Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in this place this afternoon to talk about an exceptional group of people and organisations that I honoured on Australia Day as part of the 16th annual Holt Australia Day Awards 2020. On that day, we recognised 28 outstanding individuals, presented two posthumous awards and honoured seven local organisations for their contributions to the community at the Hampton Park Day of Nations celebrations. I want to honour the people who received awards by reading their names into the parliament record and the Hansard: the Senior Venerable Thich Giac Tinh; Aanchal Meshram, Andrew Gai, Bassir Qadiri, the Casey Multi-Faith Network, Colin Butler, the Cranbourne Stroke Support Group, Dalvinder Garcha, Deborah Chamberlain, Emmanuel Mabil Majok, Fiona and Colin Crane, Gail Kavanagh, Immanuel Marthoma Church in Melbourne, Jasbir Singh Suropada, Jodie Hollis, Kaci Hillis, Kaye Coram, Kelly Warren, Kenneth Drane, Kim Warlond, Dr Leon Shapero, Lindsay Mitchell, Lisa Norman, Louise Berkelmans, Michael Hall, Michael Johnson, Senior Sergeant Niall Waring, Dr Pat Macwhirter, Rebecca Hyland, Rex Genoni, Sally Francis OAM, Sikh Volunteers Australia, Simon Walliker, the Zimcarrum Soccer Club, the Gethsemane Church Charity and the Cranbourne Regional Uniting Church Food Truck. There are a lot of names there.

The names that I've just read into the parliamentary record are the names of people and organisations that didn't seek the limelight for the work that they did, but what they did do, in their own quiet, quintessentially Australian way, worked to make the community a better place. I've read these people's and organisations' names into the parliamentary record, and it's a pity that we didn't have the time to go through exactly what each of these people and organisations did to make their place and community a better community, particularly given what we have been confronting. We live in an era when we've confronted the devastating bushfires that our country's experienced. We're dealing now with the onset of the coronavirus, which I think will be a pandemic. We've had the hailstorms here in Canberra. We've literally faced fire, flood and now this virus. We need to emphasise the good in our community to keep the public spirit and the community resilience up. Honouring these people in this place in this way, I think, does that. Congratulations to all those who were honoured on Australia Day.

See this speech in context