Motions

Lunar New Year

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (11:22): I move:

That this house—

(a) notes the Lunar New Year took place on 29 January 2025;

(b) recognises this is the Year of the Snake, bringing abundance and prosperity; and

(c) wishes the South Australian Chinese community a safe, happy and successful new year.

I rise to speak about the wonderful celebrations that are occurring across our state and, indeed, my community to celebrate Lunar New Year.

Lunar New Year took place on 29 January, and there are many traditions and customs associated with Lunar New Year, including the colour red—which I very much like wearing—visiting ancestors' graves, displaying lanterns, gifting money and being kind to one another. We also acknowledge that other Asian countries also celebrate Lunar New Year with their own traditions and customs, including Vietnam, South Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.

This year, we welcomed the Year of the Snake, associated with creativity, transformation and strength. People born in the Year of the Snake are believed to be intelligent, intuitive, strong and caring. That might suggest that, indeed, everybody in this parliament might connect with the snake. Lunar New Year also incorporates elements, including wood, water, fire, earth and metal. The 2025 element is wood, making it the Year of the Wood Snake, having last been celebrated in 1965.

The Malinauskas government is proud to continue its funding to assist in the delivery of the beloved Chinatown Adelaide Lunar New Year Street Party, which I cannot wait to attend this weekend. On 8 February, the Chinatown precinct will come alive with dancing, stalls, delicious food offerings, art and celebration. I would like to thank Mr Wayne Chao, president of Chinatown Adelaide South Australia, together with his executive committee and members. They work incredibly hard to promote the history and tradition of Chinese culture here in South Australia.

This event is accessible for all South Australians to participate in and each year the crowds certainly show that. I also acknowledge all the community organisations that have held Lunar New Year events this year. It is such a beautiful and vibrant time of the year, and the Malinauskas government truly values the contributions these organisations make to our state.

As an example, the weekend before last I was able to join Chinese Welfare Services SA at Kingdom Chinese Restaurant in Gouger Street as an early Lunar New Year celebration. I want to acknowledge Vivien and all the people at the association for the wonderful work they do supporting people in the Chinese community. It was a pleasure to attend the event, alongside Independent MLC the Hon. Jing Lee in the other place and her husband, Eddie.

We have so much to celebrate when we look back on the past year as the relationship between South Australia and China continues to strengthen. We recently welcomed back China Southern Airlines to Adelaide and have received two new pandas at Adelaide Zoo—Xing Qiu and Yi Lan—following Wang Wang and Fu Ni's retirement. Last week I had the absolute pleasure of joining supporters of the Adelaide Zoo to wholeheartedly welcome our newest Adelaide residents.

We heard from one of the zookeepers that Xing Qiu and Yi Lan are settling in really well, with their personalities already shining through. Yi Lan is curious and particularly loves her new red hammock—if you hop on the Adelaide Zoo's social media you will see her enjoying her hammock—while Xing Qiu is slightly more cautious and takes time to consider new items in his enclosure. One thing is for certain: he really loves bamboo. I encourage people as part of Lunar New Year celebrations to visit Adelaide Zoo and wish Xing Qiu and Yi Lan a very happy Lunar New Year as they settle into their new home. To everybody across our state, in particular all those in my local community: Xin Nian Kuai Le.

The SPEAKER: Let's hope those new pandas are more productive than Wang Wang and Fu Ni, as much as we loved them.

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (11:26): On that note, I rise to commend the motion. Where the member for Adelaide left off, I was proud to attend the official welcome to Xing Qiu and Yi Lan. I can tell you that Yi Lan was heading straight up the nearest tree, which the zoo folks were pretty excited about because it was the fertility tree. You have all these protectors around all the small trees in the enclosure. I pointed to this big one without a protector on it and they said, 'Oh, that's the fertility tree,' and as soon as the door opened Yi Lan was straight up the fertility tree. I have not seen a panda quite so active before. They rested shortly after that.

It is all the more appropriate in the Year of the Wood Snake, because among all those other criteria, as we have been reminded in the last week, the wood snake also represents fertility. It is a wonderful thing that we have seen the new pandas arrive and welcomed the Year of the Wood Snake. Quin Tran at the festival on the weekend made the point about it being the year of fertility in saying, 'That might explain why I have four children.' There were celebrations in all directions over the last week and we know there is a particular celebration for the Chinese community this coming weekend.

I want to reflect briefly on the Zhu-Lin Buddhist Association celebration last week. I was proud to attend and represent the Leader of the Opposition, among thousands of the Chinese community celebrating that very important new year celebration. They do it properly: fireworks at midnight, mid-week, the night before school starts—an extraordinary amount of exuberance and celebration. They are there at that large site, at which building is ongoing, with plans to do more, the building of nursing facilities in the future for that community. It has been 30 years on that site, sustained by volunteer work, the provision of meals every weekend and regular involvement all the way through the year for that community.

It is so special to be able to celebrate this important time of the year together with those of us representing the parliament and the government and, as I say, me there representing the opposition. It was a very significant and happy occasion indeed.

As I have alluded to just now, the Vietnamese Tết Festival for the new year celebrated on the weekend, in if it was not 40º heat it was up there, was just a wonderful, joyous occasion. It is new year, and this year it was also celebrating and commemorating, for those among the Vietnamese community from a refugee background, 50 years since those refugees started arriving in South Australia, in 1975.

The Premier made this observation and I did in my own way as well—to say that 50 years ago it might have been true to say to those new arrivals, 'Look what Australia is doing and is able to do for you.' We know that beautiful song that has been sung now on significant occasions saying, Thank you Australia, but 50 years down the track we can go along and say, 'Thank you, Vietnamese community, for all you have done for Australia and for South Australia.' As we celebrate a new year, we do that very much together because the Chinese community and the Vietnamese community in South Australia are at the core of the fabric of what we claim as proudly South Australia and what characterises those aspects of life that we are proud to call South Australian.

So it was a week of opportunity to say thanks, to celebrate, to welcome in the Year of the Wood Snake. There is more to come, and I look forward to continuing to participate in those celebrations and wish all of our communities, particularly those celebrating this Lunar New Year, a very happy new year and a happy new year ahead.

The Hon. J.A.W. GARDNER (Morialta) (11:32): It is a great pleasure to be able to acknowledge Lunar New Year in this place. To everybody in our Chinese and South Asian community, those who are Mandarin or Cantonese speakers I would say 'Xin nian kuai le' and 'Gong xi fa cai'—happy new year, and may this be a prosperous year, befitting the Year of the Wood Snake, befitting the Year of the Snake. I hope that the resilience, the cleverness and the creativity and for our pandas, as the member for Heysen said, the fertility that the Year of the Snake suggests is truly brought home to all.

It was a great pleasure for me to join the member for Heysen along with a number of other members of parliament—the Hon. Jing Lee, members of the government and members of the broader community—at the Zhu-Lin Buddhist Association temple the other night to bring in the new year. It is an event that I have very much enjoyed going to year after year.

It is funny, because although it is some distance from the Morialta electorate, I have never been there without the experience of somebody from Rostrevor or Athelstone or Newton coming up to me within the first five or 10 minutes of the event and expressing their appreciation that they have come. It is truly something that brings people from the Chinese community in particular and the broader South-East Asian community together, those Buddhist South Australians who have brought so much to our South Australian experience of multiculturalism, who have added so much to our cultural and social fabric and who have helped make South Australia what is in my view the most successful multicultural story pretty much in the world.

There was an expression of joy, welcoming the new year—as we began the school year, as the member for Heysen said. I think the member for Heysen did a great job as the new shadow minister for multicultural affairs in expressing the Liberal Party's strong support. Indeed, it is appropriate that the parliament and the government continue to foster multicultural success stories, especially when the communities are reaching out to the broader South Australian community to share in their expression of their faith, their culture, their history and their values.

I commend all of those from the Zhu-Lin Buddhist Association, who did such a great job in bringing it together; the MCs were fantastic. To the Abbot, the Deputy Abbot and all the assistant abbots, it was very much appreciated. I look forward to next year but, for the moment, we bring in the Year of the Wood Snake in that format.

As the member for Adelaide said, we have the Chinatown street party coming up this Saturday night, and thanks to Wayne Chao and all the volunteers—as they are, in many cases—from the Chinatown Adelaide Association for putting on that event. Can I give everybody the hot tip? If you do not have other plans on Saturday night, get yourself down to Gouger Street, because it is a spectacular celebration. Between the food, the smells, the stalls and the performances it is a wonderful expression of culture right in the heart of Adelaide. It is something I think everyone in South Australia would enjoy.

For those members of parliament who are honoured to be in the formalities—which is certainly a good part of the day—it is important that we express our appreciation to all those members of the community, all the traders and all the cultural performers, as we should. You do not need to be there from 5pm to 7pm to enjoy that night. It is something that is really important that Chinatown and the traders put on together.

The former Marshall Liberal government supported this work and the work of Chinatown Adelaide very significantly; I remember it was David Ridgway who opened the covering down Moonta Street that has enhanced what can be done. However, we all appreciate the ongoing support that the government continues to provide—that it has provided for a long time and continues to provide—to ensure that street festival can bring the best of multicultural celebrations to anyone who wants to visit.

It is really important that we recognise that the Lunar New Year is a broad celebration for many people of South-East Asian backgrounds. This year is a particularly important year for South Australia's Vietnamese community, and it was a privilege to join the member for Heysen and other members of parliament—and I note from local government as well—at the Vietnamese community's Tet Festival on Saturday afternoon.

As the member for Heysen identified, it was a hot afternoon, but it had also been a hot afternoon the weekend prior when so many volunteers from the Vietnamese community had been putting together, hand stitching, many of the decorations that were around the Vietnamese Community Association's facilities. They made that outside area—which, on a hot day can be a pretty significant heat zone, as a car park—a covered, shaded area that looked like a piece of Vietnam transplanted into Adelaide's north-western suburbs. It was an extraordinary experience to be there on that hot day, yet thousands of people were still making their way to the Tet Festival to enjoy the experience.

To our Vietnamese community in South Australia, 50 years here in Adelaide as a home away from home, on behalf of the Liberal Party—and the member for Heysen did it so well—we also express 'chuc mung nam moi'. It is a great celebration, the Year of the Wood Snake, for the Vietnamese too. The Vietnamese community in South Australia has had a profound influence on the way in which we express ourselves as a multicultural community, and that community's contribution has been expressed in many different ways. The Vietnamese culture has expressed itself not just in Vietnamese events; it is one of those communities whose cuisine, whose outlook, whose efforts—South Australia would be unthinkable without it.

It is still an ongoing trauma for many people in that community that they were wrenched from their homes as a result of war and as a result of an expansionist, dictatorial regime 50 years ago. The experience of those Vietnamese South Australians and their families in the years that followed that upheaval in 1975 was profoundly traumatic. For second and third generations, some of whom have stories told to them of where they have come from, it is important that they have the opportunity to know the stories, know the culture.

Part of their identity as South Australians is as Vietnamese South Australians, and the stories of their heritage going back thousands of years take pride of place for them, but the stories of the reason they came here are also something that is still quite challenging. It is an ongoing disappointment to many, of course, that is difficult for them to explain sometimes, but they do.

There is a Fringe performance coming up celebrating or telling the story of Gerald Ford's sponsored airlift of Vietnamese children to escape the changes that were happening in 1975. I am looking forward to hearing those stories of survival and celebration of a maintenance of culture in mid-February. I think that is a tremendous show; it is called Fragile: Handle With Care. I hope that many members will take the opportunity to get along to see that performance.

I want to thank Quin Tran and the members of the Vietnamese community association for the way that they contribute to maintaining their culture so that not just the second and the third but the fourth generations and those that come after can understand the stories of their heritage, can understand what it means to them to be in South Australia, which prompts the community to celebrate with songs like, as the member for Heysen said, Thank You Australia, a beautiful expression of the best of what South Australia is, the best of what Australia is. Perhaps it sometimes requires that look from the outside at what our community can be and can give for us to truly appreciate it.

I express my thanks to them and wish all members of this house, all members of our South-East Asian community, and anyone else who celebrates Lunar New Year a prosperous, safe, happy and creative Year of the Snake.

The SPEAKER: The member for Morialta reminds us again why he is known as the George Donikian of the South Australian parliament. Hansard may appreciate if you could send up the spelling of those Cantonese and other words that you used as part of your speech in the telling of the story of the greetings during the Lunar New Year.

Mr BATTY (Bragg) (11:41): I rise briefly to support this motion. Hansard will be pleased to hear that I am not going to attempt to practise my Mandarin or Cantonese, but I do want to take the opportunity to wish all of those celebrating the Lunar New Year across South Australia a very happy, safe and prosperous Lunar New Year.

The Chinese community, of course, celebrates Lunar New Year, as do many others. We have a thriving Chinese community across South Australia. I think nearly 60,000 South Australians have Chinese ancestry. A lot of those people can be found in my own electorate and local community. I think about one in 10 of my local constituents speaks Mandarin or Cantonese at home. They do it a lot better than the member for Morialta.

It has been a pleasure to engage with that community as their local member of parliament over the past few years, as recently as last month at a citizenship ceremony, where we welcomed some of the newest members of our local community. Citizenship ceremonies are very happy occasions. I think it is an enormously important moment in the lives of those people who are becoming new citizens, but I think it is also a really important moment in the life of our state, our country and our local community, because we are all the beneficiaries of these people's lived experiences, their own cultures and their own history.

The Chinese community, of course, is extremely active across the state. It was a pleasure to attend to farewell Wang Wang and Fu Ni at the Adelaide Zoo along with the member for Chaffey last year, and I look forward to visiting our newest pandas. It was also a pleasure to attend the Chinese film festival that took place at the end of last year, the Australia China International Film Festival, which welcomed over 5,000 people to South Australia. It involved the screening of a number of films, a number of workshops and also a number of awards.

I attended the awards ceremony, which was a very big and happy occasion. I want to congratulate all of those who were involved in organising that, in particular the Burnside councillor Andy Xing, who played a key role in helping to put that together. Hopefully, it will continue to be a success in the future.

Last year, I also had the opportunity to participate in the Australia-China Youth Dialogue. I was a delegate to the Australia-China Youth Dialogue in 2023 and had the opportunity to travel to Chengdu in China, which was a really great opportunity to learn a lot more about the contribution of Chinese Australians to our country, to learn more about Chinese culture and, of course, to visit some pandas and to eat a whole lot of hotpot as well. It was a great experience.

What was particularly rewarding was that last year the conference came to Australia, and for the first time it came to Adelaide. It was a pleasure to be able to support some of that program, part of which involved a seminar here at Parliament House, and also a trip to the Barossa, where I had the opportunity to chair a panel about the Australian wine market in China. I want to thank all those involved with the Australia-China Youth Dialogue for putting that conference together and for adding Adelaide to their list of destinations. We hope to welcome them back soon.

Of course, there are a number of upcoming Chinese New Year and Lunar New Year celebrations. We have had many already, and the member for Morialta has mentioned the Chinatown Adelaide Lunar New Year Street Party coming up this weekend. I look forward to going along to Gouger Street and having a lot of fun, eating a lot of food and celebrating the Lunar New Year, just as I look forward to heading along to the Lantern Festival celebrations at the Burnside council in the coming weeks. There is lots going on, and I am very excited about all of it.

I support this motion and once again take the opportunity to wish all those celebrating the Lunar New Year, particularly in my local community, a very happy, safe and prosperous Lunar New Year.

Mr WHETSTONE (Chaffey) (11:46): I, too, rise to speak on this motion. I think it is a really important motion, recognising the Chinese New Year. It has a lot of meaning, not only to those Chinese residents here in South Australia but also in the recognition that China is our largest trading partner. I think it is reciprocal. Obviously, we do have a sister-city relationship with Qingdao. On 29 January it was 'Let the celebrations begin!', as they say. It is 16 days of celebrations to celebrate the Year of the Snake, which is the zodiac sign for this year.

As the member for Bragg mentioned, he and I attended the farewell of Wang Wang and Fu Ni, the pandas at the Adelaide Zoo. I was fortunate enough to visit the Adelaide Zoo just last week. I took my young grandson, Walker Whetstone, who is four years old. He was keen to have a look at these black-and-white bears, and we managed to get along to have a look at them. He was quite taken with Xing Qiu and Yi Lan. One of them was in hiding, I think it was Qiu, while Lan was hiding down the back somewhere. They really are a unique animal; they have that unique characteristic of being black and white.

I noted at the Adelaide Zoo the amount of bamboo that is grown to feed them. Every available space has bamboo growing, and there are many zoo staff cutting down the bamboo at every opportunity to give those new pandas their favourite food and to keep them ready to go for the operation that we hope will take place in the very near future.

Celebrating the Lunar New Year is also a great opportunity for the South Australian economy, whether it is the local economy while we celebrate here or whether it is sending over a lot of our produce. Potentially, anything that is red is ready to go. I guess the barriers of trade, over a long period of time, have caused significant hardship for many of those commodities. But we are back up and running, and it is great to see that we have wine going into China, the majority of which is red wine. We have a lot of horticulture going into China, and the majority of that horticulture is red. Whether it is dragon fruit, stone fruit or grapes, we are seeing a lot of produce going that way.

One of the great products out of our ocean is the rock lobster and I think we are back in business. After speaking to the lobster fishermen they are very, very happy to finally see their produce returning to the tables and the restaurants, not only here but also in China, and it is great to see. Red meat is another product that saw headwinds through the trade barriers or the trade tariffs that were introduced to some of our world's best products. It is great to see those tariffs lifted.

For many of you there are 20 unknown things about the Lunar New Year and I will just give you an understanding of what some of those are. The Lunar New Year is known as the Spring Festival and there is no set date for a Chinese New Year. The day is for praying to the gods and it is also for fighting off the monsters. It is the day the most fireworks in the world are let go—of course, only where it is legal—and it is the longest Chinese holiday of the year.

The festival also causes the largest human migration in the world, and it gives a few stats. Single people hire fake boyfriends and girlfriends to take home as part of the festival. There is no showering, no sweeping or throwing out of garbage allowed during the festival.

Children receive lucky money in red envelopes. Of course, children are always looking for money, but if they come in red envelopes it could mean prosperity. You eat dumplings for every meal on every day during the festival. The Chinese desserts have special meanings and there is wine specifically for the Spring Festival that is made and branded to celebrate. All of the decorations are historically in red and every year has a zodiac. This year, as we said, is the Year of the Snake. It does say that your zodiac year is bad luck. We do not like to see anyone with bad luck, but that is a Chinese tradition.

You grow one year older than the festival, so the festival never ages; it is always upon us on an annual basis. The greeting is Xin Nian Kuai Le and the Chinese New Year ends with the Lantern Festival. So there are many things involved in the Chinese Lunar New Year.

It is a great festival and for many of us here in South Australia Gouger Street is the go-to. The food, the smells, the festivities, the action, the noise and the fireworks going off really make it a great opportunity just to be a part of the festival and to go down there and experience what the festivities are about. You can enjoy some great traditional food and be a part of the dragons that wander through, the people adoring Gouger Street and some of the restaurants. It is something that I always look forward to, as do many of us here in this chamber as representatives for our local community. Whether we have a responsibility within portfolio areas, it is a sight to behold. It really is a festival that I think everyone should experience and should be a part of.

Ms WORTLEY (Torrens) (11:53): I, too, want to support the motion moved by the member for Adelaide that notes the Lunar New Year took place on 29 January this year and recognises it is the Year of the Snake, being abundance and prosperity, and wishes the South Australian Chinese community a safe, happy and successful new year.

I want to knowledge that this year the Chinese New Year celebrations—and, in fact, the Lunar New Year celebrations—have been very obvious out there. There are many ways of saying happy new year in my electorate and in fact in our state of South Australia, and we can hear them in many different tongues within our communities, not just at this time of year but throughout the year. It is this fabulous rich cultural fabric which now makes up South Australia that we all enjoy. The diversity of experience, knowledge, food and language that permeates our neighbourhoods makes us all richer in our own lives.

In addition to the Chinese residents, I particularly want to extend my Lunar New Year wishes to our Vietnamese, Malaysian, Singaporean and Filipino communities and all who celebrate the Lunar New Year here in South Australia.

Mr PATTERSON (Morphett) (11:55): I also rise quickly to support this motion. Of course, on the boundary of the electorate of Morphett and previously in the electorate of Morphett is the Plympton International College and they have a fantastic Chinese bilingual program. I look forward to going tomorrow. They have a fantastic performance to sound in the Chinese New Year, the Year of the Snake. I am looking forward to the cultural performances that go with that. I went last year. The member for Morialta is also a frequent visitor to this school.

It is an R-12 school, so you get performances from multiple year levels and they are fantastic. It is all organised. You have to give a lot of credit to the principal, Amy Whyte, for the work she does, and also Joyce Chen who is the leader of the Chinese bilingual and language program at Plympton International. Certainly, the Year of the Dragon, probably of the 12 years, I would have to say is my favourite. Of course, a lot of people are enraptured by dragons. We were present with the classic dragon. You had performers there with the head on one and the backside on another, moving around, with many symbols and lots of noise as well.

It also should be noted that the school provides that fantastic bilingual program and the school itself has set up a sister school relationship with Jinan No. 3 High School in Shandong. I think it was only October last year when a number of the students from that Jinan No. 3 High School came over as part of an MOU signing ceremony and we were able to experience some of their cultural performances and just see the range of cultures coming out of China that is such a worthy benefit of having this sort of relationship. It exposes Australian students to another culture and, similarly, Chinese students to Australian culture.

At that grassroots level, it just shows at the human side how similar all humans are, putting aside political differences. If only that could be a way forward for us that we get along because you can see the dances the Chinese students came up with are quite similar to what we would experience here as well. It is a fantastic school in the electorate of Morphett among many other fantastic schools. I look forward to attending the Year of the Snake ceremony this week.

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (11:58): I rise briefly to thank the members for Heysen, Morialta, Bragg, Chaffey, Torrens, and Morphett for their contributions and also echo many of their statements in regard to encouraging as many people as possible to come down to Gouger Street this Saturday to celebrate the Lunar New Year with Chinatown Adelaide. The festivities kick off from 6pm. We have lion dances and other performances, firecrackers which are very loud—word of warning—but lots of fun and beautiful food. It will be just an incredible celebration of the beautiful Chinese culture that we have here in South Australia. Once again, thank you very much to all of the members who contributed today and Xin Nian Kuai Le.

Motion carried.