Margaret May (McPherson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Ageing) Share this | Hansard source

No—go the Titans! What will be very exciting for the Titans is that, on 14 March, we will be playing at Skilled Park, our brand-new stadium. There is a very special ceremony happening in April. We actually take on the New Zealand Warriors on the weekend of 25-27 April. At that game we will be stopping and remembering our Anzacs. I think it is fitting that on that weekend we will be planting a lone pine. It will be planted in a place of remembrance that we can use for ceremonies on important days. Of course, most members in this House would know that Lone Pine was the scene of one of the fiercest hand-to-hand battles of World War I and took its name from the single tree left standing after Turkish soldiers had cleared the plateau to make roofs for the trenches. During the withdrawal, a soldier picked up a pine cone, which his aunt then propagated at home in Victoria. Gradually, more trees grown from the original pine were propagated. I want to put on the record today my thanks to Norm Smith. He is one of my Vietnam War veterans. He has been raising a lone pine which will eventually be located outside Skilled Park on that very special April weekend. Thank you, Norm.

Mr Speaker, I note you have just taken the chair. Welcome and congratulations! Last week was Organ Donor Awareness Week, and we celebrated here in the parliament the gift of life. There are in fact 1,875 people who are still waiting for organ transplants in this country. It is very significant that only 198 people signed up last year for organ donation. Those waiting lists keep growing. I would say to all Australians and to the federal government: let us make a massive effort to ensure that Australians are aware of what they have to do to ensure they are on that donor list. In my electorate of McPherson a very special young man received a heart-lung transplant. It turned his life around. Chris Wills now has a life because of the gift of life. I would say to all members in this place:  see what you can do about raising the awareness of organ donation in your electorates.

Security in our communities is also something that really concerns me. My electorate, like many electorates around Australia, has concerns about hooning, graffiti and antisocial behaviour. The advent of CCTV has certainly allowed us to make great steps in ensuring that people in our communities can live safely knowing that those cameras are trained on antisocial people. I say to the incoming Labor government: give some thought to security in our communities and to setting up a fund whereby each of us can identify those areas of concern in our community and ensure that people can live safely and walk our streets knowing that any antisocial behaviour is going to be tracked by CCTV cameras.

In the short time left to me today, I would like to say how proud I am to have been named the shadow minister for ageing. This is an area that has been of particular interest to me over a number of years. I was a member of the health policy committee when I was in government. Now, as shadow minister for ageing, I look forward to working with the Minister for Ageing to ensure that the elderly residents of this country and our older Australians are ageing with dignity. We certainly have some challenges ahead of us. We know that we have an ageing population. We need to ensure that those people have services and infrastructure in place so that they can age with dignity.

I look forward to those challenges. I am very much into active ageing and I will certainly be putting forward some programs to encourage the older Australians in our community to take some care of themselves and take responsibility for some of their lifestyle choices. All of us in the House today could stop and think about the lifestyle choices we make. We know that obesity is on the rise in this country, cancer is on the rise in this country and diabetes is on the rise in this country. Each and every one of us has a part to play in ensuring that older Australians in our community do something about those lifestyle choices. Each and every one of us can set some examples in that way.

Once again, to the people of McPherson: thank you for your support. I thank you for the trust you have put in me in electing me to represent you once again in the federal parliament. To the incoming new members: I wish you every success in your new careers. It is an honour and a privilege to sit in this place. It is something I will never take for granted, and I hope that each and every one of you will get the satisfaction and the rewards that come with this job. It is hard work representing your constituents—we are going to sit that extra day; we all know about our five days a week. We on this side are, of course, committed to doing that, to representing our constituents in this House. It is a rewarding profession, and I think you will gain a lot more from it if you put something into it. I wish all those new members well and I thank the people of McPherson for the trust in me they have shown in re-electing me to the federal parliament.

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