Mid-Autumn Festival

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (12:54): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises that the 2024 Mid-Autumn Festival will take place on 17 September;

(b) acknowledges Mid-Autumn Festival traditions date back over 3,000 years and continue to be celebrated by South Australia's Chinese, Malaysian, Hong Kong, Vietnamese, Singaporean and Korean communities;

(c) notes the significant role played by South Australia's Asian communities in enriching our social, economic and cultural life; and

(d) congratulates the Malinauskas Labor government for its unwavering commitment to supporting, promoting and celebrating major cultural festivals.

As referred to in the motion, the Mid-Autumn Festival is celebrated on 17 September this year. The origins of the Mid-Autumn Festival can be traced back some 3,000 years. The moon was associated with an abundant harvest and a pathway to prosperity and today around the world it is a time to give thanks for the many blessings of life. It is still a central part of life in China and across Asia.

Here in South Australia, the Mid-Autumn Festival has been widely embraced and it has been wonderful to see how our community organisations prepare to hold events across our state to celebrate. Families celebrate the Mid-Autumn Festival often by gathering for dinners, watching the moon, lighting paper lanterns and sharing mooncakes. I have been lucky enough to try a few of those in my time as local MP.

It comes at a time when diplomatic relations between Australia and China are strong. In June this year, Chinese Premier Li visited Adelaide for engagements at Adelaide Zoo and Penfolds Winery. We are obviously very pleased to be welcoming two new giant pandas as well.

There are also ongoing discussions around lifting trade tariffs on Australia's wine, meat and seafood. Growing up in a wine region close to the Coonawarra, I know how very important this is. As Minister Penny Wong confirmed, in 2023-24 Australia exported $15 billion of previously impeded products to China—compared with only $4.4 billion in 2022-23—with nearly half of all our wine exports for the April-June quarter this year going to China, which had a value of $376 million.

To summarise, I wish everybody in my community and all across our state a very happy Mid-Autumn Festival. I commend this motion to the house.

The Hon. Z.L. BETTISON (Ramsay—Minister for Tourism, Minister for Multicultural Affairs) (12:57): I cannot believe that there are no speakers from the opposition. This is an incredibly important festival that is celebrated by one of our major multicultural communities. The fact that there are no speakers here speaks to the fact that this opposition is in a complete and utter shambles. The lack of respect to a key part of our community is absolutely unbelievable.

I know as minister that we are hosting a Mid-Autumn Festival, a reception, next week here in parliament where we will have people from the Chinese, Malaysian, Hong Kong, Vietnamese, Singaporean and Korean communities. This is a very important festival to those communities, celebrated for more than 3,000 years, a time of reflection and a time of coming together as a family to recognise this new moon.

The Tong De Association invited me to share a celebration with them on Sunday at Campbelltown. I made my very first mooncake. It was challenging but made. This is a key part of it. What we see is an opportunity to support the children who are here. The Tong De Association is fairly new, having been formed in 2018, supporting new migrant communities who are here, who want to keep their language strong and want to have their culture strong.

The reality is that this is why the Malinauskas government has put so much funding into multicultural affairs, because we want to support people to keep their culture and language strong. We want to support those community language schools, of which we have 92 now in South Australia, and 10,000 students every week are attending these language schools. We invested $4 million over four years to do this, but this is what I hear time and time again from our diverse communities: 'How do we keep our language and culture strong? We know that we are being backed up by the Labor government.'

We know that this Mid-Autumn Festival takes place on 17 September. It is actually a very joyful time, a time when people come together. They also invite their friends, their neighbours and their work colleagues to come and share with them this special event. I think that is where we see that diversity is our strength in South Australia. People from 200 different countries have made South Australia their home but they want to continue to celebrate and recognise their cultures and invite other people in with a focus on interculturalism but, more importantly, say, 'I am Australian, but this is also what is important to me and I want to pass it on to my children and grandchildren.'

I am invited quite often to lots of different communities to celebrate and we see people who have been here for many generations and also those skilled migrants who are new.

Time expired.

Sitting suspended from 13:00 to 14:00.