Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to celebrate two firsts in the electorate of Lalor on the past Saturday and two firsts for the city of Wyndham. For the first time in Wyndham we celebrated the Lunar New Year festival with the Chinese community in Point Cook. It was a fabulous celebration with dancing, singing, martial arts displays—everything you would expect to find in a Melbourne Lunar New Year festival. I would like to congratulate the Chinese community and all of the sponsors. I joined Councillor An, Councillor Gibbons and Councillor Hooper there, and would like to give a special mention to former Councillor Bob Fairclough, whose vision it was to work with our community to deliver on that day.

The other event that I attended on the weekend was our first International Mother Language Day celebration, initiated by Nurul Islam Khan, President of the Victorian Bangladeshi Community Foundation, who invited me. I joined Councillor Gilligan and Councillor Villagonzales and we shared reading bilingual books and a celebration of all things mother language. In a country like ours it is really important that we stop to note the importance of the mother tongue and what it means to have the freedom to speak it, as of course our Bangladeshi community fully understands with the stark history in their own country, where people lost their lives defending their right to speak their mother language.