Ms Julie Ownes member of parliament for parramatta celebrated Australia Day with Tamil ethnic community from Sri Lanka, India, Malaysia & Singapore at toongabbie. Ms Julie Ownes presented prizes to the winners of sportsmeet.Sydney's Tamil community celebrated Australia Day 2007 at Binnalong Park, Toongabbie and which attracted thousands of visitors, our reporter says. Thamilar Thiru Naal 2007, or New South Wales Tamils Celebrating Australia Day, was hosted by the Consortium of Tamil Associations.

Julie Ownes is highly comitted to social justice and never hesitate to raise her voice in the parliament. She described her commitment in her own words at her first speach in parlament,

"..My commitment to social justice came a few years later when I left my state high school of Everton Park to study full time at the Queensland Conservatorium. My father was in the army and we lived in an army suburb in Brisbane. My high school served a working-class and housing-commission area, and I saw bright, intelligent boys and girls who had everything in them that they needed to do well but were held back and down by family circumstances not of their own making.

The Conservatorium was a different world. Entry standards were very high, and you needed a reasonable level of wealth for private teaching and to buy a good instrument to get in there in the first place. I got there because a number of people who believed in me taught me for less than the going rate. But I was the only state school educated person there. My new friends from lives of relative comfort had no understanding at all that they had travelled an easier path and that, for many others, there was no path. I see that same level of incomprehension in the attitudes and policies of my colleagues on the other side of this House. .."

Julie Ownes presented prizes to the winners at the end of Australia Day celebrations.