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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, Second Session (54-2)
2020-03-03 Daily Xml
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Hurtle Vale Electorate Community Events

Ms COOK (Hurtle Vale) (15:40): On 8 February, I had the honour of attending a birthday celebration for Auntie Georgina Williams, who was celebrating her 80 years of wisdom and leadership. As everyone in this place will know, Auntie Georgina Williams is a Kaurna elder who provides irreplaceable and impossible to ignore advice around our past and guidance for our future. Our local community is indebted to Auntie Georgina for her life work and I look forward to celebrating more milestones with her in the future.

We thank Auntie Georgina for a number of things, including her significant work at Noarlunga Nunga Community Services Centre at Christies Beach in the 1980s, her role assisting the South Australian Museum staff in interpreting and understanding the song cycle of Tjilbruke, her role as a member of the Tjilbruke forum of councils about Kaurna heritage in relation to the Dreaming track of the song of Tjilbruke in the 1990s, her contribution as a steering committee member of the 'Best practice in working with Aboriginal women and children experiencing family violence' joint project for southern domestic violence and Nunga Mi:Minar Inc., her long-term involvement with Christies Downs Kindergarten, her long-term involvement in Neporendi, and many more really great projects and leadership episodes in South Australia. We thank you, Auntie Georgina.

Last weekend, Sunday 1 March was Clean Up Australia Day's 30th anniversary. I joined the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association in my electorate, which put in a lot of extremely hard work and dedication to our local community on a range of projects. We met them at the Woodcroft Library, which is the starting point for their clean-up mission in Hurtle Vale.

Cleanliness is a major part of the religion Islam, which teaches that cleanliness is half of faith and love of land is part of faith. Because of this, the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association Australia has been participating in this event for the past 15 years and has regularly had some of the highest numbers of volunteers in the country registered to participate. This time, they had 190 members of the community volunteer their time to clean up at various locations in the Adelaide region.

We were fortunate enough to have them volunteer at four different allocated sites across Adelaide. In my electorate of Hurtle Vale, they regularly do the Panalatinga Road area, which runs down the centre of Woodcroft. The association was able to pick up and dispose of 80 huge bags worth of rubbish, a really successful and honourable outcome as a result of all the hard work and effort from the volunteers.

That is not all they are doing this week. The Ahmadiyya team will be participating in and collecting on behalf of the Red Cross this weekend, just another act of virtue and selflessness being performed by an incredible organisation. I thank the Ahmadiyya Muslim Association. I also thank everyone across Australia who participated in Clean Up Australia Day this year on the 30th anniversary and made Australia a cleaner and more beautiful place—if that is possible.

I would also like to touch on a comment that was made last sitting week in the other place by the Hon. Michelle Lensink, the Minister for Human Services. During question time in the other place, the Hon. Ms Lensink stated that I had rung her during the recent bushfire events—I did, in fact, seeking assistance—and said in relation to the member for Mawson, quote, 'Can you please just ring Leon because he is really annoying the rest of us?'

This purported comment is untrue and it is outrageous. I did call the honourable minister and I did ask her to call the member for Mawson because absolutely nobody from the government had contacted him, as the local member of parliament, during the bushfires, which had commenced a few days earlier. It has been convention for an indefinite number of years that the local member is contacted during a period such as this; but nobody, not the Premier, not the emergency services minister nor the human services minister, who is responsible for emergency recovery, contacted this member.

As for other things said during question time in another place regarding the member for Mawson, I think the minister needs to have a serious think about what was said and consider making an apology. It was unnecessary to denigrate the member for Mawson, who is one of the most compassionate and one of the best local members I know.

His dedication to the community of Kangaroo Island during the fires was exceptional. He was on the ground before any member of the government was there. He was getting his hands dirty during recovery and he continues to do so. Many of us would have been there also, but I was having surgery and could not attend. But the members from this side of the place visited as soon as they could to support the member for Mawson. The government needs to reflect on the way this was handled during the recent fires and the comments since.

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