Dave Sharma (Wentworth, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last month I had the chance to put on an apron early on a Thursday morning and go down to Rosetta restaurant in the CBD to help out with the Hope Delivery initiative. The Hope Delivery initiative has been set up by the Rockpool Foundation and Neil Perry, the chief behind the Rockpool Foundation. It's operating out of the Rosetta restaurant in Sydney and the Rockpool Bar & Grill in Melbourne. This initiative is all about utilising restaurants, that are otherwise closed, to prepare meals for those who are doing it tough in this pandemic—hospitality workers, the homeless and people who are out of work. In the mornings at these restaurants, volunteers come in and help prepare meals and then pack and dispatch them. So far, since March, since this initiative has been operating, they've delivered over 110,000 meals across Sydney and Melbourne.

Last week alone, it was 6,790 meals that they delivered. As I stood there cutting up polenta, sprinkling garnish over some beef ribs and helping to spoon out the sticky date pudding, I had alongside me Craig Foster, a former Socceroo, and across from me a woman called Michelle, who used to work in marketing for Qantas but was stood aside because of the pandemic but is instead giving her time and her effort to help those who are doing it tough. So I just wanted to give my congratulations to Neil, and people like him, and his Hope Delivery initiative, which is partnering with other charitable organisations, like OzHarvest, to provide meals and look after those in the community who are doing it tough during this difficult time.