Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to congratulate the team at the Cancer Council Queensland for staging another great Relay For Life event in Rockhampton on the weekend. Every year big crowds gather at the CQ University oval for a great day and night of entertainment and fun and, more importantly, for fundraising. This year was no exception. There were 114 teams walking laps of the oval all night with numbers far higher than the previous year. The teams varied in size from between 10 and 15 members so the organisers estimate that there were about 1,500 participants. As at lunch time today, they had banked about $189,000 and the final tally is expected to be over $200,000. To put that in perspective, they banked just over $50,000 last year, so this year’s event has been a massive success with the money raised going towards cancer research, support, and prevention activities in the region. I congratulate everyone at the Cancer Council, including Relay for Life committee chair Ros Bedward and the army of volunteers who donated their time to ensure everything ran smoothly. I had the honour of opening the relay. This meant that I was there for the Survivors’ Walk, which is truly inspirational, in which cancer survivors, wearing their purple sashes to mark the journey that they have been through, lead the first lap of the event. It was a great day and the culmination of a lot of hard work by dedicated volunteers with long-lasting benefits for those living with cancer and their families in Central Queensland.