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Legislative Council - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-06-27 Daily Xml
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HACKHAM WEST COMMUNITY CENTRE

The Hon. R.L. BROKENSHIRE (15:54): I rise today to talk about two key issues: one is the Hackham West Community Centre and their 30th birthday renovation and the other is to congratulate one of the leaders of the Hackham West Community Centre, Mr Eric Bennett, who received an OAM on the Queen's Birthday honour awards.

The Hackham West Community Centre is a community centre which I have had the privilege of being involved with for a long period of time. Every time you go to the Hackham West Community Centre, you are reinvigorated with respect to the spirit of community and consideration for each other and the general wellbeing of each other.

Sometimes we see negative stories about Hackham West. I think that is unfortunate, although I am pleased to say that rarely these days do you see the negative stories. In fact, you read a lot of very positive stories, and one of the key reasons for this has been the commitment of both volunteers and paid people who work at the Hackham West Community Centre. An enormous amount of people get personal fulfilment, development, family support and general confidence building opportunities from accessing the programs at the Hackham West Community Centre.

The model for the Hackham West Community Centre has changed over the years. Back when I was a member of government and prior to that, government had an arguably much more significant input into the funding and support of the community centre than the then Noarlunga council and even in the early days of the Onkaparinga council. Today, and they should be congratulated for this, the Onkaparinga city council is the primary funder and supporter of the Hackham West Community Centre, together with all the other community centres in the district, and do a really good job of resourcing and supporting the community centre.

The community centre is to be congratulated for the number of grants they obtain. It is only the hard work and knowledge of the volunteers and paid staff that creates enormous opportunities for approval for grants programs that are then directly spent back into the community. I believe that, conservatively, for every dollar of grants that the Hackham West Community Centre receives, they would probably make that dollar into $10 of benefit for the communities of Hackham West and surrounds.

On 17 April, I was privileged to attend the 30th birthday renovation celebration which, at this point in time, is another stage of the renovations and further development of the community centre. I was involved in working with the community centre many years ago with a new model for funding through the then health department to expand the infrastructure of the community centre and I am pleased to see that there has been an ongoing expansion of infrastructure, but successive governments will still need to significantly increase their funding to allow for further infrastructure to accommodate the needs of the community.

There are people who I want to particularly put on the public record for their outstanding work. There is always a danger in listing people, but these people have shown great leadership, together with the hundreds of volunteers and the thousands of members who support and attend courses, including meal programs and so on, at the centre. Tina Adams, Tim Deslandes, Dave Kelly and Eric Bennett have put extraordinary and outstanding service into the Hackham West Community Centre.

Eric Bennett is an honourable man. He is a man who I always enjoy spending some time with. He is intelligent, he is passionate and compassionate and his family and the Hackham West Community Centre are front and centre of all of his energy and commitment generally. He is one of the people who is certainly very much deserving of an Order of Australia medal. It is a long time coming but it is something that he certainly deserves to have been awarded.

I commend the people who nominated Eric Bennett. I am sure it would have been a very big and detailed nomination because Eric Bennett has done so much for the community. He is still incredibly active, but he also works on a concept of transition and, therefore, he has built a great team around him. I encourage members of the house to visit the community centre and see the great job they are doing for the southern community.

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