The Queensland Police Service (QPS) is this week celebrating Harmony Week, with events taking place across the state, including at Police Headquarters in Brisbane today.
The QPS Multicultural Affairs Unit, alongside Police Liaison Officers and Cross-Cultural Police Officers, have held a morning tea to celebrate the many cultures, languages and backgrounds of QPS staff and officers.
The QPS reaffirms its commitment to fostering inclusive, respectful and safe working environments for all its people, with a continued focus on promoting cohesion within the Service and in the community.
Acting Commissioner of Police, Shane Chelepy APM, attended the Harmony Day celebrations at Police Headquarters and spoke of how important it was for QPS to reflect the cultural diversity of the community it serves.
“Our vision for the QPS is an inclusive, diverse and culturally responsive service where people of all cultures, languages and faiths feel safe, included and empowered,” Acting Commissioner Chelepy said.
“The QPS is proud to have officers from all walks of life, and the experiences and perspectives of our culturally diverse workforce makes QPS stronger and more effective in serving Queensland.”
The QPS is committed to enhancing the cultural capability of the service to improve relationships and achieve positive outcomes for First Nations and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) communities.
The recently released QPS Multicultural Action Plan 2024-27 reinforces this commitment and provides a framework of the meaningful steps the QPS is taking to achieve cultural change and improvement for our CALD workforce and communities.
The QPS has committed to undertake 14 activities across three focus areas in the Multicultural Action Plan: delivering culturally responsive services, driving diversity and inclusion, and promoting social cohesion.
Among the 14 activities, QPS has reiterated its commitment to taking a strong stance against racism by actively promoting anti-racism messages, and will develop and deliver targeted products and actions to enhance the confidence of people from CALD backgrounds to report hate crime incidents to police.
The QPS will also develop and implement time-sensitive translation services for emergency situations to be utilised by CALD communities, and will continue to deliver training to uplift the cultural capability of all staff to help better understand and address barriers to inclusion.
For the full QPS Multicultural Action Plan 2024-27 visit:
