Justine Elliot (Richmond, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about a fantastic local event that took place in my electorate last Saturday, the Far North Coast Rural Fire Service medals presentation. It was a great event, held at the Ocean Shores Country Club at Ocean Shores. We presented a whole series of different medals to members of the Rural Fire Service. There were two national medals and 26 long-service medals. It was remarkable to present such an array of medals to some wonderful people. In total, there were 27 recipients, who were presented with 28 medals and had a combined total of 601 years of service, which I think is remarkable. Indeed, a number of those recipients had more than 40 years service each. Congratulations to them. I made the point at the time of thanking all those people for their dedication, commitment and service to our local community, and also their families for allowing them to volunteer and keep us all safe. As a former police officer, I was very fortunate to work with many different emergency services personnel. I know how dedicated and committed they are in volunteering their time to keep us all safe. It was a great event. It was wonderful to be able to speak to so many volunteers and recipients of medals, to hear some of their life stories and to hear about how much time and commitment they put into our local community. I say thank you to all of them. We appreciate their great efforts.