OZASIA FESTIVAL

The Hon. J.S. LEE (15:27): It is my pleasure to rise today to speak about the OzAsia and Moon festivals. The OzAsia Festival is recognised as the nation's pre-eminent Asian/Australian cultural engagement and collaboration event. Now in its seventh year, it has grown from strength to strength. Congratulations to the Adelaide Festival Centre, particularly to CEO Douglas Gautier, and OzAsia Festival director, Jacinta Thomson, for their great vision and leadership.

The OzAsia Festival is a celebration of cultural diversity, a showcase of many talented and exciting artists in Australia and from Asia. It was a great privilege to attend many OzAsia events this year. I would like to share some of the highlights. The opening night performance for the OzAsia Festival on 13 September 2013 by renowned Taiwanese company U-Theatre, Meeting with Bodhisattva, was a breathtaking show with 16 drummers slicing through the air, striking their instruments with impeccable precision. The complex performance shows the Buddhist wisdom through martial arts, theatre, meditation and percussion.

OzAsia is connecting Australia to our closest neighbours. Every year, OzAsia will feature an Asian country. This year, the focus is on Malaysia. What I love about the OzAsia Festival is its ability to engage with the local community on various cultural journeys. On 15 September, OzAsia offered a public event by partnering with the Malaysia Club of South Australia and the Migration Museum in Three Weddings and a Cook. The cook for the event was the delightful Poh Ling Yeow from MasterChef and ABC TV's Poh's Kitchen.

Poh's mum, Christina Yeow, is the president of the Malaysia Club. Christina had worked tirelessly with her committee to stage three traditional and elaborate weddings on the day: a Malay wedding, a Chinese wedding and an Indian wedding. While two weddings were mock-up weddings, the Indian wedding was a real wedding, so congratulations to the bride and groom. It was certainly an auspicious day. I was very honoured to be involved in the Chinese Wedding Tea ceremony. Special thanks to Christina Yeow, Dr Evelyn Yap, Betty Lee, Eric Lai and the whole committee of the Malaysia Club for putting on a wonderful community event.

The Mid-Autumn Festival, also known as the Moon Festival, is celebrated around the world. Taking on the theme from Asian Mid-Autumn Harvest festivities, OzAsia has adapted the theme and has offered the Moon Lantern Festival to the public as a free community event. It is held every year at Elder park. Unfortunately this year, because of the really poor weather, it was cancelled. It is really quite sad because the children and teachers of the 12 participating schools and some 40 community groups have taken a year to make beautiful lanterns and they did not have the opportunity to show them off this year because of the heavy rain. So, rain rain, please go away and stay away for next year's Moon Lantern Festival so that the parade can happen again.

The Moon Festival is celebrated throughout the community by many Chinese organisations, and I would like to pay tribute to them now. The Chinese Welfare Services has organised the Moon Festival dinner plus the inaugural Moon Festival street party. The opposition leader Steven Marshall was there to launch a joint campus singing competition at the street party in Moonta Street on Saturday. It was such a wonderful success. Lots of congratulations and special thanks to Cathy Chong, Peter Yang, Colin Wang, Carmen Chow and all the volunteers for a wonderful day.

The other organisations I would like to thank and congratulate are the Overseas Chinese Association of South Australia, the Oceania Federation of Chinese Organisations from Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos, and the Teo Chew Association of South Australia for organising all the Moon Festivals so that all the migrants from Asia can celebrate in a big way.

We are very lucky and privileged to be a part of the OzAsia and Moon Festival celebration. Thank you to all the community leaders and organisers for sharing and enriching South Australia with wonderful traditions and artistic talents.