Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I say to the member for McMillan that I commend his remarks in this place and that I support them. I would like to speak about the Holt Australia Day ceremony in Doveton this year, where I had the honour of being able to present 17 local volunteers, through the Holt Australia Day awards, with recognition of their selfless efforts in making the community a better place to be and to live.

These awards recognise and honour those who serve the community in often unrecognised and unheralded ways. They provide what I call the social glue that holds our community together. They often do that in a very quiet and selfless way; it is a way that eschews self-promotion. I think that particularly on Australia Day, a day that recognises that quintessential character of the Australian people, we should recognise that as a community, and that is why I conduct the Holt Australia Day awards.

In the time available to me, I would like to mention those who were the recipients of these awards and honour them again in this place today. Posthumously, we honoured Sister Ann Halpin, from Wellsprings for Women in Dandenong, an organisation that helps marginalised women in the local community. We honoured Aida Nyhuis, who is the coordinator of the Berwick Opportunity Shop; Jean Westerman, who has been involved in the community of Doveton for over 35 years, particularly in the local opportunity shop and at weekly luncheons at the Doveton Baptist Church; there is collectively a group called Salvo Access—volunteers who work at the Cranbourne Salvation Army opportunity shop and who devote a great deal of time to helping needy families in the area; Michelle Sanders, who is responsible for the annual single parents dinner in Berwick—an excellent way of reaching out to many families who really need it; Leslie Vincent Hughes, who puts in countless hours to raise funds for the RSL Anzac Day and Remembrance Day appeals; Victor Allan Dennis, who is actively involved in many sporting and community groups having been a member of the Lions Club of Cranbourne since 1972 and of the Cranbourne Cricket Club; Tom and Maureen Miles, who have been chaplaincy visitors at the Casey Hospital since it opened five years ago; Betty Merrett, who was an inaugural member of the Doveton-Hallam CFA Ladies Auxiliary 1960 and will celebrate 50 years of service in June this year; Irene Prater, who is deeply involved in palliative care in the community; Stephanie Polykronakis, who at 10 years of age has been inspiring her peers through her work; and Trevor Scott, Master Ru Sun Shih, Door Mohammad Aschna, Dale Sheppard, Adolfo Crespin and Paddy Hamill.

If you listen to the stories about the contributions these people have made to the community they do, in my view, absolutely summarise what it means to be an Australian. Our society could not function without these people. They often devote a number of hours selflessly, at great personal expense to themselves, but what they are doing is making our community a better place to live and a better place to be. They are great inspiring examples for many of our young people who are coming through the community.