James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was my pleasure to attend the opening last Friday of the Laurel Avenue Community Garden in Linden Park in my electorate. Before I talk a little bit about that project I want to pay tribute to the Stronger Communities Program, which gives us the opportunity to provide support to so many worthwhile community organisations in our electorates. In my brief time as a member of parliament there have been three or four rounds of this program, with another one coming up. I start by shouting out to all the community organisations in my electorate that the round that closed recently will be another opportunity for us to invest in our local community groups and achieve the kinds of outcomes that I was able to see firsthand at the opening on Friday.

Luckily for me, but unluckily for them, the initially planned grand opening of the community garden had to be postponed. That was lucky for me because at the time of the initial opening I was unfortunately in home isolation for two weeks having returned from the last sittings of parliament. The postponement meant that on Friday I could be there to see the excellent work and the outcome of that hard work in what's been achieved at the community garden. We were able to be supportive through the Burnside Rotary, which put in an application to Stronger Communities to get federal funding to support some infrastructure to go on the site. I'm proud of that but, of course, in no way do I suggest that that was the difference between this project going ahead and it not going ahead, because it's the local community in the area that have come together, identified the opportunity and put their own volunteer hours into transforming that site. It's a suburban block of land that once had a home on it that's now been redeveloped by the community, with the support of the local Burnside council.

Many of us would have these community gardens in our electorates. They do so many worthwhile things for the community, including bringing people together; obviously, allowing them to grow vegetables and other produce for their homes; and doing it together, in that community environment. It's great to see people working together on these things. If someone goes away on holiday for a few weeks, there's always someone else in the team ready to back up and support them and look after their lettuces and carrots or whatever they might be growing while they're away. Indeed, I planted some carrots—which probably died within half an hour of me putting them into the soil, given my history when it comes to growing fruits and vegetables at home. Nonetheless, I was thrilled to be there because it was great to see people coming together in an initiative like this.

I've got five community gardens in my electorate. They're nicely dispersed, geographically, so most people now have, somewhere close to their home, the opportunity to communally grow produce and to eat more healthily because they're eating what they grow. But they're also coming together as a community to work together and support each other. I hope to keep supporting groups like the Laurel Avenue community garden well into the future.