Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In 2010, young Sam White was living with his parents, Jim and Andrea, in Whyalla. Jim was a senior manager at Arrium. Sadly, he has passed since. But Sam had a motorbike accident at Port Lowly, about 15 kilometres out of the city and, sadly, he was rendered a paraplegic as a result of that accident. Whyalla was shocked, and rallied around a popular young man and his family.

But you can't keep a good man down and, after a shift to Adelaide, Sam, then confined to a wheelchair, started playing social night-time basketball. It turns out he was okay—before long he was playing for the Adelaide Thunder. With a bit of encouragement he decided to relocate to the US, where he studied and played wheelchair basketball for the University of Wisconsin. They went back to back in 2014-15, and Sam made his way onto the Rollers team, which is the Australian wheelchair basketball team—our national team—as it went to the Rio Olympics. Two years later he was part of our team at the world championships and tomorrow he will take the boards for the Rollers at the Tokyo Paralympics. Go Sam!

I often say the challenge of life is to focus on what we can do rather than what we cannot do. That's certainly Sam's attitude. He is a great example of what you can do to turn your life around and make the most of it—(Time expired)

See this speech in context