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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2018-05-29 Daily Xml
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Newland Electorate

Dr HARVEY (Newland) (15:46): I am very pleased to rise today to talk about the Tea Tree Gully Toy Library that I had the pleasure of visiting the other day, along with the Minister for Education (member for Morialta), the member for King and also the Mayor of the City of Tea Tree Gully. We are very pleased to follow up on our commitment, made at the last election, for $100,000 over the next four years to support this important local community service. I would really like to acknowledge the work that the local toy library performs, particularly the coordinator Lyn Turner, who has worked there for a number of years now and also coordinates quite a large number of volunteers who commit so much time to make sure that local kids have access to important toys, books and all kinds of things.

I can certainly say that, as a parent myself, toy libraries really are very important. My mum spent more than 20 years volunteering in one. Often you never know which toys kids are going to be interested in. You can spend a lot of money on one, and they might only be interested in it for a couple of days and then very quickly move on. Obviously, a toy library is the opportunity to borrow things and then return them, if the kids are interested in them or not. They also have some high-value educational toys that are very difficult to come by, can be quite expensive and also may only be good for a small amount of time. So they really do present a great local service, and I am very pleased, as part of the government, to deliver on our commitment to increase their funding allocation and give them some longer term certainty.

The other day I was also very pleased to have the opportunity to visit, along with the member for King, the Modbury branch of Meals on Wheels. It was great to go along and meet a number of their volunteers as they were preparing, early on, for their delivery for that particular day. There are about 146 different volunteers, I believe, through that branch, and they deliver on average around 115 meals. The Modbury branch is responsible for a lot of the north-eastern suburbs, particularly my electorate in the metropolitan part but also a small number of other suburbs in other electorates.

They also have a recently updated and renovated facility that is looking very good now. I would also like to acknowledge a very important milestone coming up for Meals on Wheels: I believe they are about to very soon—in fact, this week—deliver their 50-millionth meal, which I believe will be delivered by His Excellency the Governor. Meals on Wheels in South Australia deliver about 1.5 million meals each year and it is very exciting and a wonderful achievement for them to be able to reach that important milestone.

Obviously, providing food to people who may find it difficult to obtain through other means is such an important service. They also provide company and someone who regularly checks in to see how people are going. There are many stories where someone was in trouble and had fallen over and the Meals on Wheels volunteer was the person who found them and was able to help them out, so it is a wonderful service. I was very pleased to be able to visit our local branch just recently.

A number of weeks ago, I also was fortunate to attend the Tea Tree Gully District Cricket Club's annual awards night, which was a fantastic night. They have had a very successful season, becoming premiers of division 1. I would like to congratulate team captain, Matt Weaver; coach, Peter Sleep; and president, Peter Cronin, on a wonderful season. I would also like to congratulate the many volunteers and other supporters who make this club such a successful one.

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