Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As members will be aware, the end of May marked the end of the application period for the Centenary of Anzac Local Grants Program. I wanted to take this opportunity to thank the wonderful Canberrans who formed the committee for the electorate of Canberra and who have spent much of the past six months working on allocating the grants for our electorate. The members of my electorate committee were Kevin Gill, who is president of the Vietnam Veterans Association of the ACT; Elaine Pennock, who is president of the ACT Branch War Widows Guild of Australia; Jim Gilchrist, president of the Woden Valley RSL subbranch, which is a very large and active subbranch; Sub Lieutenant Lorne Thurgar, executive officer at Training Ship Canberra; Leading Seaman Zoe Rule, from TS Canberra; and Cadet Petty Officer Alexander Thurgar, also from TS Canberra.

In forming my electorate committee, I wanted to ensure that Canberrans of all ages were represented and so I would like to say a particular thank you to Alex and Zoe from TS Canberra who are in year 12 and year 11 respectively. They were able to provide a youth perspective about what kinds of projects would interest school-aged Canberrans and about how they wanted to commemorate the centenary here in Canberra. Alex and Zoe made an outstanding contribution, and it was wonderful to have the youth of Canberra strongly represented on this committee. I would like to thank the committee very much for its work and also commend Sub Lieutenant Thurgar for growing TS Canberra so that it is now one of the biggest and most active Navy cadet units in the country.