Policy & Advocacy

AMWA and the Australian Multicultural Health Collaborative jointly made this submission on Proposal P1067, broadly supporting the move to a mandatory Health Star Rating system as an important preventative health reform.

The submission argues that mandating the system should be the beginning of reform rather than its completion, and calls for a stronger multicultural and health equity lens throughout the evidence base, implementation strategy and evaluation framework, given that consumer trust, understanding and food purchasing decisions are shaped by language, health literacy, culture and settlement-related barriers.

It highlights the role of multicultural women as household interpreters of food and health information, raises the potential impact of compliance costs on ethnic grocers and specialist food importers, and calls for genuine partnership with multicultural community organisations during implementation.