Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This year the Maronite community of Australia will be celebrating their 50-year golden jubilee. In the 50 years since the establishment of the Maronite Eparchy of Australia in 1973, the Maronite community has continued to flourish, establishing schools, aged-care facilities and, importantly, their network of both churches and committee organisations right across the nation.

There are numerous Maronite organisations in my own local area that form essential building blocks of the local community.

Within these, I count Maronites on a Mission; the Monastery of Saint Charbel in Punchbowl, which includes both a primary and secondary college; and Saint Charbel's Care Centre, which has most recently benefited from $2 million in investment under the Albanese Labor government. But the very inception of that aged care centre was due to funding that was committed back in 2013, when we were last in government.

When I reflect on the contribution made by these organisations and by the Maronite community across Australia, I'm reminded of unyielding generosity—not merely to fellow Maronites but to the community more broadly. I want to congratulate all the Maronites, both at the local area and around the country, on the 50-year anniversary. I particularly want to congratulate my friend Sayedna, His Excellency Bishop Antoine-Charbel Tarabay, for his tireless leadership; and His Beatitude and Eminence, Mar Bechara Boutros, Cardinal RAI, Patriarch of Antioch and All the East, who will travel to Australia next month to celebrate the milestone.

While I'm on my feet, I also want to acknowledge a great announcement we had from my local area just the other week. On Tuesday 18 July I was joined by the Minister for the Environment and Water; the member for Canterbury, Sophie Cotsis; representatives from local councils; the Cooks River Alliance; and the Mudcrabs, and we all got together on the banks of the Cooks River, a river that in the last 10 years has been ranked among the worst-polluted waterways in Australia. That's set to change. It's been a project of mine to turn what was treated as a stormwater drain back into a beautiful urban river. We did some of that when we were last in government, but very little happened in the intervening 10 years. In partnership with the Cooks River Alliance and Indigenous rangers, we will now be using $10 million of government funds to restore and revitalise the river.

In Australia, we often refer to the leafy suburbs when we mean the wealthy suburbs. Whether or not you have access to good-quality local environment shouldn't be based on the bank accounts of those in the local area; it should be something that, no matter where you live, you have a pathway to be involved with nature. The rehabilitation of the Cooks River will make a massive difference to that for my part of Sydney.