Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

At the end of the Chinese New Year festival I want to put a big 'thank you'—an enormous xie xie!—out there to all in my community for their efforts over this wonderful festival period. With over 27,000 people in my electorate identifying as being of Chinese descent, Chinese New Year is by far the largest event celebrated in my community. Starting off the Box Hill festival was the dusk-to-dawn ceremony, two weeks ago, where between 70,000 and 100,000 people trooped through downtown Box Hill to enjoy the fireworks, the lion dancers, the stalls, the community atmosphere, and the enormous number of cultural events performed on the stage—it was an outstanding event. So I would like to say an enormous thank you and congratulations yet again to the hardworking team of the Asian Business Association of Whitehorse. Their dedication to this festival—its growth, its strength and its multicultural embrace of all the community—is amazing. Particularly to my good friends Vincent Liu, Andrew Yu and Frankie To: an enormous thank you for all your hard work, not just over this one day—which starts at three in the morning and ends at about 11 the next day; it is an amazing effort—but thank you for all you do for our community. Money raised during the event is also donated to charity.

In between festival events, the Chinese seniors of Waverley, the Chinese seniors of Box Hill, the Monash Chinese Friendship Association, the Chinese Women's Association, the Chinese Professional & Business Association, and many more in my community have celebrated and hosted wonderful events. Sadly, this year I did not get to as many as I would normally have done, as it was over the two weeks of sitting. But then we ended this festival season, down at Kingsway in Glen Waverley, again with an enormous celebration of multiculturalism—an enormous celebration of everything that is Chinese and is great about my community, with the Glen Waverley Chinese Lantern Festival. Again, an enormous congratulations and thank you to the Monash Chinese Events Organising Committee, and for the tireless work of Vincent Chow to make this event happen.

A big thank you to both city councils—Whitehorse and Monash—for the hard work they put in to supporting these events. Also to Victoria Police, who put an enormous amount of effort into making sure these events are happy and safe festivals—which they are. The wonderful thing about these events is that it is not just the Chinese community who are there in force. Indeed, the event in Glen Waverley opened with Chinese dancers, followed by Irish dancers. It was a wonderful embrace of what is great about our community. As always, the amazing Chinese lion dancers of Glen Waverley were breathtaking. If anybody can go and a look at the video of the work those guys do above the poles, in their lion outfit—it is just a sight to behold. It is a wonderful celebration of all that is good about the diversity of our community. Thanks to all those involved.

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