Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This week is National Reconciliation Week and there are many wonderful community coming-together events all over the country and particularly in my seat of Page. At Yamba market on Sunday I picked up a brochure from Barbara Whale, who was running the Uniting Church stall which was packed with fair trade goods and the brochures, which I have here. The brochure is about National Reconciliation Week and also the Week of Prayer for Reconciliation, and the Uniting Church commemorates and celebrates both during this week.

I will read a few things that are contained in the brochure. It says that this year the theme for National Reconciliation Week is Let's Talk Recognition, which is topical as the start of a public consultation process is underway talking about recognising Indigenous people in the Australian Constitution. The brochure says:

The Uniting Church has taken its own journey to a new Preamble of our Constitution which acknowledges Aboriginal and Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia.

The brochure then goes on about National Reconciliation Week and the Week of Prayer, which coincides with two important dates in Australia's history, and says:

27 May marks the anniversary of the 1967 Referendum in which more than 90 percent of Australians voted to remove clauses from the Australian Constitution which discriminated against Indigenous people.

3 June marks the anniversary of the judgment in the 1992 Mabo case in the High Court …

Then the brochure says:

… recognition isn't just about the referendum, it's much broader, and has a lot to do with reconciliation. During NRW 2012—

the Uniting Church is—

… asking all Australians to think about the value of recognition, what it means to you personally and its importance to the nation.

Another local happening that I was really pleased to see was that the Grafton based Caringa Enterprises received a $20,000 grant to help it with preparedness for the NDIS in terms of being IT-ready. There are only 64 nationwide, but what that says is that Caringa are at the forefront of change and want to be prepared. They are embracing the NDIS. They know that it is needed, that it is long overdue. At the same time, they know that there are some uncertainties about what the future means. But the certainty is that they know that the people they care for, people with disabilities, will get the care that they need.

This $20,000 grant is not a huge grant but it is something that can make a difference. The story was on the front page of our local paper, the Daily Examiner, on Monday, 28 May, titled 'Small step for disabled work: Caringa gets $20,000 for insurance scheme'. The article continued onto pages 2 and 3, including an editorial about it, such is the interest in the NDIS and that Caringa is one of those wonderful services. Part of the editorial said:

The news that Grafton's Caringa Enterprises has received a $20,000 Federal Government grant to ready it for the National Disability Insurance Scheme is both welcome and a reward for a successful enterprise.

It went on to say that the work Caringa does in our community is wonderful work and is:

… a model for how disability services can be delivered.

The editorial also said that there is there is no entitlement to support if you acquired your disability in a range of areas but:

This is about to change with the rollout of the NDIS.

Tim Howard, who wrote the editorial also said:

It's an indication of how overdue this reform is that it has received bi-partisan support in the highly charged federal political sphere.

The third event I want to talk about in the short time I have is a function I attended here at Parliament House organised by Dr Grace Moshi of the Sarah-Grace Sarcoma Foundation. Grace gave an elegant and eloquent talk about an illness, a cancer, that until this event I did not know comprises 20 per cent of all childhood cancers and attracts one per cent of the research funds. I did know, but had forgotten, that it does not respond to chemotherapy, so in my view it is in need of strongly supported research. No wonder it is called 'the forgotten cancer'. Grace is a survivor of sarcoma, and she introduced Ellie Cole, herself a sarcoma survivor. As the flyer said, Ellie is a 'London-bound Paralympic swimmer'. (Time expired)