Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So it was that four months ago I sat at a dinner table with the Malayali Society of Townsville. It an Indian group. The first family moved to Townsville at roughly the same time I got there, in 1994, and now there are over 200 Malayali families in Townsville. They said that they were going to try to have a standalone Indian festival in Townsville. The local member is David Crisafulli, the member for Mundingburra. I sat there and said, 'Gee, you're leaving your run late.' We met with them a couple of times but there was a small band of hearty volunteers who brought the entire Indian community together.

On the weekend, to tie in with the Diwali Festival of Lights, we saw Townsville's first standalone Indian festival. We are now the proud owners of an Indian festival, a Filipino festival, an African nations festival, a Greek festival, an Italian festival and we also of course have our Culture Fest. All these things have come from a very small group of tables from about 20 years ago, and we have grown to love our multicultural side of the world. Over 15,000 people turned up over the weekend. It was my daughter's birthday on the Saturday night and we had homemade gnocchi for dinner—but I did still manage to squeeze in a little bit of butter chicken on the way out there.

A special thank you goes to Adani—that mining that is so vilified throughout the world—for being the major sponsor of this festival. It was a great weekend. To the committee of Biju, Sam, Ebby, Jacob and all the volunteers I say thank you.