Page 358 - Week 01 - Thursday, 27 February 2014
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Scouts ACT
Ordination of deacons
MR COE (Ginninderra) (6.10): I rise this evening to speak about the work of scouts in the ACT. Scouts provide fun and challenging opportunities for young Australians aged six to 25. There are over 68,000 members in Australia which makes the scouts the largest youth movement in the country. Scouts are able to participate in many outdoor activities, including camping and bushcraft, abseiling, overnight hiking, rafting, canoeing, snow activities, rock climbing, sailing and flying. Scouts are also involved in performing arts, leadership development, community service, amateur radio operation, environment projects, cuborees, jamborees and ventures, international events and service projects in developing countries. They also learn practical skills like first aid and cooking.
Scouts ACT offer a unique youth program which includes issues like youth health, responsible risk taking, vocational skills and issues relevant to Indigenous Australians. The awards scheme encourages scouts to participate in a range of available activities and recognise their achievements.
On 19 January I was delighted to visit the Scouts ACT cuboree at Camp Cottermouth. The scouts hold a cuboree every three years for cubs between the ages of eight and 11 years. This year’s cuboree was attended by 600 scouts and about 300 adults. Each cuboree has a special theme, and this year’s theme was “under construction—creating a better world”. At the cuboree scouts were apprentice tradies and travelled to six building sites looking for clues to build a better world. They found something lost, rescued a civilisation, found a lost planet, ran an inn, climbed a mountain and planned a city of the future. As part of this adventure, they went rock climbing, water sliding, sang and danced, operated slot cards, went geocaching and built an aqueduct. At the end of the cuboree the scouts graduated as tradies and were presented with cuboree woggles.
Of course, to undertake such a task requires an enormous amount of commitment from volunteers, whether it be setting up obstacle courses, inventing exercise bike operated hoses, writing risk management plans, arranging truckloads of food, serving as first-aid attendants, managing the car park, ensuring security, collecting dietary information, managing medication, writing and printing instruction manuals, collecting permission forms, and on and on. To everyone that made the event a roaring success I congratulate and thank you. In closing, I commend the chief commissioner, Peter Harris, and the president, Leo Farrelly, on a very successful camp.
Madam Speaker, I wish to briefly speak about an event I attended on 22 February—the ordination of deacons with collation of an archdeacon at St Saviour’s Cathedral, Goulburn. The celebrant was the Right Reverend Bishop Stuart Robinson; Dean of the Eucharist was the Reverend Andrea de Vaal-Horciu; the Dean, the Reverend Canon Mark Cooper; the organist, David Johnson, and the choirmaster, Greg Oehm. The sermon was delivered by the Reverend Patrick Cole of Christ Church, Hawker in my electorate.
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