Pre Budget Submission 2026-27

Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative Pre-Budget Submission 2026-27

Australia’s health system serves one of the most culturally diverse populations in the world. More than half of Australians are either born overseas or have a parent born overseas, and over five million people speak a language other than English at home. Despite this, health policy, funding models, and service design continue to assume a largely homogenous population.

This mismatch has measurable consequences. Multicultural communities experience poorer access to care, lower participation in preventive health and screening programs, and later diagnosis of disease. These outcomes are not driven by culture itself, but by structural gaps in how the system is designed, governed and evaluated, and how Australians from multicultural backgrounds are consulted about the health system and how the system, its services and workforce engage with this population.

The Collaborative was funded and established by the Commonwealth Government to address these gaps at the system level.

This pre-budget 2026-27 submission outlines seven targeted investments that would embed multicultural health equity into the core architecture of Australia’s health system, rather than relying on fragmented, short-term responses.