Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the honour last week of chairing a committee to judge the Palm Beach-Currumbin Lions Club Youth of the Year Quest. I was joined in my judging responsibilities by Mr Ron Workman OAM, President of the Currumbin-Palm Beach Returned and Services League; and Mr Barry Ferris, a retired high school principal.

The aim of the Lions Youth of the Year Quest is to select an outstanding youth to be an ambassador for his or her country and travel overseas under the auspices of Lions Clubs International. The quest is to encourage, foster and develop leadership, in conjunction with other citizenship qualities, in our youth at the age when they are about to enter the fields of employment or higher education. The quest provides students with the incentive to pay greater attention to the general qualities so vital in developing our youth into first-class citizens. The qualities we were looking for as judges, apart from academic attainments, were those of leadership, personality, sportsmanship, public speaking and good citizenship.

We certainly spent the afternoon and evening questioning and talking to seven exceptional young Australians, each of whom had already achieved in many areas of endeavour. Our judging was difficult. We had to engage these young people with questions ranging from local community issues to international affairs. Their resumes were impressive—each was a high achiever and all were leaders within their school communities. The task of choosing one winner and nominating one student for the public speaking award was made more difficult by the high calibre of entrant.

The overall winner was Charlotte Borwick, an exceptional young lady who is vice-captain of Elanora State High School. The public speaking award went to Beth Ward-Smith, who was the captain of Elanora State High School. Both girls are a credit to their school, their families and their local community. The other entrants were Kate Di Pompo, from Marymount College, Cha Cha Westerveld from Somerset College, David Mace-Kaff from Elanora High School, Annaliese Woods from Palm Beach-Currumbin High School, and Sam McDonald also from Palm Beach-Currumbin High School. Sam has a promising future in swimming and hopes to represent Australia at the Beijing Olympics. He is also the school captain. Annaliese is a successful actress and school captain. David is also involved in acting and producing short films and is school vice-captain. Cha Cha is a gifted public speaker and debater and Kate has a strong academic background with outstanding results in Japanese. It was a great pleasure to meet and spend time with each of these students. I wish each and every one of them success in their future endeavours.