Lunar New Year Celebration
Melbourne’s Lunar New Year celebrations this year were a blast, with a multicultural Lunar New Year Fair organized by the Springvale Asian Business Association (SABA) on Australia Day, January 26th in Springvale. This year, I was unable to attend and set up a booth as the Sameway Magazine was celebrating its 20th anniversary on the same day in Box Hill Community Arts Centre. On Saturday, February 1, there was a community celebration with politicians at Box Hill, and on Sunday, February 2, I went to Chinatown to participate in the traditional Lion and Dragon Dance in the city center for the tourists. There were lion dance teams from various organizations performing to the traders in Chinatown to wish them good luck for the new year. On February 9, there was a Lunar New Year and Lantern Festival celebration at Glen Waverley. The Sameway Magazine also had two booths offering riddles games, calligraphy, a roulette wheel raffle, and an exhibition on organ donation, which attracted a lot of people to look around. The event was sponsored by the Oriental Merchants which sponsored a lot of gifts. After this day, all the New Year celebrations were completed and we could stop for a while to take a break.
As in the past, all the celebrations at Springvale were very unique. During the opening ceremony, the MCs spoke Vietnamese, Cambodian, Mandarin and English, accepting each other’s ethnicity with a folkloric and lively atmosphere, and the food was everywhere, which was extremely enjoyable. This year’s price hike has made it difficult for small businesses to operate, and many downtown Chinatown merchants are looking forward to the Lion and Dragon Dance to drive away the hard times, and revival. There were also a lot of tourists to the city centre, and many nearby landmarks were having activities, so it could be said that Melburnian Chinese all worked together to decorate the beautiful side of Melbourne, so that everyone could enjoy themselves, At Glen Waverley’s celebrations, the weather was the best, not too hot and sunny, but not too many visitors, and there were fewer booths compared to the previous year. Maybe it’s because of the huge number of Lunar New Year events across Melbourne. One of my friends, who is a parliamentary officer for a local MP, told me that her boss, has participated in 12 community events in the past two weeks, so I guess he is feeling a bit overwhelmed.
Box Hill annual Celebration “Hijacked” by Politicians
Yes, the celebration with the largest number of dignitaries in attendance today was the Box Hill Celebration. Due to the construction of the SRL, the event was held in the backstreet near the Box Hill Town Hall, but it was a great opportunity for the MPs to get some exposure. This year is a federal election year, and the area around Box Hill has been transformed from the Chisholm electorate to the Menzies electorate, making it a marginal seat for the two major political parties to fight over. Prime Minister Albanese and Opposition Leader Peter Dutton both attended the event to rally support from the Chinese community. A number of councillors and candidates from the East Metropolitan Melbourne also took the opportunity to show their support for their own parties, including independent councillor Monique Ryan from nearby Kooyong electorate. The Prime Minister lived up to his promise and said in his opening speech that if he won this year’s election, he would spend a total of $150,000 over the next three years to support the ABAW in organizing further celebrations. The Leader of the Opposition, Mr Peter Dutton, also responded immediately that he would be even more generous in allocating $250,000 over the next five years to support the event.
This is what I find most offensive because it is a blatant “bribe” from politicians to the Chinese community. The federal government’s support of the Chinese community’s Lunar New Year celebrations is commendable. But why not put resources into Melbourne’s Chinatown to organize a celebration for the entire Chinese community and tourists, or support Springvale’s for many years of uniting Chinese and Southeast Asian immigrants from different countries to promote community solidarity and social cohesion? The Asian Business Association of Whitehorse (ABAW) in Box Hill organizes this annual event, which has all along been strongly supported by the Whitehorse City Council and sponsored by a number of local big real estate developers and banks, and in recent years, it has even organized a lavish thank-you reception to promote the event, so why should it worry about the lack of funds? Are the Prime Minister and the Leader of the Opposition all suckers for influence? Of course not. In the run-up to the election, the Lunar New Year has become a political event to garner support from the Chinese community.
Bribing the Chinese community?
Federal funding should be approved in accordance with the relevant policies. Funding for Lunar New Year celebrations should be approved by the Minister of Multicultural Affairs, and should be evaluated to find the most appropriate program to support. Over the years, the longest running celebration is in Melbourne’s Chinatown, and the earliest and most widely supported multicultural event in the outlying communities, the Springvale Lunar New Year’s Market, have not received any federal funding. Should the Minister for Multicultural Affairs explain why the Prime Minister has taken it upon himself to offer his support to the Box HIll event? The Leader of the Opposition, Mr. Dutton, probably also needs to explain.
But then again, this is a federal election year, and Melbourne’s Chinese community is a hotbed of competition between the two major political parties, and the Chinese community of Box Hill once in the Chisholm and now in the Menzies electorates, is extremely marginal, so it is no wonder that the two major political parties have come forward to ask for support for the Box Hill annual Lunar New Year Celebration. Such behaviour can be regarded as “election bribery” to the Chinese community.
Responding to the needs of the Chinese community
It is common and acceptable for politicians to offer funds to specific groups of people during general elections, obviously to buy people’s hearts and minds by providing subsidies, but I think it should be done in a proper way. First of all, these funds should be used to meet the real needs of these communities, not as window dressing for some community leaders. In light of the long history of business sponsorships that the ABAW has received in the past, federal funding is just icing on the cake, and does not meet the principle of supporting the real needs of the community.
What are the urgent needs of the Chinese community? Of course, everyone has a different perspective on this issue. In order to buy Chinese votes, the leaders of political parties will naturally recognize these needs as long as they are able to consult with the community and understand the people’s sentiments. If a political party’s funding proposal can address the most urgent needs, it will be most recognized by the Chinese community and will receive the strongest support in the election. Therefore, in order to buy the votes of the Chinese Australian, one should not do it casually, but should show the political wisdom and knowledge of the politicians. To put it simply, one has to find the “right” way to buy votes in order to achieve the goal.
In Victoria, the first person who took the initiative to reach out to the multicultural community was Ted Baillieu, the then leader of the opposition after 2006. Ted Baillieu took the initiative to hold regular press conferences for the multicultural media, requesting the media to reflect the needs of the community to him on a regular basis, and set up a special column in Sameway Magazine to collect the views of the Chinese community on the government. 5% of the government’s publicity budget would be allocated to multicultural media. The Labor Party followed suit and established close ties with the Chinese community, and continues to do so today.
In the 2014 election, Victorian Labor Leader Daniel Andrews proposed a policy of supporting the construction of multicultural elderly care facilities. To date, the Labor government has purchased four parcels of land to build care facilities for the Indian and Chinese communities. Unfortunately, these four sites are still vacant and have not been allocated to the community for construction. Melbourne has more than 40,000 Chinese elders aged over 75, and according to the federal government’s elderly care standards, they need at least 1,500 elderly care beds. Even if the proportion of Chinese elderly in care facilities is not as high as in mainstream society, it is estimated that at least half of them would need 750 beds. With less than 200 Chinese-speaking beds managed by Chinese community, this means that most non-English speaking Chinese elders will end up in English-speaking elderly care facilities, where they will have to live a difficult life without communication with their fellow residents and caregivers. Two sites, which have already been purchased for Chinese-interested elderly care facilities, are projects that the Victorian government desperately needs to develop as quickly as possible. The federal government, which is responsible for senior care policy, has a responsibility to assist the Chinese community in building senior care facilities on these two purchased sites.
If Prime Minister Albanese or Opposition Leader Peter Dutton would commit funds to support the Melbourne Chinese community to build much needed elderly care facilities on these two sites, it would show that they value the Chinese tradition of respecting and caring for the elderly, and would better meet the needs of the aging Chinese immigrant community. I believe that this kind of buying Chinese votes will be recognized and supported by all Chinese people.
Mr. Raymond Chow, Publisher of Sameway Magazine