Page 590 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 22 February 2012

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Part (1)(c) says:

(1) decries the attack on …

All of these people volunteer—the president, the treasurer, the secretary, the vice-president, the chairs of the committee and the people who, every first Tuesday of the month, come to the community council regularly. Those people and those that come on an irregular basis volunteer their time and do the work. They go out and talk to their community. They put together a newsletter. They attend stalls. If the event had not been rained out this year, they would have attended and staffed the stall at the Tuggeranong community festival. They do that so that they can be in touch with their community. They should be congratulated. The slur should go.

Part (2)(a) says:

… supports:

(a) all aged volunteers for the valuable services they provide in the ACT …

Here we are as a country saying: “We are not going to let you retire, folks. We are all going to work a bit harder and a bit longer, and we are all going to volunteer a bit longer because we want your expertise, we want your skills and we want your knowledge.” But we attack them in the ACT Assembly. And then the members of this place will not stand up for those aged volunteers in our community. Well, they should.

Part (2)(b) says:

(2) supports …

(b) the Tuggeranong Community Council in all its endeavours;

I do not agree with everything that they determine, but we should agree to their right to exist and we should agree to the right to support them. We should not be calling them a bunch of punters that go and claim “to have some sort of community connection with this geriatric mob”. We should not be saying:

It is … a self-help group … I would not feed them … they are a self-interest group and I would not touch them with a barge pole.

They are none of those things. If Mr Hargreaves had bothered to attend recently, he would know that they are none of those things. And I do not believe that at any time they have been any of those things in all the 17 or 18 years that I have been attending the Tuggeranong Community Council.

Part (3) says:

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