Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to inform the House of the Nowruz festival celebrations which will take place this week—the largest celebrations taking place in my home town of Adelaide. Nowruz means 'new day' and it is the new year celebration which is celebrated by different ethnicities right around the world. It is particularly a Middle Eastern celebration. I know that a large emerging culture within the Adelaide electorate, the Afghan community, will be out in force over the weekend. As I indicated, the largest Nowruz celebration in Australia will be held in the Adelaide electorate. It will involve over 5,000 people and celebrations will run over three days this weekend, with communities travelling from interstate to witness this great festival in Adelaide.

The Nowruz festival is around 3,000 years old and it shows the benefits that our very diverse multicultural communities bring to our local neighbourhoods. It marks the first day of spring and the new year. On Friday night there will be quite a celebration—a festival of fire—which is being organised by the Kurdish community, who work incredibly hard in Adelaide, for the wider community. There will be a symbolic table on which there will be seven things which symbolise the coming of the new year. On the last Wednesday of the year, which is today, a fire is lit to cleanse the passing of the last year, and the community jump over it to move into the new year and to leave the last year behind. I can assure people that in Adelaide this fire will be off the ground, because of our local fire bans, so it cannot be jumped over; but the sentiment remains the same.

On Saturday there will be a large celebration held at the Adelaide Festival Centre to celebrate the diversity of Middle Eastern cultures in the Adelaide community. Celebrations begin on the Northward equinox—the moment the sun crosses the celestial equator and equalises day and night. That is when families gather together to observe the rituals. It is a secular holiday enjoyed by people of several different faiths. It is celebrated by cultural regions in the Middle East including the regions of Turkey, Iraq, Syria, Afghanistan and Kurdistan and also other scattered populations in Central Asia. It is a celebration of language, of food, of music, of dance and of leisure activities.

I really want to congratulate and give my best to all of those who are celebrating this very special holiday this weekend and particularly acknowledge all of those in the Adelaide community who work so tirelessly and volunteer their time to organise these celebrations. To all of them I say that I very much look forward to joining them to mark these celebrations, and I want to thank all of the multicultural organisations who give so tirelessly back to our community, especially the Middle Eastern Communities Council of South Australia and the Migrant Resource Centre of South Australia. To all of the community I say: a very happy Nowruz.