Daniel Mulino (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Vietnamese community in Fraser is one of the largest, most vibrant and rapidly growing and is home to over 30,000 Vietnamese Australians calling my electorate home. Fraser hosts many important festival events each year that exemplify Vietnamese culture and add to the rich diversity of the Fraser, one of which will take place in the bustling centre of St Albans this weekend. St Albans Moon Lantern Festival, or Tet Trung Thu, is a very special occasion for children and for family and community reunions to celebrate the harvest. Lantern festivals are popular traditional events celebrated in Vietnam and many other South-East Asian communities. When the full moon rises, as it has this week, families get together to celebrate and eat mooncakes and sing moon poems. During the St Albans festival, there will be thousands of members of my community gathered to watch parades, make and carry lanterns, and enjoy spectacular dancing and traditional food. In anticipation of this weekend's fun and festivities, I would like to acknowledge all of the hard work that's been invested in this community festival by volunteers and by the St Albans Business Group Association. I thank them for organising this event.

I would also like to acknowledge another event this weekend, as it marks the official opening of a very special community space in my electorate, the Australian Buddhist Centre in Cairnlea. This important area has been under construction for two years. It will be home to the United Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation of Australia and New Zealand. The centre has cost over $6 million to construct, and I think it's important to acknowledge that the vast majority of this has been raised by members of the community and donors throughout my electorate.

This will be an important cultural centre of Australian-Vietnamese Buddhism. It will be an institute for teaching and learning and practising Buddhism for the Vietnamese Australian Buddhist community. It is a unique architectural achievement that stands on the Cairnlea grasslands as a striking and beautiful example of traditional Vietnamese Buddhist worship. In the 2016 census, 2.4 per cent of Australians identified as Buddhist, and Buddhism is Australia's fastest growing faith. This grand new Buddhist centre will be a place of great spiritual significance for all Buddhist organisations across Australia and New Zealand. I am delighted that it is placed in my electorate. Thanks are owed to thousands of donors and supporters of this project across my electorate and the broader community. Particular acknowledgment is due to Venerable Thich Phuoc Tan OAM, Chair of the Organising Committee, and Senior Venerable Thich Thien Tam, the President of the United Vietnamese Buddhist Congregation, who will officially open the centre on Sunday. Congratulations to the organising committee and to the broader community who have made this wonderful centre possible.

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