Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to be able to speak tonight in the grievance debate. I suppose that the grievance debate offers us members an opportunity to talk about the good things that are happening in our electorates and the great projects that are coming to fruition as well as the many organisations that we visit, see and discuss issues with in and around our electorates.

Tonight I am going to highlight some of the good work that is being done in the Hindmarsh community and some of the fantastic community events being run locally. I will also highlight some of those fantastic infrastructure projects in my electorate that have recently received funding from this Labor government and some that I hope will receive funding soon or in the very near future.

Recently we all attended Anzac Day ceremonies in our electorates. I was very honoured to attend the Anzac Day dawn service at the Henley and Grange RSL. The dawn service attracted around 5,000 people. There were high schools represented on the day, even though it is not a school day. There were students there representing their high schools and laying wreaths from Henley High School and St Michael's College, the two biggest high schools in the Henley and Grange area.

There was a breakfast that followed straight after, and there were many people there who I spoke to and met, but I had to leave fairly quickly to get to another RSL in my electorate, the Hilton RSL, which my wife, Wendy, attended on my behalf to lay the wreath at the dawn service. Certainly, there were quite a few people there. It is a small RSL but a very active RSL and a very active community in and around the Hilton area. They will soon receive new club rooms through a project that the local government—the West Torrens council—is funding. They are going to create a community hub, and within that hub there will be the new RSL for Hilton.

On the Sunday before Anzac Day I also attended a service for the Plympton Glenelg RSL, which is in my electorate. Unfortunately, I could not attend that one on that day, but my staffer, Maureen Maclean, attended that. But there was a service and a light lunch that they held on the Sunday beforehand, which we attended. Again, that is another very active RSL that does great work, with a great number of members who are very community minded. They offer a whole range of services for the veterans—everything from a pension officer right through to personal support for many of their members.

On 26 April, the day straight after Anzac Day, I attended the Henley High School which had a wreath-laying service as well. I was their guest speaker on the day and spoke to them about what Anzac Day meant to me. It was interesting when we were talking about Gallipoli and looking at the sea of faces in the auditorium at Henley High School; many of those soldiers who gave their lives and died in Gallipoli would have been not much older than, if not the same age as, many of the students who were there. I would like to congratulate the Henley High School for putting on an Anzac Day service, even though it was the day after Anzac Day, to get the students to get the feel of Anzac Day and to ensure that it gets passed on to the next generation of Australians.

I also attended the 217th birthday celebrations of Captain Charles Sturt held by the Charles Sturt Memorial Museum Trust Incorporated. The special guest was Parliamentary Secretary Senator Don Farrell, who is a senator for South Australia, and the Hon. Dean Brown AO, who is the patron of the Charles Sturt Memorial Museum in my electorate. The memorial museum is actually the house where Captain Charles Sturt lived in South Australia. It has been restored, and it is an absolutely wonderful historical piece of work. Don Farrell was the guest speaker that day and, as I said, as the Parliamentary Secretary on issues that deal with water, it was interesting to connect the water that we talk about so much today to the Charles Sturt Memorial Museum and to Charles Sturt himself who, as we all know, navigated up the rivers of the Murray-Darling. On 6 May, I attended the 2012 commemoration service for the Battle of the Coral Sea. I represented the Prime Minister and laid a wreath on her behalf. It was a very special day, commemorating the Battle of the Coral Sea, a very important historical event that changed the face of the Second World War.

I have many older constituents in my electorate; it is one of the oldest seats in the country. I was very pleased that on 9 May the Italian Pensioners and Aged of Thebarton and other suburbs had a Mother's Day lunch. Unfortunately I could not attend—I usually attend every year when I am in Adelaide—but my staffer Maureen Maclean went. I would like to congratulate Frank Violi, the secretary and president, who has been running this club for a long, long time, offering support to many older Italian pensioners within the electorate of Hindmarsh. I have a lot to do with them. Frank is constantly calling our office about issues to do with pensions and with Centrelink for many of his members. I am very grateful and lucky that a member of my staff, Frank Barbaro, speaks fluent Italian and helps these constituents as much as he possibly can. I am learning a little bit of Italian but am struggling with it. Hopefully I will be able to converse in the near future. I am trying to learn from Frank in my office as much as I can. I occasionally do have the odd chat with Italian constituents. I might understand bits and pieces of what they are saying, but I am sure they do not understand a word of what I am saying! But I am working on it.

I also attended recently, on 11 May, the Immanuel College commemoration service and the opening of its 'memorial cabinet'. I represented the Minister for Veterans' Affairs. The memorial cabinet is a historical cabinet which commemorates veterans who were former students of Immanuel College who went away to war and never made it back home. It was a very interesting day. We had descendants and relatives of some of those young men that perished in battles in World War II and Gallipoli in attendance. It was really interesting that some of the students at the school are actually descendants of those soldiers who gave their lives for us to have a better world and to enjoy the fruits of today's Australia. It was a great service and a great day.

On the same day, I also attended the Vietnam Veterans Federation South Australian Branch memorial and wreath-laying service to commemorate the battle for fire support bases Coral and Balmoral, one of the toughest battles that Australian soldiers fought in Vietnam.

There are a lot of RSL events and commemoration of battles et cetera, but I think it is very important that we remember these battles and remember the people that gave up their lives for us, whether it was in the Vietnam War, the Korean War, World War II or Gallipoli. Events such as these that I have attended recently—as many of us do in this place; we attend RSLs and commemoration events for veterans—are very important. It is very important to pass that history on to the next generation of Australians.

A couple of weeks ago I attended the dedication mass and formal reopening of the Queen of Angels Church. The Queen of Angels Church is a large Catholic church right on the border of my electorate, on the eastern side of South Road, which makes it in the seat of Adelaide. The western side is my electorate. The eastern side has many industrial sites, so the majority of people that attend the Queen of Angels Church are from my electorate, and I was very honoured to attend the reopening of the Queen of Angels Church. They received funding for the refurbishment of the church under the infrastructure programs, and they have now redone the church and opened it up, and it is absolutely beautiful. The Archbishop of South Australia was there that day and he asked me to convey his thanks to the Minister for Infrastructure and Transport, Minister Albanese, for the funding they received to refurbish the church. The event was attended by approximately 200 to 300 people, and again many members of the Italian community were there with us.

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further grievances, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting. Buonasera!

Federation Chamber adjourned at 21:54.