Australia’s Multicultural Power Infrastructure.
Converting participation into decision-making influence across politics and governance.
Who We Are
Allies in Colour (AIC) is Australia’s independent multicultural peak body built as a national civic infrastructure. We work at the intersection of community trust and institutional influence, and we are building the bridge between the two by building capabilities in:
- Political participation
- Governance
- Institutional representation
- System stability
Our mandate is simple:
Ensure multicultural participation converts into measurable decision-making influence across Australia’s public and governance institutions.
Our Initiatives and Impact
We are a national network of about 28,000 grassroots members strong.
Allies in Colour was established in 2021 as a national, independent, multicultural peak body
- Driving Engagement: Started interstate multicultural networking events to foster deep intercultural bonds and encourage active political engagement. We built this civic framework years before social cohesion was identified as a pressing national challenge.
- Challenging the Status Quo: Recognised that legacy organisations were monopolising representation and failing to serve the government effectively, and so we successfully lobbied government agencies to open up their networks and engage directly with the true diversity of our communities.
- Media-Backed Insights: Produced groundbreaking research on multicultural representation at the 2022 Federal Election that was widely featured across major news networks.
- Targeting Civic Literacy: Began benchmarking data on adult civic education after identifying it as a serious, unaddressed gap in Australia.
- Training the Next Generation: Ran targeted political candidate training programs to actively put more diverse voices into the political pipeline.
By 2023, we turned political engagement into a mainstream topic for multicultural communities through relentless advocacy and networking.
- Testing a National Pilot: Ran a completely unfunded, volunteer-led 5-week civic education pilot in 2023 that drew 120 national applicants, half of whom graduated, with 70% being multicultural women.
- Pioneering Media and Political Literacy research: Commissioned major research with UNSW and the University of Melbourne to map political literacy in South Asian and Chinese communities. This became a foundational work in shaping how media literacy programs are built today.
- Educating on the Voice: Acted as the only multicultural organisation to run a full explainer webinar on the Voice to Parliament, focusing on deep civic education rather than just campaigning.
2025 – Federal election and Bondi Massacre.
- Launching The Governance Authority: Soft-launched a new branch focused entirely on training and elevating multicultural Australians into governance roles.
- Going Regional: Took our political engagement and intercultural networking events beyond capital cities, expanding our footprint into regional areas.
- Electoral Data Leadership: Released Australia’s only multicultural data analysis of the 2025 Federal Election results.
- A Proven Track Record: Watched our persistent push for adult civics education finally hit the mainstream—a major win after years of driving the issue solo.
2026 – Royal Commission into Antisemitism and Social Cohesion
- SOMA Policy Briefing: Launched the State of Multicultural Affairs (SOMA), Australia’s very first independent multicultural policy brief.
- Multicultural WHIP (Women Hustling in Politics) – Launched Women Hustling in Politics (WHIP) alongside our signature Power in Practice political candidate training program to get more diverse women elected.
- Multicultural Youth Fellowship Program – Created the Multicultural Youth Fellowship, giving a select group of young leaders hands-on experience working directly on COMPELL’s political and civic campaigns.
- The People’s Mandate – Built Australia’s first national civic voting infrastructure, starting with our community mandate on the Royal Commission.
- Read our first mandate on the Royal Commission
- Australian Civic Excellence Leadership program – Coming soon!
The Participation–Power Gap
The Participation–Power Gap (PPG) describes the structural disconnect between who participates in society and who holds formal decision-making authority.
Participation includes civic engagement, economic contribution, professional leadership, and community involvement.
Power refers to roles with binding authority — such as parliamentary office, board directorships, senior executive roles, regulatory appointments, and advisory councils.
PPG measures the delta between population presence and decision-authority representation.
It is not a diversity metric. It is a conversion metric.
How does a modern democracy ensure representation translates into institutional influence?
Allies in Colour exists to solve that conversion challenge.
Our Institutional Partners
We work with government departments, statutory bodies, corporations, and boards seeking to:
• Strengthen governance pipelines
• Mitigate representation risk
• Build decision-ready leadership capability
• Improve institutional resilience
Engagement is selective and outcome-driven.
We exist because institutional resilience requires infrastructure.
Acknowledgment of Country
Allies in Colour acknowledges Traditional Owners of Country throughout Australia and recognises the continuing connection to lands, waters and communities. We pay our respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures; and to Elders past and present.