Page 1426 - Week 04 - Thursday, 4 April 2019
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Staff also deserve to feel safe going to and from work. After a long day at work they should not have to be on their guard while walking to a government-supplied car park. I stand with staff at the Canberra Hospital and Canberra Health Services, who do their best every day. The Canberra Liberals will always support them in their work, and I call on the minister for health to take immediate steps to improve the security and safety of staff at the Canberra Hospital.
Relay for Life
Gungahlin Jets
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (5.56): I rise this evening to talk about Relay for Life and the 2019 Gungahlin Jets season launch. On Saturday, 23 March this year I participated in the Relay for Life at the AIS athletics track in Bruce. For anyone who is not familiar with Relay for Life, it is a fundraising challenge that brings the ACT and surrounding community together to celebrate cancer survivors and to recognise the unsung heroes, their carers.
Friends, families and colleagues are encouraged to join in teams and relay around a designated track to raise funds to support people affected by cancer and to fund research and prevention programs. Teams walk, run, dance, hop and skip over 24 hours to acknowledge the fact that cancer never rests. During the evening a candlelight ceremony is held to remember those who have lost their fight with cancer.
This year I joined the Community and Public Sector Union team. We were there in support of the wonderful Fran Blackburn, an organiser with the CPSU and a cancer survivor. I am pleased to say that our team completed the challenge, raised a lot of vital funds and had a great time coming together with many people from across the ACT and region to support this worthy cause.
While I was walking around and around the track that afternoon I struck up a conversation with the person next to me. He asked me if I was walking all evening. I let him know that I would not be able to walk into the evening because I had to go to the 2019 season launch for the Jets. I asked him if he had heard of the Jets and, to my surprise, he had. He mentioned that he plays AFL for a competing team. He then went on to tell me how the Jets were really getting it together and were becoming a team not to take for granted.
For the last few years the Jets have been in a phase of rebuilding and strengthening their club. It has been a long and at times difficult road for the club. But their “one club, one family” motto has translated into a community club that is finding its feet and going from strength to strength.
At the 2019 season launch I had the honour of becoming the 2019 number one ticketholder. While I was addressing the club, I recounted the story from earlier that day. As I said to the club that evening, to hear a competitor from another club that I had never met before tell me about how well the teams are doing and how they are becoming a group to watch is testament to just how far the Jets have come.
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