Page 1033 - Week 03 - Wednesday, 25 February 2009
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The Ginninderra Lions Club’s major project is in conjunction with the great organisation, Tandem. The club, albeit a relatively small one, is punching well above its weight. I would particularly like to congratulate Graham Erikson on his hard work and dedication to the Ginninderra Lions Club.
I would also like to pay tribute to the Australian Lions Foundation, supported by Lions clubs around Australia, which has recently provided an initial $40,000 to Lions clubs in bushfire affected areas in Victoria to enable them to help victims of the fires purchase food, clothing and other essentials. This is where volunteer organisations like Lions come in. Being part of their local community, they are able to respond and provide immediate relief. Lions clubs around Australia are still accepting donations to help support the recovery effort.
I would encourage those in the Belconnen community that have some time to put back into the community to consider becoming involved in the Ginninderra Lions Club. My office has the details or you can lodge your interest at www.lionsclub.org.au.
Organ donor awareness
Planning—schools
MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.24): Madam Deputy Speaker, thank you for your indulgence of my slightly chaotic state there. I would like firstly to acknowledge also the efforts of the organisers of the ORGANised walk this morning. I thought it was a tremendous effort. There was a great crowd out there, I gather, from listening to the radio. I must confess I slept in this morning and did not make it but I think it has been an extremely successful effort due to the fact that it has actually got me organised and I intend to sign up this week as an organ donor. I have never been quite sure how; so I think the promoters of the week have done an excellent job in making it accessible to someone like me, with a busy lifestyle, to make it very simple and to make it really easy and obvious for me to go out and sign up. So I congratulate the organisers on, I think, a highly effective community campaign.
The other issue I wanted to speak to and reflect on while I have the floor was the efforts of the minister for education to secure support for the changes to regulations for schools because of the stimulus package. We have heard a great deal about that in the chamber in the last few days and I wanted to, I guess, express my dismay at the way the minister for education has gone about this.
Last Thursday, he decided to communicate with the rest of this parliament by press about his intentions and to then use that as an opportunity to create great alarm in the community about the nature of what may happen in this place, without having given either other party a briefing, without having provided any substance of his intended regulations, other than what he put in the press. He then chose to run a scare campaign on what other parties in this place may do without those parties actually knowing what was being proposed, other than what was in the minister’s press release.
I think this is an entirely inappropriate way to conduct public policy on important matters such as the stimulus package. We have had a lot of debate in this place about
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