Janelle Saffin (Page, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to talk about some of the events that I have attended in my electorate of Page over the last few days. The first one I want to talk about is a breakfast. The Uniting Church in Lismore runs four breakfasts a year to raise money to help with the welfare activities of the church. They are really well attended and they involve the elderly in our area, particularly from Caroona and other homes. The one this week was at the Caroona residential care home. It was packed. Breakfast started at eight o’clock and finished a bit after 9.30. The event managed to raise about $1,600 and we had lots of fun catching up with people. It is a tribute to the work that they do. Retired butcher Ray Ingram and his wife, Lola Ingram, organise, with a whole range of people, all the cooking. Everything is done with voluntary labour, of course.

The second event started at lunchtime, and it was called ‘In Good Company’. It was held at Lismore Turf Club and it went from 12 to 12. So many artists donated their time and their musical talents for free. I would like to thank Pip, Horace, Peter and a whole range of other people who donated their time. To pull all that together takes enormous effort. It was a major success. They are hoping that it is the start of something that will be an annual event. The money goes to the mental health support group and to the Lismore Soup Kitchen.

It is getting to the end of the year, and on Friday night I attended the end-of-year ball of the year 12 students at Trinity Catholic College. All the young women and men were dressed up so beautifully. And on Saturday night I attended the end-of-year ball of the year 12 students of Evans River Community School. They started theirs with something different. They had a parade of cars. There were old cars and souped-up cars. It was really interesting. We stood out the front of the RSL and watched all the cars parade by before we went in and had dinner. It was just lovely. It is so positive to see the kids there. A friend of mine was there to see her nephew graduate. She said he was only the second person ever, out of a big family, to get to year 12. It was lovely to hear that and to see what it meant to that family. She is someone I have known for a long time and she was so excited to tell me about that. The effort of going there is absolutely worth it when you hear comments like that from people. It is a shame that I cannot get to all of these events, but it is just not possible in my electorate. But I try to go to the ones that I can get to when I am at home.

The Macadamia Processing Company is the biggest processing company of its kind almost anywhere. It is in Lismore at Alphadale. I launched its project to make an organic processing and marketing service available to macadamia growers. Not all of them want to grow organic but there are some who do and they need advice and support and they need that facility there. That is what I was able to launch. It was very positive. You can see a macadamia on the market now that is sort of in transition, going from the traditional to the organic. That is available now. (Time expired)