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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-07-06 Daily Xml
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Light Electorate

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:43): Today, I would like to bring to the attention of the house a couple of matters relating to my electorate of Light. First of all, this is the season of handover dinners for service clubs. I am sure many members in this chamber would be attending a number of service clubs' handover dinners, and it is important to highlight the work that service clubs do. Even in an increasingly difficult climate, when it comes to volunteering some service clubs are doing really well and some are not doing so well.

In my electorate, we have a strong volunteer ethic and we have very strong service clubs. I have been fortunate enough over the last few weeks to attend the Rotary Club of Gawler Light in Gawler, the Rotary Club of Gawler (we have two Rotary clubs in Gawler), and I am soon attending the Apex handover dinner. Sadly, I missed my own Lions Club handover dinner because of community events; I had to chair a community meeting. Sometimes, the work these organisations and service clubs do in our community is not known.

When you go to the handover dinners and the presidents present their reports of activities, it is incredible the depth and breadth of programs and projects that our service clubs get involved in. For example, they get involved in a whole range of projects like looking after parks and gardens. My own Lions Club looks after Gawler Railway Station. They do quite a bit of work in maintaining the station. They also use the railway station car park for a weekly market, which is a major fundraiser for them, and they put those funds into various local projects. They actually support other charities in the community and also make contributions to the Lions Foundation. They have been very proactive in dealing with a whole range of international projects through their donations.

Some of the service clubs are involved in supporting and funding breakfast programs at our local schools. They get involved with student exchange programs and also encourage cultural exchange programs with like clubs and young people from other countries. I would just like to pay tribute to the work of our service clubs.

This weekend, the Barossa Light and Gawler Football Association are holding their Indigenous round of football. This is to mark the contribution that Indigenous players make to the game of football, to Aussie Rules on this occasion, to highlight that the game is for everybody and to bring out the really strong message that there is no place for racism in sport. In fact, there is no place for racism in society, particularly in sport. I commend the football association for holding this round to highlight the challenges still faced by First Nations people in our country and to highlight the contribution they are making.

A lot of these local clubs in my area—for example, the Willaston Football Club, of which I am member, the Gawler Central Football Club and the South Gawler Football Club—do a great job in fundraising and also promoting women's football. All the clubs have a women's football team. They are important in promoting local sport. Under the new leadership of Aldo Pasin for Willaston, Damian Brook at Gawler Central and Daniel Kiryk at South Gawler, these younger men actually bring with them new ideas and new ways of managing the clubs, so the clubs are much more sensitive to where football is in society today, and particularly to their behaviour. I commend the work undertaken by that group of volunteers in our community.

With the time I have remaining, I would like to highlight the volunteer work undertaken by a particular group in my community because today they celebrate their 20th birthday, and that is the Gawler road safety committee. This committee were established 20 years ago, and their role was to help educate and promote road safety in our community. They do that by having stalls at various community events where they promote the road safety message.

One of the very successful programs they have run is a speed trailer, which highlights people's speed in the streets and encourages people to drive at the correct speed. They also have a bin sticker program, where they actually have stickers with speed limits in particular streets. These volunteers not only do this but they actually spend a lot of time fundraising to do these activities. They are another group of volunteers I would like to commend, and I support the work of the Gawler road safety committee.

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