Page 442 - Week 02 - Tuesday, 20 February 2018
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video
To continue the sporting theme, while I am here, I would like to also pay tribute to the volunteers who make the Tuggeranong parkrun happen every Saturday morning, and indeed those who make it happen at the various park runs right across our city. I am not a runner, but I have stepped out to have a crack at the parkrun on the last three Saturdays and I have survived, with three PBs to my name. I am pretty keen to do a sub 30-minute run. I am hoping to pull that off soon. It is wonderful to be involved in a genuine grassroots community event and I promise that I will take my turn as a volunteer when I am too sore to go for a run, which I am sure will be at some stage soon.
If the members of this place, or anyone who is receiving this speech in any form, have not done a parkrun on a Saturday morning, I would urge you to come on down and have a go. You do not actually have to run. The parkruns are every week in Tuggeranong, Lake Burley Griffin, Lake Ginninderra, Gungahlin, and I believe Coombs is about to start. There is also a Queanbeyan option.
Furthermore, I would like to give a big pat on the back to all those involved in the big Canberra bike ride raising money for the Amy Gillett Foundation on Sunday. I was most pleased to head out with the pack to do the 70-kilometre ride out to the Cotter and back. Congrats to Pedal Power and all those involved for putting on another superb event. It all came together like clockwork, which is amazing when you consider that there were over a thousand riders participating over 100 kilometres, 70 kilometres, 20 kilometres or five kilometres. It is so important for us to encourage more and more Canberrans to get out on the bike, and even more important that we can provide a safe environment for them to do so. I will continue to support the big Canberra bike ride.
World Day of Social Justice
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (5.27): Today is World Day of Social Justice. This year the United Nations theme is “Workers on the move: the quest for social justice”. The UN states that most migration today is linked directly or indirectly to the search for decent work opportunities. Australia is a proudly multicultural country, with more than 95 per cent of us hailing from overseas either by birth or descent. And here I would like to reflect that we are here in this democratic, affluent community in many cases by good fortune or the forethought of our parents or grandparents.
Many Australians, most Australians, like me, are immigrants and many of us are dual citizens. Our journeys, or those of our ancestors, to this land are many and varied. Some of us have escaped from international war and conflict or oppressive, undemocratic regimes. Others moved or were forced here by the colonial policies of the British and their invasion of Australia to establish a penal colony to deal with incapacity within their own legal and social systems, and in so doing wrought generations of dispossession and genocide upon our nation’s First Peoples.
The ACT has a well-established commitment to support and encourage refugees to settle here. The ACT is a refugee welcome zone, and over the past 10 years Canberra has welcomed over 2,000 refugees to our proudly multicultural city. We, the Greens,
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . . Video