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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 11 Hansard (30 November) . . Page.. 3585 ..

of the employment practices that are perpetrated against young people. I have often had occasion to be very thankful for the SDA and for the work that Athol Williams has done.

Athol was the chief steward of the Canberra Greyhound Racing Club for a number of years, the initial secretary of the Kambah Residents Association, a board member for Tuggeranong Cooperative Retail Supermarket, a board member of the Australian Workers Housing Cooperative, board member of 2SSS FM and, as Mr Smyth pointed out, board member and chairman of ACTTAB. He is also a board member of the National Price Watch Committee, coach of a whole range of award-winning and premiership-winning high school and primary school softball teams, an ACT coach for softball, a board member of the Sudden Infant Death Association, a board member of the Retail Industry Training Board, leader of Neighbourhood Watch for Kambah and very active in AFL for Canberra.

He is a man with a distinguished record of achievement for Canberrans and particularly for people in the valley. He is an outstanding Canberran and a credit to the Labor team. He is a man with exceptional family and community values, a man who is true in public to his personal values, a man who through his commitment to his family personifies the central role of the family in the community and the importance of family values, a man who has stood by his wife, Cheryl, and his family in all the adversities of life, a man who through his marriage to his wonderful wife, Cheryl, lives the values of family life and the need to nurture a wife and a family and to stick with them through thick and thin.

He is an untiring advocate for the community, a man whose working life has been centred on maintaining employment conditions and quality of life for others, and as a union official a man who has stood firm in the face of the unprincipled attacks of others. He is a man who did not deserve this low, gutter, snivelling attack by one of his political opponents in Tuggeranong, Brendan Smyth, the so-called Deputy Chief Minister.

MR SPEAKER: The member's time has expired.

MR STEFANIAK (Minister for Education and Minister Assisting the Attorney-General) (5.44): I want to put on record my gratitude to a lot of people at an event I had the pleasure of going to last night. Mark Stowers, who is dying of cancer, played well over 100 grade games for Royals from 1980 to 1988. He has about two weeks to live. I was highly impressed with the community spirit shown at a fundraiser for him last night.

Former Raider Ricky Stuart and current Raider, soon to go to England, David Furner were there, along with Steve Larkham and Owen Finegan. There were about 300 people from right across the spectrum of Canberra's sporting society there, and I was delighted to see over $40,000 raised by community effort for Mr Stowers' family.

He will leave behind him a wife and three young children. I put on record my gratitude to the Canberra sporting community in assisting the Stowers family in their time of need and their time of grief. It was a wonderful gesture by a lot of people in Canberra sport.

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