Mr LAWLER (10:42 PM) —This evening I would like to take a few minutes to share some thoughts on some of the most admirable people I have come across in my travels around the electorate. I am not referring to mayors or shire councillors; I am not referring to doctors or sporting geniuses or academic marvels. I am talking about two groups of people whom I have had the pleasure of meeting recently. They are the young people associated with the Green Corps program.

I had the absolute honour some weeks ago to be involved in the presentation to the Green Corps group from Broken Hill, who had just finished their six months on a Green Corps project. I do not need to point out to those members in the House that the people who participate in the Green Corps project are volunteers. They are young people who have been on the dole who have decided that there is more to life for them and have decided, of their own volition, to join the Green Corps project.

Gerard Bennett, Matthew Chandler, Rachel Daley, Carl Krelle (otherwise known as Rainbow), Calvin Lee, Scott Nilson, Leah McWaters and Darren Thomas: these eight people—seven of them from my electorate and residents of Broken Hill and one from Rainbow in Victoria—were working during the six months leading up to about April. One of the tasks that was undertaken, under the supervision of the National Parks and Wildlife Service, was something that I would say many adult Australians who spend time berating the young people of today would not even consider doing. These young people, amongst other things, performed jobs such as installing Environet, creating signs for National Parks, revegetating areas, digging holes for fence posts, et cetera. But the thing that I marvelled at when I met these people was the job that they did without a word of complaint in the 40 degree plus heat of a Broken Hill summer in January, rolling up about 120 kilometres of barbed wire.

The dedication and commitment that these people showed to perform these tasks, after starting off a somewhat disparate group of people—some of whom knew each other, many who did not—were remarkable. They formed a team, they learned a lot about life, they learned a lot about relationships. They certainly learned a lot about hard work and, most importantly, they learned about the pleasure and the satisfaction gained from getting stuck into a job, whether it is hard or not, and seeing it through.

These young people had a great time in the Green Corps. It is probably not the type of work that many people would choose, but these young Australians were motivated and excited when they were finished. Many of them were going to take the opportunity to get hold of some further funds to continue with study. It will look terrific on their CVs—the fact that they have contributed to society in this way. They probably did not care whether or not I was there for their presentation, or the mayor or whoever else. The highlight at the end of their Green Corps time was to sit down and chat about the experience and what they had achieved for themselves.

It was a privilege and an honour for me to meet these people, and I hold them up as representatives to anyone who questions the work of Green Corps. More importantly, I hold them up as an example to anyone who gets on a soapbox and talks about the youth today in a disparaging way. These people face challenges that, as young people, we never had to face. They have risen above these challenges and met them and punched them in the eye.

I recently also had the pleasure of launching another Green Corps group who are just starting on their learning journey in Parkes—another fine, motivated group of people really looking forward to getting stuck into the work at hand. All of them are appreciative of the opportunity that they were given and I am sure that, like their Broken Hill counterparts, they will also benefit enormously and the community will benefit enormously in turn from their valuable input.

I look forward to finding out, at the completion of this Parkes Green Corps project, just how many of them finish and what their hopes and aspirations will be then. After what I have seen already, I will be most surprised if the number finishing are any fewer than the number that started.