Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak on the Australian of the Year awards. There are four categories to this award: the Senior Australian of the Year for people over 60; the Young Australian of the Year for people 16 to 30; and the Australian Local Hero. The Australia Day Awards are a way of recognising eminent Australians who have made a significant contribution to creating a better Australia and who are role models for us all.

The Local Hero category was introduced to the Australia Day Awards in 2003. It recognises people who have made a special contribution to their local community. It acknowledges ordinary Australians who give something back to their community, which we all share. There were four finalists in the national Local Hero award this year, and I would like to speak about one of them. Layton Hodgetts lives at New Norfolk, in the Derwent Valley. He is one of the local Tasmanian finalists chosen to come to Canberra for the finals of the Australian Local Hero award for this year, which will be held on Australia Day next year.

Layton has spent his life as a music teacher. He has been teaching children music in the Derwent Valley and in other areas of Tasmania. He took on the role of developing the Derwent Valley Community Band. The band has toured the world, performing in Japan, China and Europe. This year the band won a major award in the European band finals. Layton has been much honoured in Tasmania for achieving that success.

I must confess that Layton is my cousin. We began with Thomas Hodgetts and Harriet Hodgetts, who came to Sydney on the Second Fleet—Thomas as a convict and Harriet as a free woman. Thomas was a blacksmith and, after some years on Norfolk Island, settled in Tasmania at Norfolk Plains. Thomas and Harriet became great citizens of our state. Layton’s grandfather and my grandmother were brother and sister.

Layton built the Derwent Valley Community Band with the help of others in the Derwent Valley, but he has been its driving force. He has now been recognised for his work and has been asked to participate on a world body dealing with community bands. He is serving the state of Tasmania and the nation in this way, as well as giving enormous opportunities to so many young people and to many not-so-young people in southern Tasmania to perform in this great band, the Derwent Valley Community Band. We have the wonderful opportunity of listening to the great community band of the Derwent Valley when any occasion arises for it to perform.

Layton is a great achiever. He has been well recognised as a local hero; he is a local hero. He inspires people in the Derwent Valley and in southern Tasmania through his work. I am very pleased that he has been recognised in this way, and I am sure that many other people will also feel that Layton has served his community in a tremendous way. As a local hero, he inspires many young people to work at their endeavours in the same the way that he does in serving so many in his community. He is a great role model, a great local hero. I certainly wish him well when he comes to Canberra for the national awards early next year.