Julian Simmonds (Ryan, Liberal National Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to support the motion of my friend, the member for Longman. It is a cracker motion because it gives us all the opportunity to talk about the valuable contribution that Guides and Scouts provide for our community. Particularly this year, when our young Australians needed the opportunity to continue to keep in touch with their friends, Scouts and Guides provided that opportunity. When you think about it, has their motto of 'be prepared' ever been more relevant than it has been this year in 2020? We all needed to be more prepared and they are the kinds of things they are teaching scouts and guides, those leadership skills and opportunities for life.

My electorate in Ryan is home to eight fantastic scout groups—the Kenmore group, the Moggill group, the Barton group, the Enoggera Scout Group, the Indooroopilly group, Taringa Milton Toowong Group, Grovely Mitchelton and the St John's Wood group at Ashgrove.

I was a very proud Scout at the Moggill Scout Group, where I learned some of those very important skills all of our local kids, leaders and families learn. My dad was a community leader. Like so many other community leaders, I saw him work incredibly hard. Even long after I left that scouting group, he was there supporting local people. For a number of years after I left Scouts, I was the chairman for the Tyakunda district, supporting our uniformed volunteers in Scouts as well, which was a tremendous privilege.

I can't say I've had the same connection with the Girl Guides; I was never a Girl Guide. But we have five Girl Guide groups who do a fantastic job in our local electorate of Ryan. We have Girl Guides at Kenmore district, St Lucia district, Moggill district, Walton Bridge/The Gap district, and at the Bardon district. I really want to pay tribute to scout and girl guide groups in the Ryan electorate. They are essential local community groups that facilitate the personal progression of those young men and women. The youth program is concentrating, for the scouts, particularly on leadership and teamwork in the categories of the outdoors, community involvement, creativity and personal growth.

They of course rely very heavily on fundraising and donations as well as membership fees. That has been very difficult in this year of COVID-19, but they have done tremendously well. The Taringa Milton Toowong Scout Group in particular have their annual mulch drive. Normally I am there with my shovel bagging up mulch myself, but that wasn't possible with COVID-19. It was a much smaller operation this year, but they still did get their normal mulch drive out in some way, shape or fashion. My wife, Maddy, and I were very pleased to be able to be a keen purchaser of the mulch for the garden but also to support that fantastic scout group. Likewise, the Kenmore Scout Group are always out there supporting our local community. They were out there for Clean Up Australia Day on 1 March. Again, it has been hard for them to fundraise, but they've persevered and they recently finished up their fundraising raffle as well.

More than that, we are also proud to support them as a government. One of the examples of where we're reaching out to support the scouts and the guides is St Johns Wood Scout Group through the government's Stronger Communities Program. I've been able to support them as a local MP to undertake some much-needed club refurbishments to their 45-year-old building. If you visit their clubhouse and see what the improvements look like, including a new roof, they have put the Stronger Communities Program grant to very good use and they've driven the money a long way. Not only has it given them a new roof and a building that is fit for purpose for their activities going forward; it will now allow them to put solar panels on the roof, to be installed in the near future, to make the building more environmentally friendly and improve their sustainability.

This group has provided, as all the groups have, a much-needed and important local connection during the COVID-19 pandemic. In fact, the energy and initiative of the St Johns Wood Scout Group during COVID-19 has seen its membership grow and increase, from 88 in April 2019 to 134 today, because they were on Zoom and they were continuing to look out for and support each other. Their group leader, Alan Brake, said, 'Scouts volunteers have implemented additional sanitising to continue to deliver important training under a COVID-safe plan.' Many parents have expressed their appreciation for the pivotal stability that these scouting programs have provided during these difficult times. Scouts contribute to the development of young people in achieving their full physical, intellectual, emotional, social and spiritual potential as individuals. I congratulate all the volunteers, scouts and guides in the Ryan electorate.

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