Daryl Melham (Banks, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to talk about volunteerism, and I want to commend the government in one respect and, in another respect, seek for it to do some things. I want to commend the government for the Volunteer Grants Program 2008, wherein funding totalling over $21 million was announced and grants of up to $5,000 were made available for each organisation to purchase small equipment items and to assist volunteers by, for example, contributing to reimbursing fuel costs incurred by volunteers in carrying out their voluntary work. In my area, more than 20 organisations received the benefit, and that was right across Australia in every electorate. I know that community groups were very appreciative of that.

I also want to commend the government in relation to its announcements on local community infrastructure, which allocated some $500 million for community infrastructure—for sporting grounds, swimming pools, community centres and town halls. In relation to that, each local government area is allowed one application, and projects must need a Commonwealth contribution of at least $2 million. These are large projects. My concern is that there are a lot of groups falling between the cracks, and I believe government should be attempting to assist them. Small donations—$5,000 for some organisations—are excellent, but I will come to the other organisations.

I agree with the member who spoke earlier. Volunteers play an enormous role in our community. Recently there was an Australian Bureau of Statistics study on social trends. It reported on 9 July 2007, and it is worth quoting a few things from it. It states that, in 2006, 5.2 million people—34 per cent of the Australian population aged 18 years and over—participated in voluntary work. They contributed 713 million hours to the community, doing many different activities in organisations and groups with a diverse range of interests. Overall, 32 per cent of men and 36 per cent of women were volunteers. What is interesting is that, of those 713 million hours, 407 million hours were spent in capital cities and the balance of 306 million was spent in all other parts of the states. That shows that people in regional and rural Australia are obviously putting in hours at a higher rate.

I know that government cannot involve itself in every activity of our lives but, when you have volunteers putting in this level of effort, in my humble opinion it is in the interests of the community to have a partnership approach from government and a level of seeding for all levels of volunteers. For instance, in my area I am Vice-President of Revesby Workers Club. It is a large, licensed club with 34,000 members. We have 36 sporting bodies. Little Athletics has 300 kids participating every Friday night at the University of Western Sydney oval in Milperra. They have had to find the money for lights and then for repairing those lights. The universities are cash-strapped at the moment as a result of the issue of student unionism and sporting facilities. They are not the only ones.

We have taken on board a local rugby league club. We have not had rugby league at the workers club for many years. We did in the sixties, and they were expelled as a result of certain incidents, which I will not go into. We have taken a partnership approach with them. We encouraged them, they came to us, they have money of their own and we have, in effect, agreed to lend them $60,000 at reasonable bank rates and to give them $30,000 so that they can extend their clubhouse. We give the other clubs within the workers club some $200,000 per year in seed funding. That includes the ladies group, disability groups—we have a whole range of groups. That partnership helps them. Without the money they could not survive, but they put in a lot themselves. We have a happier community, a more tightly-knit community, a community that comes together.

It seems to me that what government needs to do, as I said, is to expand the availability of money a little bit. One cricket club in my area, of which I am the patron—I will not name them but they are a first-grade club in the Bankstown area, so it is not hard to work out what they are called—have been renovating and building grandstands. Our club, Bankstown Sports, put in large amounts of money to assist them in the first stage. They want to go to the next stage. They have raised a million dollars. They are looking for half a million dollars so that they can further advance the local facilities on the ground, which will be available to the community, and something beyond that. At the moment there is no program that they can look to for that level of funding, because it is too small for one end of the scale and too large for the other. They have been a tremendous club within our community. We have had Cricket Masala there, we have had shield cricket matches—a whole range of matches—because it is a high-quality ground with high-quality volunteers. The other day I was told that one of the fellows from the athletics club spends eight hours before athletics commences on Friday night at six—virtually the whole day—preparing the ground.

So my grievance is this: although these are difficult economic times, we need to nurture the spirit of volunteering that is in our nation, because in dark times it is the spirit that will prevail. If government can nurture that spirit then as a community we will see our way through the dark times. That is why I believe what the government is doing at the top and bottom end of the spectrum is something that should be commended. It is not partisan; it goes to every council and every electorate in the country and it is on merit. That is the way it should be. You should not have a situation where members of the opposition are excluded from accessing funds for their local community because they are in opposition. That is not the right way to do it. They should compete on merit.

This study on voluntary work in Australia includes, I think, good information to justify what I am suggesting. For instance, on page 4 it says:

The pattern of volunteering varied with life stage. People aged 35-44 years were in the age group most likely to volunteer (43%).

So what you see there is bonding within the families as a result of volunteering. The study goes on to say:

The four most common types of organisation for which people volunteered, namely sport and physical recreation, education and training, community/welfare and religious groups, accounted for three-quarters (74%) of volunteering involvements. The remaining quarter includes a very wide range of advocacy, emergency service, environmental, animal welfare, self-development and other recreational and special interest groups.

I know that we cannot provide for everyone, but in my opinion this is money well spent. As the study says on page 10:

In the course of doing voluntary work, many volunteers incur expenses, such as for telephone calls, travel, and uniforms, or unspecified costs which might include wear and tear on own equipment or income foregone for duration of service. In 2006, 58% of volunteers incurred expenses.

And they are not reimbursed for those expenses.

I suggest that we need to look at this so that we can provide seed funding at every level of the volunteer community. It is in the national interest to do so.

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