Our peak event of the year, the annual Australia-Malaysia Ball, was held on the evening of Friday the 26th August at Landmark Restaurant, Sunnybank, Brisbane. It was an event with everything - 14 politicians and other special guests, 11 course banquet dinner (delicious by all accounts), well-received speeches, Air Asia X flights as the major raffle prize, a shout-out to Malaysian TV audiences, a silent auction, a clairvoyant reading, and a little bit of controversy, just for good measure.
Some of our young AMBCQ members and
supporters with Cr Julian Simmonds
Each year the event is a whole lot of work and an equal measure of pain, but in the end we always have a wonderful time. This year we left the planning of the event a little late due to our preoccupation with the Selangor Government delegation which took up most of July - plus my computer hard drive died. I won't go into that tragedy and the ensuing turmoil... However, thanks to our members and the collective goodwill of our supporters, we still had a good turnout of 160 people.
Firstly the special guests in no particular order:
Danielle Morris speaking to Steve Kilburn MLA
Dr Peter Yeoh OAM and Mrs Alice Yeoh
Karen Jeffrey with Cr Steven Huang, BCC
Dr Peter Yeoh OAM and Mrs Alice Yeoh, Patron of the AMBCQ
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, Lord Mayor of Brisbane
The Hon. Peter Slipper MHR, Deputy Speaker of the Australian Parliament and Federal Member for Fischer
The Hon. John Mickel MLA, Speaker of the Queensland Parliament and State Member for Logan
The Hon. Dean Wells MLA, State Member for Murrumba
The Hon. Julie Attwood MLA, State Member for Mt Ommaney and Parliamentary Secretary for Health
The Hon. Judy Spence, Leader of the House and State Member for Sunnybank
John-Paul Langbroek MLA, State Member for Surfers Paradise and Opposition Spokesperson for Police and Emergency Services
Michael Crandon MLA, State Member for Coomera
Steve Kilburn MLA, State Member for Chatsworth
Cr Julian Simmonds, Brisbane City Councillor for Walter Taylor Ward and Chairman of the Public and Active Transport Committee
Cr Matthew Bourke, Brisbane City Councillor for Jamboree Ward and Deputy Chairman of the Infrastructure Committee
Cr Angela Owen-Taylor, Brisbane City Councillor for Parkinson Ward and Deputy Chairman of Council and of Field Services Committee
Cr Steven Huang, Brisbane City Councillor for MacGregor Ward
Brigadier Peter Jeffrey AM, CSC, RFD
Ms Danielle Morris, Deputy State Director DFAT, representing the Hon. Kevin Rudd MHR, Foreign Minister
Cr Steven Huang and the Brisbane City Council also provided some much appreciated funding for the event through the Lord Mayor's Suburban Initiative Fund. As always, Air Asia X was our Gold Sponsor and provided us with Premier Return tickets to KL via Gold Coast, 2 for raffle and 2 for silent auction. The anticipation for those tickets was palpable throughout the room!
This year we invited three of our special guests to speak, one from each level of Government and each of them strong supporters of the AMBCQ - Lord Mayor Graham Quirk, the Hon. John Mickel MLA, and the Hon. Peter Slipper MHR. Each of these gentlemen are very good speakers and they all gave very strongly supportive and enthusiastic speeches about the role of AMBCQ, the ascendency of the Asia-Pacific region in general, and the importance of defending our Australian democracy.
Lord Mayor Graham Quirk with Kiong Chan (photo courtesy of Inge Slipper)
We also used the occasion to present Graham and John each with a commemorative shield - to Graham to congratulate him on his new role as Lord Mayor, and to John, as he has recently announced that he will retire at the end at the next election, to thank him for his service to Queensland. To John, with the help of Grace Tan, we also presented a cake - because it just happened to be his birthday as well! It was very important to us to personally thank these two wonderful people who have strongly supported the AMBCQ in its growth from a fledging organisation to what it is today.
Wan O'Farrell, JWT Financial and Juana Berardo
Now this is where the controversy comes in. In thanking John Mickel for his speech and also for everything that he has done for Queensland, Kiong spoke about the importance of the role of the Speaker in the Queensland Parliament. As you may be aware, there have been changes made to the Queensland Parliament recently which take a number of powers away from the Speaker and put this authority into the hands of a Committee. Queensland is quite unique because it is a unicameral chamber (unlike other Westminster parliaments, Queensland does not have an upper house to provide additional checks and balances, so the role of the Speaker is especially important. This is the first such change to the powers of the speaker in the several hundred year history of the Westminster system of parliamentary democracy. The Courier Mail published an article on what Kiong said at the Ball and it is notable that the 30 comments posted by Courier Mail readers in the hours after the article appeared were overwhelmingly supportive.
The Hon. John Mickel MLA addresses the crowd
However, it was never our intention to set the cat amongst the pigeons. It was however our intention to pay homage to Speaker John Mickel. He has held many Parliamentary roles, including Trade Minister for Queensland, and he has served Queensland for many years. On a more personal note, he has strongly supported the AMBCQ, and many of our colleagues in other business and community groups. For instance, wherever possible, he has always attended our functions, he has organised and facilitated meetings, including meeting with YB Teresa Kok recently, and he has been a constant source of moral support for many in the international business community. His current role as Speaker has been at a difficult time, with the reforms that have been introduced to the Parliament.
The Hon Peter Slipper, Elfi Massey-Vallazza, ACE President,
John Massey, Inge Slipper and Simon Massey di Vallazza (Photo taken by Lai Peng Chan)
We also had the aforementioned pleasure of hearing from the Hon. Peter Slipper MHR, who is the Deputy Speaker of the Australian Parliament. It was a very entertaining speech - it began something like - "I had not met John Mickel at that time, but I considered him to be a vile and offensive man".... and then proceeded to heap praise on John Mickel for his virulent defence of democracy. It was quite an oration, the likes of which only Peter Slipper can deliver.
But that was not the end of the evening. Kiong also gave his traditional speech and spoke about some of the history and legacy that Malaysia and Australia share, particularly the traditions, laws, and values that our countries share, thanks to the British Commonwealth and the significant contribution and sacrifice of Britain and Britons to British Commonwealth countries.
We also had some fun - Romana, an acclaimed clairvoyant, offered her services to do a reading using numerology on a guinea pig from the audience. Chief Superintendent John Cawcutt from the Qld Fire and Rescue Service was our 'volunteer' and by the look on his face, I think Romana's reading may have been quite accurate! She also threw in some insults and brutal honesty for extra entertainment value to the amusement of the crowd.
Another fun item for the night, was recording a "Selamat Hari Raya" greeting for Malaysia Hari Ini, (Malaysia Today) Malaysia's top morning talk show which screens on TV3. Thanks very much to Leong Ming En who recorded the greeting for us, and then edited and posted it on to MHI Facebook page. According to our friend Zul who is a host on MHI, the recording from the AMBCQ Ball screened on the third day of Raya. A copy of the greeting with a rehearsal is below - an edited 20 second version appeared on MHI and is still available in their FB page (and ours as well).
Stacey and JP Langbroek MLA (JP is an AMBCQ member)
Lisa Butler and Shaeed Mohammed from NAB
Finally we had the raffle draw and the silent auction - thanks to the support of the crowd and to Air Asia X, we have made some funds that will help run our activities over the next year. There are a lot of people to thank - so many people provided help and support this year, and as always, it has been a real team effort. I would especially like to thank Sue Davies, who provided so much stellar support to me on the night - setting up the items, helping with the door, managing the raffle. Her husband Bryan and their kids also chipped in a great deal on the night with all sorts of work, including child minding for our "kids corner".
As usual Doug Wheeler provided the sound, microphone and other assistance free of charge, as well as a raffle prize of project management services through his company Project Success International. Many people provided raffle prizes, such as Lai Peng Chan, Lyna Chen, Gomi from Blue Gulabi, and more. Grace Tan did a wonderful job coordinating and helping us arrange the Silent Auction along with Sam Miszkowski - our first attempt at this kind of fundraising. Thanks must also go to Lucas Follbring and Leong Ming En for their photography on the evening. All the photos here in this blog have been taken by Lucas Follbring and both videos were shot and posted by Leong Ming En (www.mydemoninyou.blogspot.com). The photos are available on Facebook, or you can ask me if you after some particular shots. Thank you also to AMBCQ member Shaeed Mohammed from NAB for organising a corporate table, and to Brian Kuzman and UTM who also took a corporate table. There are probably many more people I can thank - it was a very successful night all round and the support of every single person there - and the support of many who were not able to make it - was invaluable. Hurray for AMBCQ!
Ashleigh, Gomi from Blue Gulabi, and Tara
Megan, Sue and Lai Peng -
Megan and Sue were our wonderful AMBCQ volunteers
