Prime Minister
Photo: AAP Image/Erik Anderson
PRIME MINISTER: Nǐ hǎo. Gong hei fat choy. It’s wonderful to be here - can everybody hear me? It’s wonderful to be here with the Lord Mayor, it’s wonderful to be here with my wife Jenny who has joined me and come down from Sydney today. It’s great to be here with Gladys Liu, my Liberal Candidate here for Chisolm and Kate Ashmor, the Liberal candidate here for Macnamara and all the other distinguished guests who are here. Members of the committee, those who have been part of this celebration for so many years.
It’s a great thrill for me to be here as a Sydneysider because so often we come down to Melbourne to see how these things are done and they’re done so well here in Melbourne. And it’s wonderful to come and enjoy the celebrations for Lunar New Year, as Jenny and I have often enjoyed the celebrations for Chinese new year up in Sydney and Chinatown there with our magnificent Chinese community as well. So it’s great to be able to bring those two together here tonight.
Now, Chinese New Year has a very long history here in Melbourne. Indeed, right across Victoria, as you go back into the 1860’s where the Chinese has been celebrating this most important time for their families and their communities. And there was the famed Imperial Dragon Loong who was brought to Melbourne from Bendigo in 1901 to take part in the procession and to celebrate Federation. So when our very nation, our very nation was formed, there in the middle of the procession was Loong the Chinese dragon that was a part of those celebrations and continues up until 1970. I understand the same dragon was part of the celebration here in Melbourne every single year.
So this is a wonderful time for family, it’s a wonderful time for community and it’s an opportunity for me as Prime Minister to say to all Australians of Chinese heritage and to those who celebrate the Lunar New Year out of Vietnam, out of Korea, out of other places, to say thanks for the wonderful contribution that all of you have made to Australia over so many generations. Not just recently, but over 160 and more year where we have seen the Chinese community first of all coming and making a great contribution.
Now I look over here at the emblem of the pig, the twelfth of the Chinese zodiac as I understand it. And it is the year of prosperity, it is the year of working hard, it is the year of wealth and that’s why Chinese immigrants came to Australia so long ago. To understand that they could have the opportunity to work hard, to start businesses, to support their children in education and to be able to go on and do such tremendous things. Helping build our cities, helping build our regions. This is the great legacy of Chinese Australians over such a long period of time.
We have 1.2 million Australians of Chinese heritage here and Gladys Liu is of course one of them. When she first came here in 1985 as a student and studied speech pathology and went on to become an Australian citizen in 1992 and raised here family here as so many Chinese Australians have come and done that very thing.
So that’s what we celebrate. Chinese New Year is now a great Australian celebration, not just a celebration within the Chinese community. And as I look out tonight, I see Australians of all backgrounds. I see Indian Australians, Namaste to all the Indian Australians who are here tonight. And Australians from so many different backgrounds. I see children, I see people of all generations and that’s so wonderful that we can celebrate it here as a true Australian community tonight. So xièxiè and thank you all very much.