Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak about the great success that was the Gimme Shelter benefit concert, held on Saturday, 20 February, on the beautiful grounds of the Fremantle Arts Centre. For the third year in a row, the people of Fremantle answered the call to support Gimme Shelter in its campaign to ensure that the St Patrick’s Community Support Centre was able to continue providing meals and crisis accommodation to the homeless and vulnerable in Fremantle. Instead of lurking in the shadows of community consideration, homelessness was in the spotlight on this special night. At the concert I told a story I had heard about a homeless man who was shaking a set of keys with a big smile on his face and saying, ‘I’ve got a place.’ But he ended up spending most of his time on the streets anyway because he did not know anyone other than other homeless people, and an empty room is very lonely.

The causes of homelessness are many, but at the heart of it is a lack of connectedness. Belonging somewhere is about belonging with other people—like a family or a local community. That is why Gimme Shelter goes to the very core of how we tackle homelessness. Gimme Shelter is about community action and it is about music as a way of connecting people, of bringing them together. For the third year in a row, there was an impressive line-up of local talented acts. This year Kavian Temperley from Eskimo Joe and Steve Parkin, Blue Shaddy, Matt Gresham, Moana Dreaming and one of our more recent Fremantle residents, Ben Elton, donated their time to ensure an entertaining night for the 1,800-strong audience. For the third year in a row, the perennial Gimme Shelter mainstay, the amazing Starlight Hotel Choir—members of which are mostly clients of St Pat’s—shared its uplifting voice on what was a night celebrating social inclusion and engagement.

A growing list of businesses kindly donated funds or resources: Luke Willet and CCA Productions, the Fremantle Herald, Gateway Printing, the City of Fremantle, Bendigo Bank, Fremantle Ports, Sunset Events, Fremantle Marks, McDonald Pynt Lawyers, Reclink, RTR FM 92.1, XPress Magazine, Drum Media, the Norfolk Hotel, Lawrence Business Management, Red Hot Design, ING Real Estate, Heatseeker, Access Housing, TLS Productions, Rossi Boots and the Poster Girls. Many individuals also volunteered their time and talents to what has truly become a community effort. This heartening display of generosity has meant that all the ticket sale proceeds—$45,000—will end up being spent for their intended purpose: on purchasing food and providing crisis accommodation. Thanks to all these volunteers, especially the tireless Dave Johnson and Phoebe Corke, for making this event happen again. Only by continuing this kind of social engagement, social inclusion and community action will we be able to truly tackle homelessness. The organisers of the concert have formed the not-for-profit Gimme Shelter homeless association. This association will strengthen the efforts in Fremantle while also beginning the work of taking the positive Gimme Shelter concept to other communities seeking to provide shelter in its broadest sense to Australia’s most disadvantaged.