Ms JANN McFARLANE (12:23 PM) — I am very pleased today to speak in the Main Committee on one of the wonderful sporting, social and cultural clubs in my electorate: the Balcatta Soccer Club. I am also delighted to inform the House that I was thrilled when they recently made me the No. 1 ticket holder. I think I am one of the few female No. 1 ticket holders anywhere in soccer in Australia, so I take that as a privilege. I want to tell you how wonderful the club are. Having signed up between 300 and 400 young people, they have decided that soccer is not just about sporting and competition but also about social life, connecting back to your local community and contributing to your community. The club have done amazing things in the last couple of years to develop that side of their life. They very much hold the ethos, which is now strong in soccer, that it is about participation and playing; it is not just about winning and competition. They want to move away from the side of soccer which concerns the community when they see disputes on and off the field between parents.

I commend the club on their excellent training program and coaching and their ability to train young people. They are now in the unique situation of having eight state representatives, which is truly amazing. I congratulate Lisa Tana, Sarah Cunningham, Jessine Bonzas, Helen Carrol and Debbie Gorton who were selected in the state senior team; Ashley Cane and Gemma Langley, who are part of the under-18 team, and Jessica Pilcher, who is in the school team. Domenica Carbone, in the under-15s, is also a state representative. This is a fantastic record for the club. Congratulations also to their under-6s, under-7s and under-8s who are champions of the Italian Festival Junior Carnival and the under-16a girls who won the state championships. Not only was it a great competition, it was a lot of fun and I commend them on the excellent social program they have had recently. They have monthly sausage sizzles—in June, they had a karaoke sausage sizzle night. In July, they had a family fun night at Rosetti's restaurant and a bingo night to raise funds for the senior girls to go to the state competition.

The most amazing thing this club has done is to start a youth dance called Xplosionz Under-18s Dance Party. It is an alcohol-free dance for 15- to18-year-olds and the club has set up a youth committee, which consists of 15 very enthusiastic young men and women aged between 16 and 22. This committee and the club are currently under the visionary leadership of the president, Pat Luca, and they have managed to have eight dances at the Ilinden Macedonian Hall in Balcatta. Their last dance was at a new venue, the Vasto Club Casa D'Abruzzo, also in Balcatta. These young people have done a wonderful thing and they must be meeting a need, because the dances are getting between 800 and 1,000 children at them. They are very well run and the parents are very happy with them, because there have been no incidences or untoward events.

I would like to commend the Mirrabooka police district and the City of Stirling rangers for their support of the dances and the local parents who give of their time as volunteers to make sure the dances are supervised properly and there is good behaviour as well as clean, alcohol-, smoke- and drug-free fun.

In particular, I would like to focus on the committee of the Balcatta Soccer Club, a wonderful group of people who stood back from the sports side and decided there needed to be more done for the Stirling community and have put all this work, effort, money and other resources into the club and its activities. They also think of others; from the Xplosionz dance last Friday night, $1,000 was given to a cancer foundation. They recently donated $700 to the Bali disaster appeal and $200 towards a trip for a girl that got into the state soccer team. They have also donated a table-tennis table for all to use at Balcatta Soccer Club. This is a wonderful club, they have wonderful initiatives, and we should all be very proud of them.