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

I want to talk about things that have been going on in my electorate of Page, particularly over the last month and the last week. There has been lots of activities and wonderful community events that I have been able to participate in.

On Saturday evening I attended the North Coast TAFE awards of excellence. The awards were for students from Ballina, Casino, Lismore and Wollongbar campuses, which are four campuses in my electorate. They were well attended and it was a packed hall at Trinity Sports Centre Auditorium. Just over one per cent of the students were there for the awards night and it is a reflection of the good work, training and education that they are getting. Along with state and other members of parliament in my electorate, I was able to directly participate and hand out some of the awards. It was very pleasing. Students of all ages were there with their families, who were very proud of them, and rightly so. Lots of local businesses, who are sponsors of the awards, were also there.

After that, I attended Beef Week and the crowning of the queen. That was at the Casino RSM Club. Beef Week is a big deal in our area of Casino and it means a lot to the local community. It also means a lot in terms of the economy and the amount of money that comes into the electorate from Beef Week. It is getting bigger and bigger after starting some decades ago. Everybody who works on it is a volunteer. There is a Beef Week committee. They get money sometimes and hire people, but all of the people who are on the committee and do a lot of work are all voluntary. It is a wonderful volunteer effort that everybody in the community can equally share in.

The crowned queen was 18-year-old Margaret Young, who is from a property in Dyraaba, and works for Clayton James solicitors in Casino. It was wonderful to hear her talking and see her confidence and poise. She was so natural it was like she was having a chat, and that is not easy when you are 18 and have to get up and speak in a large public forum for the first time. I could tell by the way she acquitted herself on Saturday night that she is going to be a wonderful ambassador as the Beef Week Queen for Casino and the Richmond Valley area.

I also visited Grafton Base Hospital and was able to see stage 1 redevelopment completed, which incorporated a number of things. The two key areas of redevelopment were the new operating theatres and the new emergency department. It was from money I managed to secure in 2007, and it has been an ongoing project in which everybody has been involved in. We have been able to get really first-class facilities. It was great to tour the hospital with Dr Allan Tyson, who is head of the medical staff council and is an anaesthetist, and has been a real champion of health in the area.

We are also able to have orthopaedic surgery and we have been blessed in attracting an orthopaedic surgeon, Dr Sam Martin, to Grafton Base Hospital. There is more work coming on the redevelopment with stage 2, which will involve another $10 million I also managed to get for a new imaging department and between four and six orthopaedic beds as well as a whole range of other developments.

Speaking of health, there are eight paediatricians from my area, four from Lismore and four from the Tweed, have advised parents of new babies to avoid taking them to crowded indoor spaces, et cetera, and it is about the dangers associated with whooping cough. There has been an epidemic running in New South Wales and our area has less people who get immunised. It is a real issue and, sadly, some young babies have died from whooping cough. The doctors are giving advice on how to best protect the children and adults from whooping cough.