Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today Parliament House hosted its first all-communities Lunar New Year festival. The absence of an event like this until today is an extraordinary omission given that, as Leader of the Opposition Bill Shorten pointed out in his remarks at the event, there had been Asian-Australians celebrating Lunar New Year in this country for decades before this parliament had even been formed. The event was organised by my mates Wesa Chau and Jieh-Yung Lo, founders of the Poliversity group—a group aiming to promote greater diversity in Australia's public institutions. Parliamentarians shared in many of the Lunar New Year traditions of Asian-Australian communities—red packets, launching lanterns, calligraphy, eating sweets and enjoying lion dancing.

As the Lunar New Year is a time to reflect on family, I reflected that, when my own ancestor was a member of the Queensland parliament in the mid-19th century, the Chinese born proportion of the Australian population was around two per cent. It is striking that, 150 years later, the Chinese born population of Australia is again around two per cent of our population, with over 10 per cent of the Australian population claiming Asian heritage of some kind. It is worth celebrating how the experience of Asian-Australians has been transformed over this past 150 years. No longer do our parliaments actively seek to exclude Asian-Australians. Instead, they embrace them as equal citizens and welcome their traditions into the heart of our democracy. And we are all better off for it as Australians. Now hundreds of thousands of Australians families, like my own, celebrate Lunar New Year together. So gong hey fat choy, gong xi fa cai, chuc mung nam moi and a happy Year of the Monkey to all Australians.

See this speech in context