Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker Scott, congratulations on your appointment. That was terrific.

Rohan Church, Anna Norris, James Correy and Alexandra Frain are members of the RESULTS Burnie committee, which looks to overseas aid and supporting people overseas. We had an earlier meeting where I suggested that they might like to run an afternoon tea to better inform some of their colleagues involved in the Rural Clinical School in Burnie and the hospital there about RESULTS Burnie and some of the causes that they are trying to support, and also to advocate more for governments and all political persuasions to maintain our commitments to overseas aid and, indeed, lift them.

They had a morning tea and I was happy to contribute towards that. They had something like 35 of the staff attending the morning tea, and I have lots of photos here of the 30-odd that attended. In fact, there are probably about 50—some of them have pictures on the back as well, which I did not manage to see before I came up—so I do congratulate them. On it, it names the person and says, 'I support 0.5 per cent by 2015 in terms of overseas aid; let's end extreme poverty altogether'. I congratulate Rohan and his team on that exercise. I know they are very passionate about it, and no doubt during their rounds at the hospital and their clinical work they remind patients, too, of the need to tackle poverty throughout the world.

Not only that, but Rohan and his team went to Smithton High School some time after that and talked to grade 10s and others about the importance of supporting the fight against poverty worldwide and in Australia. They have sent me original letters from the students which I intend to reply to. An example is from Phoebe Littlejohn from 36 Goldie Street, Smithton:

Dear Sid Sidebottom,

I am a 16 year old girl who attends Smithton High School, today we learnt about poverty and how diarrhoea is the biggest killer of children under the age of 5 years of age, also we learnt about how our government only just give 0.35% of our budget to help end extreme poverty.

I think we could help end extreme poverty by increasing how much we give to countries, to increase it like 0.7% to help out them.

Thanks muchly, Phoebe Littlejohn

This is reflected in many more of these letters. Just to reiterate, the letter talks about 'how diarrhoea is the biggest killer of children under the age of five years of age' and how we can increase our budget and help end poverty and improve the health of others through the world. (Time expired)