Mr BAYLEY (Clark) – Honourable Speaker, I rise tonight to talk about the Big Tassie Walk, which is the Walk for Belonging. It’s a really simple act and it’s something that people can do together. It’s a walk that celebrates diversity, it celebrates multiculturalism, it celebrates inclusion and the walk fosters understanding, conversations and connections across our community.
Many people will know that this is an initiative of the Migrant Resource Centre. It’s actually a fundraiser, so people and members and anyone listening can actually get behind this. It’s a fundraiser for the Migrant Resource Centre to help with its programs to support migrants in this state. Migrant Resource Centre, as I’m sure every member in this place knows, is a fabulous organisation. It’s been around for 45 years and it’s a not-for-profit that’s dedicated to supporting migrants, humanitarian entrance and refugees. It helps them to settle, it helps them to recover and it helps them to thrive. It does this by giving practical support, assistance with housing, with healthcare, finding employments, supporting children, mental health care and to build confidence so that new Tasmanians can fully participate in our community, and of course that includes youth work and aged care. They cover the full spectrum of ages. Fabulous people are involved with the Migrant Resource Centre. I want to give a shout-out to CEO Gillian Long; the chair is well known to this place, the honourable Peter Gutwein, who I guess kicked off this notion of walking for tolerance, for inclusion and for belonging, in his walk from the north of the state to Hobart. So, he’s really led this charge, and it’s great to see the organisation get behind the concept and raise money on the back of it. Of course, staff like Tabitha and Sahana have done a power of work to actually engage multicultural communities, get them walking and try to work with us.
I’m really proud of our Greens Team. We’ve got the Greens parliamentary team that’s got a Big Tassie Walk team: Emma, Alice, Hannah, Jack, Jenny and William. While we set ourselves a $500 fundraising goal, we’re up to $715 now, and anyone is welcome to make a contribution so that we can top $1000. While we did originally set 150 kilometres as our goal, Peter Gutwein informally set us a target of 450 kilometres and I’m proud to say tonight we’ve topped it with 488 kilometres. So, it’s not too late to donate. The Greens Team, search it on the Big Tassie Walk website. It across October, so it concludes on Saturday.
