Peta Murphy (Dunkley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In this World Down Syndrome Awareness Week, I want to tell the House about Darcy and his mother Julie Fisher. Darcy is a teenager at Frankston Special Development School. He loves playing basketball. He was supposed to be going to the Special Olympics in Tasmania at the end of the year for basketball, but, sadly, COVID meant that that couldn't happen. He was devastated, as was his mother, his father and his siblings.

Julie wrote a book last year called The unexpected journey: Embracing the beauty of disability. In it she said that she wrote her book because she wants to give everyone a chance. People face challenges in life every day, not just people with disabilities—some hard and some not so hard. It's important to be kind. I can't think of a kinder gesture than that of Wayne from the Frankston & District Basketball Association and all of the Frankston Blues who play in NBL1. When they heard about Darcy and how sad he was to not go to play basketball, they invited him to train them for the night. He went there and played with the players and talked to the coaches. As his mother said to me in an email, 'He loved it soooooooo much.' That was 'so' with eight O's.