Page 358 - Week 01 - Thursday, 11 February 2010
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Bill agreed to in principle.
Leave granted to dispense with the detail stage.
Bill agreed to.
Adjournment
Motion by Mr Barr proposed:
That the Assembly do now adjourn.
Chinese new year celebrations
MR DOSZPOT (Brindabella) (4.28): I had the pleasure of attending a number of celebrations of the Chinese new year, the year of the tiger, by our Chinese community in Canberra over the weekend and on Monday night. Although the official start of the Chinese new year is still a few days away, on 14 February, the celebrations started early to coincide with the Canberra Multicultural Festival. I have already extended the best wishes of the ACT opposition and our leader, Mr Zed Seselja, at all these celebrations but I thought it would be also appropriate and timely to mention these celebrations in our adjournment debate today.
China has a proud and unique history as one of the longest continuous civilisations on our planet. And of course the Chinese lunar new year is the longest chronological record in history, dating from 2600 BC. While in our terms we are in the year 2010, this year will mark the 4,707th Chinese year, beginning on 14 February. So 2010 is the year of the tiger.
In my capacity as shadow minister for multicultural affairs in the ACT, I have already thanked all the Australian-Chinese associations for also including our broader ACT community in these celebrations of the year of the tiger within the Multicultural Festival, enabling us all to share in this great occasion with our local Australian Chinese community.
In Canberra we have residents from nearly 200 different countries, and over one-fifth of our population was born overseas. Many of us in the ACT Assembly belong to that large percentage of those born overseas, including me, with my parents arriving in Australia in 1957 as refugees from Hungary. Most of us in Canberra have come in contact with our vibrant Chinese-Australian community, and I would like to pay tribute to them—within the context of these celebrations of the year of the tiger—for their great contribution to Canberra over the years.
Like our wider multicultural community in Canberra, the Chinese community are also integral and important contributors to our city and the Canberra region. We admire their energy and the many stories of courage and initiative and the significant contributions that the Chinese-Australian community have made to their new homeland. They have affected, quite considerably, the social, cultural, scientific,
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