Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on this motion, and I thank the member for Parramatta for raising this very important issue, because volunteers are the lifeblood of our communities. It would be remiss of me not to mention the changes that have been made by this government. Earlier we heard the member for Bruce talk about the place based volunteer services and the cuts that are taking place and especially how it will affect regional areas, where services will be replaced with some sort of website with the result that people will be unaware of where to find information and won't even be aware that it's up and running. In place of the current funding arrangements, some peak bodies will be given a year of transitional funding.

I've seen the effect that this will have on some great organisations in my own electorate, especially in migrant services. Those services, which are volunteer based, assist people with interpreters, translations et cetera. The work is all done by volunteers. This will affect them. Another example is the Hutt St Centre in my electorate, which is an incredible organisation that does great work for homeless people, trying to help them transition out of homelessness into a stable residence with the services that go with that. The Hutt St Centre has just had its grants chopped by the state government. They are one of the volunteer groups in my electorate that do an enormous amount of work, and there'll be a big gap in the Adelaide CBD without that funding for the Hutt St Centre. We recently visited the centre with Jason Clare, who is the shadow minister for housing, to see the great work they do. It's such a pity that the state Marshall Liberal government has decided to chop their funding because that will in turn affect their volunteers and all the good work that's being done there.

As I've said, I've got some great volunteer groups in my electorate. The SANFL is the South Australian football association for Aussie Rules football—the highest division in the state. I was on the board of the West Adelaide Football Club for a number of years. You see the volunteers that come in day in day out, assisting with coaching, helping to run the canteen, and taking guernseys home to wash them. It is great work, and you see it everywhere. Another great organisation in my electorate is the Adelaide Day Centre for Homeless Persons which has been set up to assist people in some of the most dire straits. The centre assists people who are living on the streets to transition and come back to some sort of normality. It is run by a magnificent woman, Sister Janet Mead of the Sisters of Mercy. Many of you who are my age may remember Sister Janet Mead. She had a hit song with the Lord's Prayer in the seventies, which went to No. 1 and remained in the top 40 for years. This woman does incredible work. She is our own Mother Theresa in South Australia. They go around and pick people up who are sleeping in parks and doing it rough. They feed them and get them into shelter, and then transition them into some form of housing. I'd just like to give a shout out to Sister Janet Mead and all the other sisters at the Adelaide Day Centre for Homeless Persons. They do great, great work.

Then we come back to sport. We see sporting clubs in every suburb, from soccer to football. There's the Kilburn Football and Cricket Club—a great club that's run by the president, Dale Agius. They have everything from under-10 boys' teams to girls' teams. It's a fantastic community club that also assists some of the kids in the area who, if they didn't have their football teams and the support by Dale and the other members of the committee, perhaps may not have the opportunity to be where they are today. They also have a really good relationship with the Ghan Kilburn City Soccer Club, which uses the premises. Basically, they look after kids under 18 who have come here on their own as refugees. They gather them up every week and have a fantastic competition where they feel like they're part of the community.

This is all done by volunteers: people who are working their guts out, day in day out, for no return but just to give back to the community. I think we have to remind ourselves constantly what it would cost government if we took volunteers out of the community. So big praise to all our volunteers and volunteer groups.

See this speech in context