Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like the member for Hindmarsh before me, I'd like to pay tribute today to the volunteers in my local community. The mayor of Logan, Darren Power, said at the quite remarkable award ceremony that he hosted on 15 May this year, 'In our community, giving and looking out for each other is second nature.' For the 34,000 volunteers in the city of Logan that is especially true. If you think about the year that we have been through, all of us together and all of our local communities, the work of our volunteers, I think, which is always important, always crucial, as you know in your community next door, Deputy Speaker Vasta, was especially important as we did what we could to back each other in, to look out for each other and to look after each other to get through the worst part of the pandemic.

What we do each year in Logan city is put on a breakfast—when I say 'we', I mean the Logan City Council—with the mayor as host. It's a massive awards breakfast on the Saturday morning around Volunteer Week. This one was extra special. We had the acknowledgment of country by my friend Aunty Robyn. We had Steve Sparrow providing the music. We had MC Terry Hanson, who's always good for a laugh. We had Denise Drysdale, who's known to many members in this place, providing the gags. She even got the mayor on his feet to sing a duet, which I have not seen before and he tells me we will not see again! So it was a really enjoyable morning. More than that, it was a really special opportunity not just to recognise the 380 different volunteers that had been nominated for the various awards but to acknowledge every single one of those 34,000 volunteers who do so much to keep our community going and have done so, in many of their cases, for a really long time now. Moving around the tables at the breakfast, there were so many familiar faces, so many people to whom we owe a great deal of thanks, not just for the last year but, in many cases, for some decades.

It was really good to see the Davida Steele Memorial Award presented again this year. It was presented by her daughter, Donna Rafton. It was especially pleasing to see it go to the Muslim Charitable Foundation, friends of mine, who have done and continue to do a remarkable thing for our community, so I congratulate the MCF. The Frank Lenz Memorial Award for Volunteer of the Year went to Peter Harrison-Kyte. The Spirit of Logan Award went to Melanie McKenzie. To everyone nominated, to every one of those 34,000 volunteers, to the team at Logan City Council, to all the councillors and state members who were there on the day, and the mayor in particular, well done and thanks.