Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning to inform the House of the work of an extraordinary young man named Peter Cole. Peter recently led a successful aid mission to Fiji, named Operation Sports Airlift. Operation Sports Airlift is so named because, through the program, sporting equipment is donated to under-resourced schools in Fiji. Peter, like many Australians, is sports mad. At only 23 years of age he is already the vice-president of the Ferny Creek-Olinda Football Club, a club in my electorate of La Trobe—and which I used to play for as a junior.

Peter was inspired to set up Operation Sports Airlift after his first trip to Fiji in 2000. It was then that he encountered what he called the ‘heartbreaking’ sight of Fijian children without sporting equipment instead playing games with sticks, bottles and old shoes. The medal tally at the recent Commonwealth Games tends to bear this out: Australia won 221 medals while Fiji won a solitary bronze medal.

On 31 March this year Peter returned from a remarkable odyssey that took him from his home in Ferntree Gully on the outskirts of Melbourne to the outskirts of Fiji and back. Peter and his friends Stephen Longham, Matthew Dunn and Mark Hawkins were able to deliver over $100,000 worth of sporting goods to 85 schools on Fiji’s main island. These sporting goods—everything from cricket balls to hockey sticks—were generously donated by hundreds of individuals, schools, sports clubs and businesses from around Australia.

A freight company, Transom Marine Services, kindly shipped the container to Fiji free of charge. High-profile sponsors, such as the Essendon Football Club and National Nine News, also contributed. However, the trip was not without its hiccups. When the container arrived, it took seven days of intense negotiations before the team could convince the Fijian government to lift a $15,000 VAT on the equipment. This could have effectively derailed the mission before it began.

Eventually, with the help of the Australian High Commission, the Fijian government saw fit to lift the tax. However, unfortunately it meant that the equipment had to be distributed in just eight days and without the help of Matthew and Mark, who had to return to Australia. So it fell to Peter and Stephen to journey through some of Fiji’s most remote areas to reach 85 schools in just eight frantic days. This involved a lot of driving that often started before dawn and did not finish until the early hours of the morning.

Operation Sports Airlift was met with rapturous receptions. In his official report, Peter observed:

Even though we were treated like movie stars, the real reward for Stephen and me was the smiles on the kids’ faces and the comments from their teachers.

Peter and his friends have done an amazing job. He is a young local in my electorate of La Trobe and I take my hat off to him. He has done a magnificent job. (Time expired)