Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tonight I wish to talk about one of the fantastic community organisations in my electorate and about the networking that is going on in my local community—and I touched on this briefly earlier today in my contribution in the Main Committee to the debate on the proposed address-in-reply. We have community organisations that are out there engaging with the business community to provide support and to work cooperatively to create initiatives. One of those organisations in the electorate of Petrie is the Redcliffe Community Association, which has joined with local businesses to establish the RCA Support Crew. Under this initiative, people in the community can join the support crew as a member and get benefits and newsletters about what the community organisation is doing in relation to domestic violence, homelessness and support for our youth. Businesses that have signed up and posted their RCA support crew signs will give discounts to members. What a fantastic initiative: businesses joining with the community, giving back to the community and, in return, being supported by the community. It is just fantastic.

I would like to recognise some of those businesses—the corporate sponsors of the support crew. They are the Belvedere Hotel, and particularly PJ, who is behind this initiative; JT Press; Peninsula Auto Zone; Peninsula Fair Shopping Centre; the Redcliffe & Bayside Herald; St George Kippa-Ring; Village Motors—Shane Newcombe and the Newcombe families have been amazing in their support for the Redcliffe Community Association; Poison Apple Studios; the Peninsula Education Precinct; and WOW Event Management, which is the business of Luke and Kerry Seymour. They do a lot in relation to event management in the local area. They support so many community initiatives. These guys have been behind this initiative and supported it all the way. You can see signs about it everywhere. You get flyers talking about big discounts and what you can do when you shop at these businesses.

Importantly, the initiative is getting the message out into our communities about what these community organisations do. They are not-for-profit organisations. They survive on grants but they need to find a way of getting revenue to keep their initiatives going and to have good staff who are there year-in, year-out, because you need consistency. When you are dealing with domestic violence and homelessness you need the same faces in those roles—experience in our communities. That is what this initiative is all about. The Redcliffe Community Association, in helping to establish this wonderful RCA Support Crew, held the big Shine Ball, which was an amazing event at the Belvedere Hotel. The Redcliffe Community Association has done me the honour of making me an ambassador for the association.

We are a fantastic community—we have a significant proportion of volunteers—but the reality is that we have our challenges and we need to face up to them. This fits very well with what the government is trying to do with social inclusion. The government has now, through the Minister for Social Inclusion and DEEWR, established an online Australian Social Innovation Forum, which is called OnIMPACT, to provide registered participants the opportunity to share information, facilitate networks, participate in discussions and engage in ongoing collaborations between government, social enterprise and the philanthropic and corporate sectors. We see it already happening in our community and now the government has taken the next step of providing this online forum to help bring these groups together. With the latest announcement, of the Social Enterprise Development and Investment Fund, we are taking that still one step further. This is a fantastic announcement. Enterprises that deliver innovative solutions to social challenges, including barriers to employment, are receiving greater support than ever through the Australian government’s initiatives. This project is about bringing partnerships together; bringing the corporate sector together with our community organisations and providing them with the funds to establish social enterprises that provide these important services in our community. I congratulate the Minister for Social Inclusion and the federal Labor government for these initiatives and I especially congratulate the Redcliffe Community Association and those businesses that do so much. They certainly deserve recognition. (Time expired)