Steve Georganas (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to talk about a great football club in my electorate, the Ghan football club—'Ghan' being short for 'Afghan'. It's part of the Afghan community, which set up a football club a few years ago to service the Ghan community and the refugee Afghan community in the suburbs of Kilburn and Blair Athol in the northern parts of my electorate of Adelaide. It is a wonderful, inspirational story where we see how these wonderful people, who came out here as refugees and are now running small businesses in the northern part of my electorate, set up a football team. They share an oval and club rooms with the Kilburn Aussie Rules football team, and they've been assisted by the Kilburn Football and Cricket Club. They bring in kids who perhaps have come here as refugees—youths under 18, including 14- to 16-year-olds—and make them part of the community. They do a lot of outreach work. Certainly Rahim, the president, has done some magnificent work up there, getting kids jobs, getting them connected to their community and assisting them with social services and a whole range of other things.

The Ghan Kilburn football club have now reached a level where they want to go into the super league, and they're going to apply to go into the super league, the top league in the Football Federation South Australia. We wish them all the very best of luck, and I will be there to assist them to get to that stage. They will continue to contribute great things in South Australia.