National Volunteer Week

Ms HOOD (Adelaide) (15:11): Yesterday, I had the great pleasure of attending the National Volunteer Week parade in Victoria Square along with the Premier, the Minister for Human Services, the member for Davenport, and the Hon. Russell Wortley and the Hon. Tung Ngo in the other place. It was such an incredibly wonderful feeling at Victoria Square. After the event, I put on social media that you really cannot help but smile when you are surrounded by so many volunteers.

The volunteers were rewarded with a free barbecue lunch. I guess if it is a democracy sausage on election day, I think we would have to call this a kindness sausage for all the volunteers who came along. It got me reflecting on the wonderful volunteers in my own community. If you hear the names Rosey, Roger, Fiona, Chris, Margaret and Mary, you would not think that they are names associated with superheroes, but they are the names of superheroes in my community. They are among the almost one million South Australians who volunteer in our great state.

At Prospect Meals on Wheels, where I also have the pleasure of volunteering, you will find Chris, Margaret, Mary, Rosey, Roger, Fiona, Annabel, Genevieve, Krystina, Vanessa, Wayne, Vernon and many, many more cooking in the kitchen and delivering meals across the Prospect community. Each will likely tell you the same thing—that they get more out of volunteering than they give. The reason they volunteer is because of the people, our clients: the clients who greet you with the warmest smiles and kindest hearts, the clients who tell you each and every time you deliver a meal how very grateful they are and also ask you when the mixed grill is next going to be on the menu, the clients who greet you at the door with their little dogs in tow, the clients who are no longer with us but we never forget as we drive down their street.

The theme of this year's National Volunteer Week is Better Together. For me, it highlights how thankful I am not just for all the volunteers in our community but for the reasons that we all volunteer. The people, the places, the causes and even the animals are the reasons we volunteer. They enrich our lives every time we volunteer, so I want to say thank you to all the wonderful volunteers in my community because we really are better together.

This weekend, there will be hundreds, if not thousands, of volunteers who will come out for the federal election. They are volunteers who do this with no expectation of acknowledgment or reward. They do it because they do believe in something bigger than themselves, so regardless of the political persuasion or the party that you will be volunteering for this Saturday, thank you.

Thank you to all the community members—the mums, dads and caregivers—who will be out there cooking up all the democracy sausages or holding a bake sale. It really is so wonderful that we can all come together in the spirit of democracy, which is so incredibly important given the events that are happening overseas today. So, for National Volunteers Week, a huge thankyou to everybody who gives something back in our beautiful community.