David Coleman (Banks, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My electorate of Banks is home to more than 33,000 Australians of Chinese descent. That contributes to our area being one of the most diverse and culturally-rich places in Australia. In recent weeks we have had the Chinese New Year celebrations, which is a very important time in my local community. During that time, I was able to visit with a number of great local Chinese-Australian organisations and celebrate Chinese New Year with them.

This morning I want to highlight one in particular: CanRevive. CanRevive is a cancer support service working within the Chinese community, both within Hurstville in my electorate and in Sydney more generally. It began in 1995, when three women—Priscilla Wong, Rose Yeung and Eleanor Yip, who had all experienced the benefits of cancer support groups—decided that it was important to establish such a support group for Chinese language speakers—Mandarin and Cantonese speakers—within the community.

CanRevive provides a range of support services in terms of home visits, telephone support and those sorts of social gatherings where people who are suffering from cancer can get together to discuss what they are going through and really benefit from support from their peers and, importantly, from people who speak their native tongue.

I would certainly like to congratulate Mrs Ella Lee, the President of CanRevive, Mr Eric Cheong, the Vice President, and all of the team on their activities and on their Chinese New Year celebration, which I did attend a couple of weeks ago.

I also attended the celebration of the Australian Chinese Community Association of NSW Inc.—or ACCA as it is known—a terrific organisation which has been going for 40 years, helping people in the Sydney Chinese-Australian community by offering community services like aged home care, dementia services, special-interest classes, Chinese cultural classes, antiracism classes and a number of others. It is a very large organisation which helps literally thousands of people in Sydney. The celebration dinner held in Chinatown a couple of weeks ago was a very large and successful evening, with more than 400 people in attendance. Mr Allen Lee, the president of ACCA, and Mr Ted Seng, the general manager, are certainly worthy of great praise for that terrific night and for all of the activities of ACCA.