Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to join all who have spoken today to congratulate the Australian Paralympic team on their outstanding efforts in the 2012 Paralympic Games in London. I would like to congratulate them on their dedication to their sport and thank them for being for such great role models, not only to others in our community with disabilities but to our community as a whole. It is through adversity that these athletes have found the courage to be the best they could be. As a result they have brought back 85 medals and an impressive 32 gold. Through their combined efforts, the Australian team finished fifth out of 74 nations on the medal tally, behind the United States.

Locally, I would like to place on the record some of the efforts of two Paralympians from my electorate of Forde. The first is an Indigenous Marsden State High School student, Torita Isaac, and the other is Bill Latham. Torita is only 17 years old and suffers from cerebral palsy and vision impairment. She was part of our Paralympic athletics squad, placing seventh in the 100-metre sprint and also in the 200-metre sprint, and she finished fourth as a member of the four-by-four 100-metre relay team. Torita first tried athletics at school, where she competed in cross-country competitions with her friends. Torita looks up to the famous Olympians like Cathy Freeman and Sally Pearson.

My congratulations go to Torita as a very brave young woman, who, despite severe pain in her legs, pushed herself to compete in the 2012 national championships in Melbourne to qualify for the Olympic team. In that event she ran 100 metres in 14.93 seconds and was set to run the 200 metres when scans uncovered that she had 11 fractures in her legs. To recover from that and to compete so successfully at the Paralympic Games is an amazing story of courage and dedication, and her family and friends must be very proud of her achievements.

Bill Latham lost his leg after an accident with a tractor slasher in 1995 and has recently moved to the Logan area to train at one of our local sports centres, in Cornubia. He hails from a sporting family. His grandfather, Tedda Courtney, was a former rugby league player for Australia and the first coach of the Canterbury Bulldogs. Bill was part of the Australian team that won the wheelchair basketball at the 2010 world championships in Birmingham, England, and was part of the Australian wheelchair basketball team in London. They went on to win the silver medal, missing out on the gold medal by only six points to Canada.

They are just two examples of many others in our Paralympic team, who brought great pride to this country and to this nation. I would just like to pass on my congratulations to the whole team, not only the athletes but all the coaches, the trainers, and the families of all the athletes as well, because there is enormous time, effort and support from the families. I wish them every success for the future and thank them for their outstanding efforts in the Paralympics.

Pr oceedings suspended from 17:42 to 18:30

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