Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

May I compliment the member for Ballarat on her initiative and her contribution to the House. I pay tribute tonight, in what I hope is a similar spirit, to all of the people who have been involved in Pollie Pedal 2009. As many members may know, Pollie Pedal is an annual long-distance bike ride involving some members of this House. It has now been going for 12 years. This year’s Pollie Pedal from Brisbane to Sydney was the longest and it was the hardest, but I would like to think that it was the best ride. It did not raise the most money of all of the Pollie Pedals but it did raise more than $100,000 for a particularly good cause. I think that under the current economic circumstances that is not bad going.

I want to pay tribute first of all to the people involved, then to the sponsors and finally I want to say a few words about the cause. It would not be a Pollie Pedal without the involvement of a number of members of this parliament. In the ride this year it was particularly good to have involved Bernie Ripoll, the member for Oxley, who I think is the best cyclist amongst the parliamentarians; Luke Hartsuyker, the member for Cowper, whose electorate we traversed and who joined us for two days; and Senator Guy Barnett. Guy has type 1 diabetes and the fact that he can ride a bike for 100-odd kilometres a day is a great tribute to his tenacity and also a sign that people with that serious condition can still have a normal and full life. Finally, there was the remarkable Pat Farmer, the member for Macarthur, who is, I suspect, by far the fittest person in this House and arguably the craziest when it comes to doing things that require extraordinary physical determination and endurance. Although I was a little disappointed, I should still pay tribute to the members for Parramatta, Menzies and Farrer, who wanted to be in the Pollie Pedal this year and were in it up until the last minute, when, unfortunately, they were detained by important electoral and other duties.

You cannot organise an event like this without a lot of volunteers. Our ride marshal, Peter Mowle, a former chief engineer of Goulburn City Council and now of Crookwell council, did a terrific job. He was assisted by a team of people who were mostly personal friends of his from Goulburn. There was also Tony Rule and a bunch of veteran cyclists, who not only rode much of the ride but also manned the support cars. Matt Hayden, the brothers Massard—Bill and Kevin—and Dick Millers all certainly deserve a formal tribute to them to be put on the record in this place.

But you cannot justify an event like this without sponsors. Amgen, the principal sponsor for the third year running; the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, our second biggest sponsor for, I think the fourth year running; Hartmann; Norgine; Macquarie Bank; Bruck Textiles; and, in particular, Tourism Training Australia were all very generous and I pay tribute to them and thank them very much indeed.

But you cannot get sponsors to put serious amounts of money forward and you cannot get people to put their bodies on the road, so to speak, for a significant period of time other than for a good cause. This year we were raising money for Indigenous health scholarships at the Poche Centre for Indigenous Health at Sydney University. The Poche Centre would not have come about but for the vision of one of Australia’s greatest philanthropists, Greg Poche. Thank you, Greg, for the work you have done. Thank you for being the absolute antithesis of a greed-is-good capitalist. If we are going to close the gap between Indigenous life expectancy and that of the general community, as all of us in this place wish, we need more Aboriginal doctors, more Aboriginal nurses and more Aboriginal people in the other health professions. That is what the Poche Centre is about and that is what the money that was raised will be going to.

It was great to share the ride for several days with a director of the centre, Associate Professor Ngiare Brown. She is a feisty woman is Ngiare Brown. I suspect that she has not voted Liberal—ever. I am not sure that I would be her favourite politician, but at least we understand each other better as a result of this ride. I know my insights have been deepened and I look forward to doing further rides for this good cause in the future.

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Congratulation to the member and all who went on the Pollie Pedal. I call the member for Canberra.