Kevin Andrews (Menzies, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the delight last Saturday to attend the Manningham Seniors Expo, organised by the Chinese Senior Citizens Club of Manningham. This was a very vibrant day of great excitement, singing, dancing, exercise classes, even some karaoke—which I managed to avoid!—and a lot of displays. The Manningham Chinese seniors club is, I think, the largest such Chinese seniors club in the whole country, and it's a very vibrant group of people, who meet weekly and organise a range of activities, including, importantly, this Manningham Seniors Expo, which was held at the Templestowe Baptist Church auditorium on Saturday. I was joined by my state colleague Matthew Guy, the member for Bulleen; the mayor of Manningham, Councillor Paula Piccinini; the deputy mayor, Councillor Anna Chen; and Councillor Dot Haynes. It was a great day and a great tribute to the work of the senior citizens club, led ably by Hardy Shum and his committee, who organised a wonderful occasion.

Community events in Menzies continue this weekend. On Friday night, there is the annual Mayoral Ball. Importantly, this is a charity fundraising opportunity for the largest welfare and social services organisation in my electorate, Doncare. They've been around for decades. They do a wonderful job, and it will be a great opportunity to raise some more money for Doncare. Then on Saturday night the Singapore-Malaysia association will be celebrating one of their regular dinners—in this case, to coincide with the Diwali festival. That's always a wonderful occasion for those in my electorate from Malaysia and Singapore.

Finally, in this short contribution I congratulate Doncaster East athlete and hammer thrower Stephanie Ratcliffe, who's been named the Manningham Leader's Junior Sports Star for 2019. The 18-year-old has claimed gold medals in the under 18s, under 20s and open age competition. She's represented Australia at the Oceania Athletics Championships and hopes to represent Australia at the Commonwealth Games and the Olympics. The Leader community news sports star program had nominations for more than 66 different sports from athletes ranging from wheelchair basketball and across junior and senior competitions. The hammer thrower Stephanie Ratcliffe is a worthy winner of the Junior Sports Star for 2019 in Manningham. I congratulate her and all those who were nominated in the competition.