COMMUNITY GROUPS

Dr CLOSE (Port Adelaide) (15:40): Last week I held a forum on community safety bringing together the local police crime prevention leader with residents from around the Le Fevre Peninsula. I did this at the Taperoo Community Centre, and it is about this centre, and about community centres more generally, that I wish to speak today. There is great need in our community. For all the progress, for all the government services, for all the great achievements in health and education that have improved people's lives, there remains great need. I see that in my electorate every day when I go doorknocking, when I spend time with community groups and when I go to the schools.

The answers to that need are manyfold and much of it is squarely the responsibility of government through its various services, but it is also the responsibility of each of us to care for each other, whether that be through a community group or just keeping an eye on how our neighbours are going. Community centres—and Taperoo is an outstanding example—are places where some government money and a whole lot of community-based organisation and basic neighbourliness come together.

The Taperoo Community Centre is run by an extraordinary woman who brings together training and caring to make a place where people feel welcome, can develop the tools they need to be self sufficient, and feel that they can make a difference to others. Whether it is the over 50s getting together for a chat, some activities and a cup of tea, or a single mother looking to return to work and developing her computer skills, or a recovering drug addict learning how to have self-confidence and to empower themselves, all these people and many more are welcomed and cared for.

Holding the forum on community safety last week in the centre was a natural fit because the Taperoo centre, like so many others around the state, is a central point for the local community to connect, to care, and to take responsibility for how their community is developing.