Strengths This section is a summary of the range of what federal participants nominated as positive strengths. These included the following: • The community engagement mechanisms in departments such as Services Australia and Home Affairs. • A strong research program funded by government including to the ScanlonMonash Index of Social Cohesion and Mapping Social Cohesion report, and the Challenging Racism Project based at the University of Western Sydney and implemented in collaboration with Deakin University, Curtin University and the University of Technology Sydney. • The biennial national research study undertaken by federally funded Reconciliation Australia since 2008 that produces the Australian Reconciliation Barometer measuring attitudes towards reconciliation across five dimensions including race relation, historical acceptance and institutional integrity. • Ministerial forums and advisory councils, such as those chaired by the Minister for Immigration, Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs twice yearly. • Formal inter and intra-departmental mechanisms, such as Services Australia’s quarterly multicultural advisory forums attended by states and territories and the Senior Officials Settlement Outcomes Group (SOSOG) intergovernmental forum. Services Australia and Home Affairs, through the Multicultural Affairs branch, both have external facing engagement supports with communities. Services Australia has provided supports for CALD communities for over 25 years in the form of in-house languages services, its own panel of interpreters and translators for customers and a multilingual phone service, as well as information sessions at the local community level to provide information and collect advice to report back to the agency. Services Australia also delivers multicultural awareness training to its own agency at staff and SES levels as well as to other agencies. The Home Affairs Community Liaison Officers (CLO) number around 50 and are based in each state and territory. They serve as points of contact for information-sharing and access for multicultural communities, and provide sentiment reports back to government to inform policy and program responses. Home Affairs has been building the CLO network in recent years and believes the strength of the network was evidenced by its successful dissemination of COVID-19 information into CALD communities during the pandemic.28 The Office of the eSafety Commissioner, an entity within the Department of Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development, Communications and the Arts 28 Information provided by Department of Home Affairs Multicultural Team 20