Tim Watts (Gellibrand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last month I attended the South Asian Food Festival and India Day celebrations in Werribee in Melbourne's west. Around 20,000 people attended the festival on the day to try all the different cuisines of the South Asian subcontinent and to be entertained by hundreds of local artists and performers. Towards the end of the day, the Indian, Australian and Aboriginal flags were raised together; the event concluding with the largest India Day parade outside of India.

Australia and India have always had close ties, but in recent years our cultural and personal relationships have grown stronger and deeper. There are over 400,000 people of Indian origin living in Australia, and that number will almost certainly increase dramatically in the next few years. We have welcomed many Indian and South Asian migrants to Australia. India alone has become one of our fastest-growing migrant communities and made up 13 per cent of our migrant intake from 2007 to 2011. This festival was a testament to the pride of Indian culture, a welcoming of newly arrived migrants and a celebration of Australian multiculturalism. Events like the South Asian Food Festival are testament to the diversity and multiculturalism that Australia and particularly Melbourne's west are renowned for as well as to the contribution that the Australian Indian community is making to Australian society and Australian culture as a whole.

I want to thank everyone involved in organising the event, particularly Hari Yellina and all of the volunteers, who worked so hard to make it such a success. I wish all Indian-Australians in my electorate—and across Melbourne's west and Australia—a very happy India Day. I look forward to celebrating many of them in the future to come.