Gibson Electorate Award Recipients

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (15:28): I rise to celebrate a number of citizens in the Gibson community who have recently won awards. First up, Samantha Kerr, who won Citizen of the Year at the City of Marion's Citizen of the Year awards. She took home the top gong, and I must say it was fabulous to see the look of shock on her face when she won. I think she was rightly surprised because it was an incredibly strong field of candidates from our community. It was particularly great to see the recognition of her environmental work commended.

She created the Friends of Sturt River Landcare Group over 14 years ago. This group has now grown to over 700 volunteers and has adopted 10 sites along the Sturt River, planting and maintaining over 120,000 plants. If you have been visiting the Oaklands wetlands over a number of years, you would have seen how absolutely transformed that site has become thanks to the Friends of Sturt River Landcare Group, led by Samantha Kerr's hard work. I would like to commend her for achieving that award.

The City of Holdfast Bay recently awarded a number of awards as well. I am so pleased that one of the Active Citizenship Awards went to Andrea Bodey who is well known at Brighton, particularly for her volunteer work on the Brighton Jetty Sculptures Committee. She has been working on that committee for over 14 of the last 17 years. Hopefully, you have all visited the Brighton Jetty Sculptures over the last couple of weeks. It finished on Sunday night. It draws in such fabulous crowds along the Esplanade at Brighton and there are also tents for the smaller sculptures.

What this event means is that art is accessible to the community. There are almost 300 sculptures lined up along the Esplanade. It gives the community a chance to engage and be challenged by some of the pieces of work. Some of the pieces of work will just bring you pure joy. It gets people having a discussion about art in a way they might not always. Of course, it is a free event, it is along the Esplanade and the people who are there are probably enjoying many of the fabulous amenities at Brighton—obviously the beach and Jetty Road—but they may also be the people who would not necessarily go to a gallery to have a look at sculptures, so it is a very accessible event. I would like to commend all the volunteers who work on that committee.

It finished up on Sunday night and I bet they do not get much of a breather until they are back again preparing for next year's event. It is an enormous piece of work. It not only supports artists across South Australia who enter into the exhibition and enables us to look at the world through a new lens but also gives money back to the artists who sell their work and provides vital funds for the Brighton Surf Life Saving Club that supports both our community and the visitors to Brighton beach. It is fabulous to see Andrea win an Active Citizenship Award.

Also a member of the Brighton Surf Life Saving Club, well known for their volunteer efforts, is Julia Church who also won, with a number of others: Nick Corbett and Brent Bunting, the Community Event of the Year in the Holdfast Bay Australia Day Awards and that is our largest open water swim. Once again, it was happening last weekend, like it seemed everything was down at Brighton. That is a really big event in our community.

I would also like to commend Frank White of the Rotary Club of Somerton Park who leads that group in an awful lot of fundraising. One of the events I particularly like to attend is the Symphony By The Sea. I will make sure I give shout-outs at a later date to others in our community who also won awards and who we are very proud of.