Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Monday 16 December last year, at the Cranbourne Community Theatre we honoured students who had made a difference to their community at the 18th annual Holt Community Spirit and Leadership Awards. These awards were commissioned by me a number of years ago because I wanted to highlight the achievements of young people in our community. We hear a lot about what's wrong with our young people. I use this ceremony as an opportunity to remind people in our community about what the good kids of our community do. There are so many good kids and they need to be remembered. Our community needs to be reminded that our young people do a lot of good. We honoured 32 students from 30 schools. It was quite an emotional ceremony. The parents were rightly proud of the young people, as I was, as we heard about their achievements.

I will read into the Hansard the names of the students who were honoured at this ceremony: Ben Myors, Jesel Johnson, Ershad Alimi, Tayleah Murphy, Aania Rehman, Malia Renee de Thierry, Nelith Liyanage, Leigh Gibson, Belle Charles, Sarah New, Bowen Lu, Manmeet Kaur Singh, Juhee Kim, Grace Jemison, Amy Pisotsky, Devmika Bogahapitya, Nyachristmas Kuach, Tycen Heeger, Joshua Appelman, Bernice Ramos, Sophie Jackson, Montanna McGuinness, Anthony Krotwaar, Guneet Kaur, Ronit Verma, Brendon Quintal, Khushi Thakar, Nethra Saravanan, Sara Tong, Megan Rojales and Lachlan Derix.

Honourable Member:

An honourable member interjecting—

Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

A good crew. Thank you very much. There were 32 outstanding young people. There's one in particular that I want to mention briefly: Ben Myors. He received an award. He was nominated by Alkira Secondary College in particular for the work that he did in the establishment of the Chloe Clash, which was a fundraising event for the Royal Children's Hospital.

In 2012, Ben's sister, Chloe, was taken away from him—the family's daughter was taken away—when she suffered a brain aneurysm. Ben wanted to give something back to the community by fundraising, so he devised an annual event called the Chloe Clash. It's a 24-hour non-stop marathon sports game—part netball, part basketball—integrating Ben's favourite sport with that of his sister's, Chloe. He has raised over $22,000 for the Royal Children's Hospital over two years. Ben is just one example of what our kids do. There's so much negativity in social media about our young children. We've got to remember what's good about what they do. And that's what I was trying to do on 16 December last year.