Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Sunday, 27 January, I was honoured to be invited as a guest to attend one of the highlights of Melbourne's cultural calendar. The Lunar New Year Festival in Richmond, which is now in its 14th year, also served this year as an opportunity to celebrate Australia Day. This is one of the first Vietnamese festivals in the country. It is the best in Melbourne and it rivals other festivals in Australia. It is not just locals who come from surrounding suburbs but this year almost 80,000 people attended the festival, I am told.

It is appropriate that it was an opportunity to also celebrate Australia Day. It is a reminder that multiculturalism is in fact the defining characteristic of Australia. I am also very pleased that in Victoria there was a tripartisan commitment expressed on the day that multiculturalism would never become an election issue and would enjoy the support of all parties in Victoria.

It is also a reminder to the rest of us that, when Australia extends a welcome to people who are coming here seeking a better life, we all benefit. People who are pillars of the community are people that we would now call 'boat people'. They are now occupying very senior positions within the community, and we can all learn a lot from them.

I want to pay particular tribute to RABA, the Richmond Asian Business Association—in particular, Mr Nhan Le, the president; Mr Meca Ho; Tony Pham; and the committee—for organising what is now the envy of other festivals around the country.

We do, as do the rest of the community, particularly as an electorate where there are many new emerging communities, have a lot to learn from the Vietnamese community in particular but also from the Chinese community. There are, of course, challenges facing traders in Richmond. They are the challenges facing many small businesses and challenges facing those particularly in the retail sector, but it remains one of the most vibrant and attractive parts of Melbourne. I have often said—and I was affirmed in this belief by attending the RABA festival—that if the rest of Australia was more like Richmond, it would be a much better place.

One of the first meetings I had on being elected was with the Prime Minister's department to ensure that the money made available for the gateway project at the top of Victoria Street was going to flow. I have had a number of meetings since then and I am very pleased to announce that during the course of this year construction will begin and hopefully be completed on a gateway at the entrance of Victoria Street. It is my hope that when visitors come to Melbourne they will see Victoria Street in Richmond as an equivalent tourist destination to Little Bourke Street in Chinatown, and I thank RABA for continuing to put Richmond on the map.