McLaren Districts Lions Club

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:49): I rise as my matter of interest today to place on the public record my appreciation for the great work that the McLaren Districts Lions Club does for the Fleurieu Peninsula, particularly in the McLaren Vale and McLaren Flat area. This was a special year and I want to put on the record my appreciation as a member of parliament for all the good work that this club does. In the past year it was led by Brian Rayner, who was the president and the club again had a very successful year.

The important thing this year was that the McLaren Districts Lions Club celebrated its silver anniversary earlier in the year. I have been privileged to attend—probably for 20 years of its 25 years—the handovers and other special functions that this Lions International Club has held. For a club that is now growing it augurs well for the future of volunteerism and Lions in the district. It is, in fact, not the only Lions Club in our district that is growing and there is other good work being done up at Willunga. Between the two clubs thousands of dollars a year are raised by, in real terms, a small number of very committed people.

Of those thousands of dollars, money is distributed right across the community supporting the local McLaren Vale hospital, the Youth of the Year Competition, some of the school projects and other general community projects in the district. Some of this money is raised through hard work with raffles and other new initiatives that Lions come up with each year to be able to generate that money. Of course, being in a wine region, they can always get hold of some of the world's best wines to assist in raffle fundraising and the like.

This year we have President Ian Tonkin taking over. He is also going to be a very good president for that club. It is good to see both husbands and wives, as well as individuals, joining the club and increasing the growth of the club. Ian will do a very good job, as I have said, when it comes to the presidency this year. I will expect the club to again raise thousands of dollars to put back into the community.

I think the important thing that government and parliament needs to look at is how we continue to foster and encourage the growth of volunteering in South Australia. It is becoming more and more of a challenge. We still have a better percentage rate of volunteering than most other states in Australia but recent Australian Bureau of Statistics information indicated that there had been quite a significant drop of 3 per cent to 4 per cent in volunteering across Australia, and South Australia dropped about 1.6 per cent.

That can be swung around fairly quickly but we do need to see how we are going to get future generations to join service clubs such as the Lions, how we are going to get them into lots of other sporting clubs and other community clubs and community organisations. We all know that it would cost the state billions of dollars a year if volunteers were not providing a lot of the services that we have become so used in South Australia.

I would encourage young people to look at serving their community, whether it is in sporting, service clubs or other organisations. These days service clubs are getting more and more involved with younger people and there is an opportunity for those young people to become actively involved in the service clubs. With those few words, I commend the work that the McLaren Districts Lions Club is doing. I trust that they will have a successful year again this year; I know they will.

I look forward to seeing continued growth and development of Lions International through the Lions Club of McLaren Districts, and other Lions Clubs, and look forward to seeing some resurgence of all service clubs, particularly on the Fleurieu Peninsula where there is much need for particular projects and opportunities to be delivered. These volunteers know that they cannot rely on the government and councils to deliver all those projects. I commend them for their work.