Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to speak briefly about the thousands of Australian men and women who voluntarily serve our community through their membership of the organisations Zonta, Rotary and Lions. Every day millions of Australians give their time freely to enrich our nation and to improve the quality of life of others. We often attempt to measure in dollar terms the value they add to society, but in reality you can never place a dollar value on the humanitarian work they do and the lives they touch.

Today I want to focus my remarks on the contributions of the men and women of Zonta, Rotary and Lions. I do so because of the unique nature of these organisations. Over the years I have developed a close relationship with the local branches of these organisations in my own area. In recent weeks, I have attended several of their annual changeovers—and I will be attending a number more—where the outgoing president hands over to the new, incoming president. As the outgoing president reports on the club’s activities of the last 12 months, I hear of new examples of the extensive humanitarian projects, both local and overseas, that these organisations are associated with. I also see firsthand the lifelong commitments, in the form of regular meetings and fundraising efforts, that so many of these people make in their service to mankind—commitments which place substantial demands on both their time and their own money, commitments where the beneficiaries of their efforts are often individuals or communities whom they will never personally see or even know.

Volunteering is always easier to commit to when you can identify with a particular need or where you are personally associated with the outcome and perhaps even share in the achievements of your efforts, but this is not generally the case with the members of Zonta, Rotary and Lions. Furthermore, because of the international nature of their work, international goodwill and cross-cultural friendships are developed, and I see frequent examples of that in my own community in the form of student exchanges and perhaps visits from international delegations of members of these organisations. One has only to look at the code of ethics and objectives of these clubs to understand how they also encourage a set of standards of good citizenship in local communities, and I suggest that we could all learn from their standards.

Millions of lives throughout the world have been improved as a result of the work of the people of the Zonta, Lions and Rotary organisations. I take this opportunity to express my admiration for and appreciation of the tens of thousands of Australians who serve both our community and the international community through these organisations.