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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2024-10-17 Daily Xml
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Waite Electorate

Ms HUTCHESSON (Waite) (15:24): What an exciting and busy time it has been in my community in Waite. We have had an amazing couple of weeks of lots of really great things, and I want to touch on a couple of those. To start with, on 22 September, the Lions Bargain Centre opened their newly extended shed. This has been a long time coming. They now have a 40 per cent increase in floor space. If you have ever been to the Lions Bargain Centre, you will know that they have lots of stuff.

The bargain centre came about after a pretty horrid time in Tasmania when they had had bushfires, flooding and a lot of disaster. Our community in Blackwood brought together a whole lot of donations for them, but there was a lot left over, so the Lions got together and started finding a way to sell some of these extra donations. From that, the bargain centre was born. It has been such an important part of our community. I have been going there since I was very little with my dad, so I was very pleased to be able to attend this opening of the extended shed.

The work that was done absolutely doubled the funding that they received from the council and also from our federal member, Louise Miller-Frost. Through the work that they did through labour, through project management costs and other savings from suppliers, the Lions were happy to help, and the suppliers were happy to give donations either at cost or below cost to help the Lions get where they needed. It is our community's largest charity. Each Saturday morning, the shed sees items being picked up from Upper Sturt, where I am, all the way down to Glenelg, from Urrbrae to Reynella.

It takes 40 people to run the shed every Saturday morning, with over 300 sales and some 1,000 customers, and less than half of these 40 workers are actually Lions: they are also 400 members of the public from 30 community groups that volunteer throughout the year. Brenton Ragless joined us as MC, opening the shed. He is such a fabulous local person. He grew up in Eden Hills, spending much of his time at the fire station and even as a CFS volunteer. He is one of our local legends. So a huge congratulations to the Lions Club, the bargain centre and all of its volunteers. It is an institution in our community.

On 6 October, we celebrated the refurbishment of the Belair Railway Station heritage shelter. It has been such a long time in coming, and I was so glad that we were finally able to celebrate. The shelter itself was built way back in 1883, which makes it 141 years old. That is 141 years of standing on the platform, bearing the brunt of the weather. It had most definitely seen better days, with cladding eaten away by rot. I was really pleased to advocate for the shelter to be restored after many discussions with the fabulous Friends of Belair Station, who work so hard to maintain the area, to do all of the gardens and make sure it just looks fabulous.

I was really pleased when the minister let me know that we were going to be able to get the restoration done. Thanks to Keolis Downer also for chipping in. The shelter was assessed by heritage architects, and after months of planning and preparing, the restoration came to life thanks to G-Force constructions, who also helped us at the Waite gatehouse as well. They did a fabulous job. It looks wonderful. We had a huge celebration with cake really generously donated from Banana Boogie. Our Lions Club came and did the barbecue.

We had the Blackwood Ukulele Group there. Bracegirdle's brought their little kombivan with their coffee. The Blackwood Bike Shed was there to help some of the mountain bike kids who came along with their bikes. Young Daphne Lim, who I have worked with to create T-shirts to celebrate our trails, was also there. It was a fabulous day. We also made souvenir posters that are now collector's items. I think it is absolutely wonderful, and I encourage anybody who has not had a chance to hop on the train and go up to Belair and have a look.

We also opened the Blackwood Library of Things on the weekend. The Blackwood Library of Things is a new place where you can go to borrow equipment, borrow cooking equipment, borrow tools, and then you give it back so you do not have to buy it yourself and put it on the shelf. Ian and Robyn have done such a fabulous job of bringing this together from a little conversation in my office to now being able to open it. It was absolutely fantastic.

On Sunday we had the St John's Grammar Community Spring Fair. What a huge effort it was. There were thousands of people there. Thanks to St John's Grammar and Kimberlee and Kate from the Parents and Friends Association who did an absolutely stellar job of bringing it together. You could not believe it. With my staff, Daniel, Caprice and Peter, we cooked over 10 kilos of popcorn and made 100 badges. It was absolutely huge.

Finally, during that time, I popped over to the Blackwood Forest Recreation Park to celebrate the Friends of Blackwood Forest volunteer avenue. It is a beautiful avenue of Manchurian pear trees that was set up to celebrate Debbie Reynolds, who was such an important person in our community. All of these things in the space of a couple of weeks—my community is constantly amazing at how we bring each other together and celebrate.

The SPEAKER: The member for Waite referred to Brenton Ragless; I would also like to give him a shout-out. Back in the early 2000s when I was chief of staff to the emergency services minister, Brenton Ragless was also known as 'firefighter Raggy' when he worked in the CFS media department. He used to entertain people right around the state and did a great job, as well as giving the media all the information they needed.

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