Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to thank those members of our community who attended our recent second Kingsford Smith Lunar New Year Festival on 13 February at Dacey Gardens in our community.

The festival was a great hit, with double the numbers of last year and with traditional Chinese artistic and dance performances, Chinese dress and wonderful food stalls from one of Australia's best Asian food precincts, in Kingsford. And, of course, the hit was the lion dance that occurred on the evening.

It was a particularly pleasing event, to see so many families, the elderly and young people in our community coming together to celebrate our multicultural background and to enjoy Chinese traditions and customs. I am extremely proud to represent an electorate with such a culturally diverse population and to see members from different backgrounds within the community join together in celebration on such occasions. That is a great thing for our community.

I would like to thank all the staff and mayors of Botany and Randwick city councils, Peter Schick and the members of the Kingsford Chamber of Commerce, the University of New South Wales, who sponsored the event, and of course the Confucius Institute at the University of New South Wales, which provided a lot of the talent on the evening. This is now an annual event. The numbers are growing, and I look forward to hosting it again next year. To all in our community who celebrate New Year: I wish you health, wealth and prosperity in the Year of the Monkey. Xin nian kuai le.