On Saturday 16th Feb 2008 Chinese Chamber of Commerce celebrated its 19th Chinese New Year black tie Dinner based on the theme “towards a greener Australia”. Chair of the organising Committee Mr Kok Wah See welcomed the 310 guests to the Ballroom at Hyatt Hotel. Mr See spoke on the importance of sustainable energy as we enter year 4706 by the Chinese calendar year. He said our actions of today perhaps can best be described as of what our future generation would like from us.

“You are alive at a pivotal moment in humanity’s development.
You are making some of the most important choices in human history.
Your era is marked by positive and negative potentials of such newness and magnitude that you can hardly understand them.
Through your public policies and daily lives, the people of your era have tremendous power to influence the future course of humanity’s story.
We strongly care about your choices, of course, since we benefit or suffer from them quite directly.
We live downstream from you in time; whatever you put into the stream flows on to our era.”
Alan Tough

Guest of Honour speaker Senator the Hon Penny Wong spoke passionately about climate change and water with the “obvious of the two issues being two sides of the same coin”.

Lieutenant Governor Hieu Van Le was CCCSA 2008 “Golden Achiever of the Year”.

Lieutenant Governor Hieu Van Le is the first Asian to head the state’s Multicultural and Ethnic Affairs Commission. Today he has an MBA and an Economics degree from the University of Adelaide. He has been working as a senior investigator and manager with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission since the early 1990s.

It has been an extraordinary journey for Mr Hieu Van Le who is the first Vietnamese refugee ever to be appointed to a vice regal position anywhere in the world.