Page 997 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 29 March 2011
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employment, disability and community services to a diverse range of people including the most disadvantaged within our community. This financial year we will assist around 100,000 people.
At the function I met dozens of people from all over Australia but particularly the South Coast where Campbell Page originated. Its origins are the Eurobodalla shire. It originated as a drop-in centre for youth, disadvantaged youth in particular, and was actually named after the corner of the two streets where the originators of this great organisation met—obviously the corner of Campbell and Page streets.
I would like to commend the board—David Hawdon, Frank Bottomley, Philip Armstrong, Fay Ashcroft, Tom Slockee, Pamela Catty and Jane Schwager—and also all of the hardworking staff, led by their CEO, Xavier Crimmins. Xavier has been with the organisation for 12 years. When you consider the growth in Campbell Page over 25 years and you think that he has been in the organisation for nearly half of it, that is quite a remarkable effort.
I also enjoyed his story of the green tree frog, which is quite famous throughout the Campbell Page organisation. Other staff at the senior level are: Anthony O’Reilly, Chris Gandy, Joan Lynch, Mary Cripps-Warwick, who is their UK representative—they are trying to break into Europe and provide the same sorts of services initially in the UK that they are providing throughout Australia—and Colleen Cuthbert. They obviously have a significant number of people working nationwide providing the great services that they do. I commend them for it, but also in particular the staff that they have here in the ACT. I would like to offer them my thanks and congratulations on their 25th anniversary.
Japan earthquake and tsunami
MS LE COUTEUR (Molonglo) (5.27): I rise tonight to speak about an issue of great concern to all of us, and I am referring to the earthquake in Japan on 11 March and subsequent tsunami and nuclear crisis.
First, I would like to pay tribute to the over 10,000 people who have died as a result of the 9.0-magnitude earthquake and subsequent tsunami which reached 14 metres and swept away houses, buildings and cars. At this stage there are still over 17,500 people missing, as well as over 2,700 people injured. There are still more than a quarter of a million people in temporary accommodation and there are occasional aftershocks.
The ongoing crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear plant has been called a slow-moving nightmare, with reactor fires, equipment failures, a partial core meltdown, hydrogen explosions, overheating of spent fuel pools, leaks of poisonous radiation, injured workers and mass evacuation.
The reactor had three cooling systems, the main one using external electricity which failed immediately. The secondary diesel system was damaged and so did not come on line. The third system was battery powered and it ran until the batteries were flat. The flooding and the earthquake damage prevented assistance being brought in from elsewhere.
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