Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to inform the House about two upcoming events that I am proud to host in my electorate. The first is the 2011 Community Spirit and Leadership Awards, to be held on Monday, 5 December, and the second is the 2012 Holt Australia Day Awards. This year marks the 10th anniversary of the Community Spirit and Leadership Awards. It is an amazing community event.

It is very difficult to describe the feeling amongst the community when representatives from up to 55 schools come to celebrate this event, which up to 300 people can attend. For this event, I ask schools to nominate one particular student. That one student embodies what it means to contribute to the overall life of the school community. It says a lot about the quality of the schools involved that they send exceptional students. For example, one of the award recipients last year helped plan and organise a fundraiser for a fellow student with a disability, which raised $13,000 to go towards essential walking equipment. There are many other stories like this, ranging from saving lives to providing bread each day for school breakfasts.

Down my way we get a lot of bad press about our young people. But I like to say, through conducting this particular event, how proud I am of the many kids and students who live in my area. These kids are there making a difference. I think we will probably get about 44 students at this event, nominated from about 44 of the 55 schools that participate. I also like to communicate, on behalf of our community and on behalf of people here, how proud we are of them and how we recognise their achievement. Too often we read in the national media and the local media about what our kids are doing wrong. I think it is important for us as a parliament and as a community to acknowledge what our kids are doing right. I think this ceremony, on behalf of us as a community, acknowledges their contribution.

The other really important awards are the Holt Australia Day Awards. I think it is also important to acknowledge what it means to be an Australian on Australia's national day. What I think that means, in a very understated way, is service to the community—not seeking headlines, not seeking the electronic media, but actually making a real-life difference to people every day. Again, I think it is important for us, on behalf of the community, to acknowledge those contributions, which often go unheralded in the mainstream community.

So those two great events—the Community Spirit and Leadership Awards and the Holt Australia Day Awards—symbolise and celebrate what is best in our community. And that is our young people, through the Community Spirit and Leadership Awards, as well as the general community from all walks of life who make our community a better place to live and work.