages than there are countries in the world with more than 250 tongues in regular use across the state, a new analysis has found. Across Melbourne, thirty per cent of people speak a language other than English…

The Australian government’s power to detain asylum seekers on the high seas and send them to other countries still needs to be determined, a High Court judge says. Lawyers for 157 asylum seekers who were detained on an Australian Customs…

AN Iranian asylum seeker has been flown to an Australian hospital after reportedly attempting suicide at the Manus Island detention centre. The incident and medical evacuation occurred last week, director of refugee advocacy group Humanitarian Research Partners Ben Pynt told…

The Australian government may be considering the acceptance of as much as 4000 Iraqis and Syrians as refugees after the Anglican Bishop of Melbourne called for their protection. The new Anglican Primate of Australia, Philip Freier, wrote to Prime Minister Tony Abbott and Immigration Minister Scott Morrison…

A young woman who fled war-torn Sudan just three years ago with little English and almost no schooling is now on her way to realising her dream of becoming a chef. After completing the AMES Youth Program, Nyanthuk Chol has…

People with Asian backgrounds are significantly under-represented at the higher reaches of corporate Australia, and the “bamboo ceiling” is hurting business in the Asian Century, according to a new report by Diversity Council Australia. The council found that while 9.3 per…

A new batch of 250 emojis is being rolled out by Unicode and among them is a set of religious icons. Emojis are the ideograms, or smiley faces, used in electronic messages and webpages. Unicode, the character coding system, is…