Luke Howarth (Petrie, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk a little about the Clean Up Australia Day that happened over the weekend. I had the chance to participate along with many other people from the Petrie electorate in Clean Up Australia Day.

I want to particularly acknowledge the year 8 and 9 honours students from North Lakes State College whom I joined on Friday, 27 February 2015 to clean up around their school. They did a wonderful job. I wish to acknowledge Miss Elyse Lucas and Miss Lisa Matthews who organised this event. I found the students very engaging and caring for their environment in a great way. It was fantastic to see them enjoying themselves.

Yesterday on Sunday, 1 March Clean Up Australia Day happened right across the nation, and the North Lakes Lions Club put on a local event organised by Debby Burgess. I also had the chance to join the club help clean up the lakes around North Lakes. They joined thousands of people around the country—last year there was something like 570,000 people at over 7,000 sites removing over 15,500 tonnes of rubbish that otherwise would have gone into our creeks, our rivers, our dams and the environment. I want to thank every one of them for what they did.

The coalition government is also getting on with cleaning up and preserving the environment though our Green Army projects. I am pleased to say that two projects will start in the Petrie electorate in the next few weeks.