Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It gives me, truly and sincerely, great pleasure to talk about a terrific organisation that is now in its 10th season in my area, the Midnight Basketball Mt Druitt Tournament. The tournament is run from the Emerton Leisure Centre, although it has been run in different places over the period of those 10 seasons. It provides valuable work in helping to skill up our local young people, and it is a terrific model of community engagement. For young kids who might spend their time doing nothing on a Friday night and potentially getting themselves into strife, it provides a basketball tournament but also the ability to learn life skills through classes that are done through the tournament. It takes a lot to get this done. The terrific Vanessa Simmonds is the chair of the volunteer committee that runs the tournament. Lindsay Trevitt—who has actually taken out Chifley's Outstanding Volunteer of the Year award—is invaluable in helping out in any way he can, and organises the logistics and the buses to pick up the kids. As well as Vanessa and Lindsay, a number of volunteers have been involved over the 10 tournaments, including Nicole Farrant and Daniel Cooper. Vanessa has said that she sees the benefit of the relationships and connections that are built during the tournaments, as the kids continue through their programs and other pathways afterwards. And I have seen that myself: I have seen the change in those young people as they have gone through, and I have seen the confidence that has grown in them, and their ability to engage in a complete different way. It is a terrific way in which this program is making an impact. This year there are 100 participants. I remember going to the first one, and they were lucky to get 20—and now they have 100. All up, there are 45 volunteers who help out in some way, shape or form.

The Lethbridge Park Community Kitchen have kindly donated their time to cook up a feast every night that the tournament is held, and they feed all of the participants. Midnight Basketball Mt Druitt is also supported by Blacktown City Council, Red Cross, New South Wales Health, New South Wales Police and Emerton Youth Recreation Centre. I am looking forward to seeing the new champion who is going to be crowned at the grand final next Friday at the Emerton Leisure Centre, with presentations occurring at 10.40 am. I say to all: you are terrific community ambassadors and role models, and I think our community owes you a debt of gratitude for what you are doing in helping young people to get on track and get better lives.

I do not know about you, Deputy Speaker, but I love a great David and Goliath story. I love the story of an underdog that is up against big odds and is considered to have no chance of being able to win or influence an outcome. In my area, we have some great community groups that are doing just that—rallying against some of the harsh impacts of what has been proposed with Badgerys Creek Airport—which is now being called Western Sydney Airport, to dilute or dodge the impact of a bad name; a name which has been reviled in our area for quite some time. There are some great groups doing some great things there: the No Badgerys Creek Airport group and the Residents Against Western Sydney Airport. These guys do not have the ability to run swanky conferences in the middle of Sydney raising a quarter of a million dollars, like the Western Sydney Leadership Dialogue—run out of Balmain—did this week. These people basically rely on people power. They go to the festivals, they go to the fetes, they talk in neighbourhoods, they organise protest meetings—some of which have attracted nearly 800 people in the Blue Mountains. These people do it tough. They do it while people from the east of the city are sneering down their noses at them. These people are making sure that community interests are actually and genuinely taken into account.

When all these big interests are collected to push this airport from the east of the city, delivering the infrastructure that the east thinks the west needs rather than what the west deserves, Barker, as they are known, are doing a great thing in speaking up for people. In what is considered a tough task—and from time to time they think that the odds will overwhelm them—I want them to know in this parliament they have a number of people backing them. I know the member for Macquarie thinks the world of the work that they are doing as does Senator Doug Cameron. I want them to know that their efforts are being noticed, not being overlooked, and that I wish them all the best in making sure that the community gets a fair deal and gets the infrastructure that it actually needs rather than a bunch of eastern Sydney toffs putting some infrastructure proposition in the west against our will.