Mr ROSS CAMERON (4:01 AM) —I move:

Just over three years ago, one late sitting night I was in my office with the member for Boothby and the present Minister for Employment Services. We were having a discussion about the risk of becoming a caricature of the politician in terms of remoteness from the people and a lifestyle lived in white cars, frequent flyer lounges in airports and suits, and of protocol and formality. We were talking about how we could ensure that we stayed in touch with the people and how we could strip away some of the accoutrements of office, and each year have a kind of ritual that would keep us connected.

Inspired by the example of Larry Anthony, we settled on what has become known as the Pollie Pedal. Each year we would take a week out of our schedules, get on bicycles and ride between 600 and 800 kilometres, and stay in caravan parks just as ordinary mortal Australians among those who elected us. Each year we would select a cause to raise money for along the way. This year the greatest cause that we could think of was the Paralympics. In the end, we raised enough money to send the Australian Paralympic cycling team to the games, and that is a source of enormous satisfaction to me.

I wanted to mention a little bit about the cause and our experience on the Pollie Pedal, riding bikes from the steps of Parliament House to the steps of the Town Hall in Sydney, passing through Goulburn, Wollongong, Campbelltown, Camden, Penrith, back through my electorate of Parramatta, down to Mona Vale, Dee Why and back across the bridge to the city. The Paralympic Games will open on 18 October and go through to 29 October. The 18 sports share 14 in common with the Olympics and four are specific to the Paralympics—boccia, goalball for the vision impaired, powerlifting and the infamous wheelchair rugby. Australia will have the largest team ever in its history, with over 400 athletes out of the total of 4,000 from 123 countries.

I think some people do not fully appreciate the magnitude of this event. It will be the second largest sporting event in the world this year. Australia will be fielding a very impressive team—the biggest team ever. It was placed second in Atlanta out of 103 countries. Australia is one of the few countries that has been represented in every Paralympic Games since 1960. The ticket sales so far are going fantastically well. We have sold over 440,000 tickets, which is over 70 per cent of the target. It is fantastic to see the way Australians are getting behind the Paralympic Games. We have already sold 40,000 tickets to the opening ceremony, a key event on 18 October. We are really encouraging people to get behind it.

As an example of the spirit of these athletes, it was fantastic for Pollie Pedal to be launched here on the steps of Parliament House this year in a bipartisan way. I appreciate the bipartisan support for this motion. I note that Mr Edwards will be joining me. He is one of the founding members of the Parliamentarians for Paralympics, which is supported by members from all parties. It was great to see at the launch Senator Kate Lundy, Madam President from the other place and Senator Helen Coonan, who is the Chair of the Parliamentarians for Paralympics. We were joined by the whole Paralympic contingent from the Australian Institute of Sport. The party, comprising about 60 bikes and wheelchairs, headed off for the 90-kilometre ride to Goulburn in a head wind and with driving rain in some places. I have just been joined by the member for Robertson who, I must say, never faltered from the moment he got on his seat until the moment he arrived, as darkness fell, reflected in the headlights of one of the vehicles travelling with us. He gave a very impressive performance on behalf of the Central Coast cyclists.

The whole experience was a tremendous one for us politicians to try to stay in touch; we could not help but be affected by the level of support we received along that route. I mentioned that our first stop was Goulburn. We were accompanied along that whole first leg by Max Hadlow, the Mayor of Goulburn, who is a good, solid Labor man but not a bad bloke all the same. For example, he arranged a fantastic reception for us in Goulburn. The town had raised quite a bit of money for us. We were taken to a performance by the Argyle Players that evening—Pirates of Penzance. Anyone who has done community theatre knows what a struggle it is to raise funds to pay for props and other things. When we turned up completely unexpectedly that night, the Argyle Players presented us with a cheque of $1,000. We were quite touched by that.

When we stopped at the little hamlet of Marulan, which members and senators from Sydney will know of from the journey between Canberra and Sydney; it is basically a truck stop—Deputy Mayor Maureen Eddie turned up with a $1,000 donation to support us. As we went along the ride many of the councils were very generous. Mayor Cec Glenholmes of Shell Harbour—and I must say that the Shell Harbour Caravan Park right on the coast is one of the most beautiful caravan parks you could ever stay in—turned up with a cheque for $4,000. Once he had done that poor Wollongong down the road were really under the acid to match it, so they kindly chipped in with another $5,000.

I want to talk about the spirit of these Paralympians. It was my pleasure to attend a fundraiser at the Parramatta Leagues Club—under the inspiration of Alan Overton, the President of the club—where the Winter Paralympic athletes were raising funds for this summer team by pushing their wheelchairs from Mount Kosciusko to Sydney. One of the athletes involved was Michael Milton, a downhill skier, an amputee. I want you to imagine a bloke going down a mountain at 100 kilometres an hour on one leg. That is not a bad achievement. The ones I like even more are the blind downhill skiers who team up with a seeing partner. They head down the mountain at 80, 90, 100 kilometres an hour with a bloke in front turning around and shouting, `Turn left, turn right' to a blind skier. That is the spirit of these Paralympic athletes.

We were met at Wollongong at a breakfast put on by the council by Damien Burroughs, who is a one-armed discus thrower who competed with our team in Atlanta. He told the story of how he watched all the other kids playing sport and he desperately wanted to participate. He started out in wheelchair basketball and, with particular appreciation to his coach Scott Goodman, who was there at the breakfast, this one-armed athlete found that wheelchair basketball was not really his thing when he was spinning around and around on the same spot. His coach suggested to him that perhaps discus throwing might be more suited to his particular gifts. With this great sense of humour, these elite athletes continued to inspire us wherever we went.

I want to acknowledge the support of my parliamentary colleagues—Jo Gash, who met us at Robertson; Jim Lloyd, who is going to speak on the motion; Kerry Bartlett, who rode with us from Penrith to Richmond; Kerry Chikarovski, who joined us for the whitewater rafting in Penrith; Peta Seaton in Moss Vale, who is from the New South Wales parliament, along with Michael Richardson. The Hon. Charlie Lynn MLC has been a stalwart. He has been with us on the ride every year. Jackie Kelly has likewise been one of the core team members and this year her daughter Dominique came too, which was particularly pleasing because there was a fair bit of speculation that she was actually conceived on last year's Pollie Pedal when her husband joined us for one night at Bathurst. I note that the member for Werriwa has just arrived. The member for Werriwa likewise set a cracking pace from Appin to Campbelltown. He left the rest of us in his wake, although he did not join us up the hill from Wollongong.

These Paralympians deserve every bit of support we can muster. We ought to get behind them in exactly the same way we are getting behind the other Olympians. I want to thank my colleagues on both sides of the House for their support of this initiative.

Mr DEPUTY SPEAKER (Mr Jenkins)—Is the motion seconded?