Senator CROWLEY (7:44 PM) —I want to talk very briefly tonight about a wonderful project that I visited in Phnom Penh during a visit to Cambodia. I was privileged to join four other senators to journey with the CDI—the Centre for Democratic Institutions—at the ANU for discussions about the Senate in Thailand and then in Cambodia. While we were in Cambodia, Australia's Ambassador, Louise Hand, suggested that we might have lunch at a particular project in Phnom Penh. I am extremely grateful that we went there. From time to time in my life I actually meet goodness. There are lots of times I meet `would be good if we could' or `we are struggling to be good', but occasionally you meet real goodness.

This project is called Friends and it consists of a whole series of very modest, indeed humble, buildings comprising a nursery school and schools for children from primary school through to early secondary school and sheds where young teenagers are able to go and learn about fixing bikes, about electricity and wiring, how to fix a television, machining, beauticians' work and so on. So a lot of these young people are being prepared for what they might do when they no longer have the opportunity to visit Friends. Most of the children who come are street children who sleep where they can. Most do not have homes to go to: they are orphans, street kids and urchins who have been turfed out of their houses. The whole project does a lot to protect the children, particularly girls, because girls from as young as five who are part way pretty are grabbed off the streets into the sex trade. If it did nothing else but protect young boys and young girls in Cambodia, the project would deserve commendation.

It is run by a young man called Sebastian Marot, who came from France some seven years ago to stay for three months. He is still there. He organised this project initially using his own personal funds. He rented these properties and then established very modest nursery school facilities—they are largely benches—and found teachers. He now has two doctors working there because the number of children who are HIV positive is pretty shocking. The numbers are not accurately known because not all the children wish to have tests. Some of them are assisted to have tests and we do know that a large percentage of them are already HIV positive.

The project features another characteristic that is quite wonderful : it runs a restaurant that is more than adequate. Indeed, it is an extremely good restaurant. The children are encouraged to learn about cooking. In cooking grade 1 they learn to wash vegetables, how to harvest vegetables, how to cut, chop and prepare food. In grade 2 they graduate into preparing food for the children and staff in the project. In grade 3 children actually work in the restaurant that serves anybody, and we enjoyed an extremely good lunch there.

I commend the project—I cannot speak too highly of it—for the feeling there, the climate of generosity and so on. As I said, it was originally funded by Sebastian's personal savings. He is a very young man—just into his 30s. It is now enjoying funding under AusAid through the Save the Children Fund and I am in the process of writing to Minister Downer urging his continuing funding for such a project, because it builds on the extremely extensive goodwill Australia enjoys in Cambodia. Recent history would explain why that is the case. But, of course, the needs change. The war has passed but the country is now in considerable need of assistance in infrastructure.

This project is almost about developing a human infrastructure. One of things that the children are taught is social niceties: how do you say hello to people, when you say hello to people, how do you learn what are ordinary manners and politenesses when you do not have mothers and fathers, if you have no adult around you except those who are teaching you how to knock over buildings or how to become thieves or to work in gangs to hurt people? Nobody had thought that these children needed teaching in just simple manners and social niceties. That is also taught in this project.

What drives Sebastian? When I asked him about it, he said that three people started the project: one was driven by a commitment to Christianity, another was driven by a warmth and compassion—if you like, the maternal feeling—and he was driven by social justice, a passion he learned from his family in France.

I could speak at great length about this project. As Sebastian said, `You do not want to have a project that is a palace when the children go home to sleep on the streets in the evening.' So his project is modest by most standards, but pure gold in terms of what it is doing for the children.

How were the rules and regulations established? He sat down with the children and asked them to come up with rules—and he said that those children were much rougher and tougher than he was. He said that some of their work concerned when to modify the rules that the children had established. They said, `Anybody who steals in this project from anybody else is out and can never come back again,' and he said, `If you have grown up knowing only stealing, maybe we should practise some gradations. If it is just a little thing a person has stolen and it is the first time, et cetera.' He said that he had to modify and negotiate with the children about even the rules of how the place should be run, who should come in and how they should behave within the rules, who should see that those rules were implemented and who should see that the punishments were implemented. He believed that it was no good having rules and responsibilities if everybody there was not held to participating in those rules.

The feeling and the atmosphere were of considerable joy and industry. A lot of these young children—who know nothing much in terms of ordinary home life, who sleep on the streets and who take some support from each other—found, when this young man came with his two partners at the time, a friend indeed who has provided for those children a learning haven which means that many of them will be able to advance to constructive adulthood. If ever there was a place that needed it, it is Cambodia post the devastation and the war. We went to the school where there is the memorial to the 20,000 or more who were tortured to death by the Khmer Rouge. That monument must stand.

It is extremely refreshing that you can go down the road to the project called Friends and see what goodness there is to counter the evil that has been done in that country and to see the goodness that is now balancing some of the tragedy and know that Australian aid dollars have been supporting the project. I was very pleased to visit the project and I am very pleased to support it. As I say, I will be writing to Minister Downer on behalf of the project. I welcome Australia's participation there, and particularly I congratulate all the people involved.