ANZAC Day

Ms CLANCY (Elder) (15:32): I want to take this opportunity to speak about ANZAC Day. I am sure that, like me, many in this room back in 2020 stood out the front of their homes at 6am on 25 April with a candle, looked down their street and saw others doing the same. For my part, because I am very hip and new, I stood there with 891 playing on my mobile phone, but others had their little radios out; it was just a beautiful experience. But this year was incredible: the nice mild weather and the lack of fear around COVID and reduced numbers at the moment meant that people came out in droves.

On the day before ANZAC Day, I went to a vigil service at the Marion RSL. I was joined by my colleagues the member for Gibson and member for Badcoe, as well as my federal colleague the member for Boothby. We got to see some incredible young people who were giving up their evening to pay tribute to our service people. I am just really proud that our next generation is so focused on others and on community service. It was a lovely service, and then a few of us quickly went home so we could get a few hours of sleep and then got up and headed to our dawn services.

I went to the dawn service at Colonel Light Gardens RSL, which is held just down the road, a very short walk, over at the Broadway Reserve. It was a beautiful service put on by the RSL. I thank them for that and for the organisation of it. I am so grateful to so many people from our community for coming along. I am always so happy to see lots of little ones at an ANZAC Day dawn service. I used to always go to an ANZAC Day dawn service with my parents, originally at the Brighton service but then eventually we headed down the road and went to the Glenelg one regularly. It instilled in me a sense of the importance of the day, and I am really pleased to see that that is happening with the next generation.

Following that service, I went back to the RSL and, after I had laid a beautiful, fully compostable wreath from a lovely local woman who runs a business called Ponder Posy—it was absolutely gorgeous, and I thank the member for Gibson and the offices of the member for Waite and the member for Boothby for also laying those gorgeous wreaths at other parts of our community—I joined them for a quick pre-7am beer.

I then bought an excellent packet of Anzac biscuits made by the RSL community and stuffed a couple of those in as I drove to the Repat for their service, which takes place in the chapel. There I was joined again by the member for Boothby as well as the Minister for Health. I really appreciate his support; he regularly goes to that service each year, which is excellent.

After that, I headed over to my neighbour the member for Gibson and joined her behind the bar at the Marion RSL for a couple of hours. She is excellent at pulling beers; I am okay, but I am very good at the point-of-sale machine, so we are good team. I really appreciate having her as a neighbour, and it is really nice to take the opportunity to give back and be behind the bar and let the other RSL members—because obviously we are members too—really be able to enjoy the day while we did some time behind the bar. So thank you, member for Gibson.

I then popped into the Plympton Glenelg RSL. A number of their members were already in the city for the march, but it was nice to see a few people there. I did not get to go, but I hear there was a lot of excitement still going on with the flipper in charge of the two-up at Colonel Light Gardens RSL, so next ANZAC Day, if it gets to midday and you think you still have it in you, definitely head along to the Colonel Light Gardens RSL. I highly recommend it.