Cassandra Fernando (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I attended the delightful Sri Lankan Independence Day celebrations organised by the consul general, Sandith Samarasinghe, in the suburb of Box Hill, in the division of Chisholm, over the weekend. The celebration gave us an opportunity to reflect on our own journeys. Despite most of us at Box Hill Town Hall that evening having taken different paths in life, we shared in common a birthplace, a culture and a heritage. It was pleasant to interact with many others who were born in the busy Colombo suburb of Dehiwala, where I grew up. The shared sense of experience of the bakeries and restaurants I visited as a child took me back 25 years into the past. For most of the 130,000-strong Sri Lankan diaspora, many of whom reside in my electorate of Holt, Australia is our home and has been for so many years. Yet our heritage is special to us. We are proud to carry on some of the traditions our grandparents followed. As the Chair of the Parliamentary Friends of Sri Lanka and the first Sri Lankan-born federal MP, I thank the Albanese Labor government for supporting Sri Lanka during these times of need and congratulate Sri Lanka on completing 75 years of independence.

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