Alicia Payne (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On Sunday I had the great pleasure of attending a fundraiser with the Zamzam Foundation, an important community organisation based here in my electorate of Canberra. The organisation was founded by Dr Nilofar Ebrahimi, a medical doctor and former member of parliament in Afghanistan, where she was an important advocate for Afghan women. She founded ZamZam in 2019 to support and empower orphans, youth and families in distress and to help young women enrol in universities. When the Taliban took control of Afghanistan in 2021, Dr Ebrahimi left her home country and moved to Canberra, where she has continued her critical work.

ZamZam's work supports people in Afghanistan with their basic needs to live, including providing them with food and supply packs that can feed a family for a month, with winter clothes for orphans and widows, and with cash, which is highly important in Afghanistan. ZamZam also aims to get girls into schools and women into university. That's despite the increasing barriers to female education that have been put up by the Taliban. ZamZam also works hard in Australia to support newly arrived Afghan refugees and help them settle into their new lives here, including helping with driving lessons and swimming lessons and community programs here in Canberra. Sunday's fundraiser gave attendees the opportunity to buy beautiful clothing and jewellery made by women and girls in Afghanistan whose education is supported by ZamZam. Their work is critical and should be commended, and I recommend that people have a look at their website and support them if you can.

Last week, I also had the opportunity to visit UNSW Canberra to hear about their major plans for the future. I am fortunate enough to have five universities in my electorate. UNSW Canberra has a long history associated with the Australian Defence Force College. They recently announced their intention to provide specialised degrees for graduates who want to pursue careers in security and defence industry, two very important industries here in Canberra. They want to become a research institution and are well on their way to doing so.

UNSW Canberra Launch is a collaborative workspace that will bring together industry, government and university to grow innovation and capability in the defence and security sectors. I was lucky to visit the Skykraft workshop and found that they are building satellites just around the corner from my office in the middle of Civic. Their plan is to build these satellites to make air-traffic surveillance and communications easier, specifically over remote regions and the ocean. To support their big changes, UNSW Canberra are planning to build a world-class campus on the old CIT Reid campus. The campus will be developed in close proximity to the defence buildings and will focus on creating graduates that have the skills and knowledge that are key to developing defence capability.