GordonMoyes.com

I rise today to give tribute to the Reverend Robert Richardson Smith who died on the 12th of December 2009, at the age of 91.

This month marks the 200th anniversary of the swearing-in of Lachlan Macquarie as the fifth Governor of the colony of New South Wales. He served in that capacity from 1810 to 1821. Governor Macquarie was born in 1762 to a tenant farming family on a tiny island off the coast of Scotland, where he eventually was buried. At 14 he left his family to join the Army.

Assisted suicide is as old as humanity; it is not a modern phenomenon and the controversies around it are not new. The Hippocratic Oath, written by the “father of medicine”, the Greek physician Hippocrates, and sworn to by new physicians for the past 2,400 years, specifically states, “I will not give a lethal drug to anyone if I am asked, nor will I advise such a plan”. This was written because the temptation has always existed to end life when it is seemingly unbearable.

I inform the House about an outstanding Christian ministry that is one of the few initiatives successfully challenging the culture of binge drinking in Australian high schools and colleges, residence halls and meeting places of the young: the Red Frogs Australia Chaplaincy Network.

Today I speak about an inspiring international Christian organisation, Prison Fellowship International, which was founded by Watergate identity Chuck Colson. Prison Fellowship New South Wales is our State branch, which seeks to transform the lives of all those in our State who are caught up in the criminal lifestyle, to help restore relationships with their families, and to reconcile them to their communities.

Today I pay tribute to Marjorie Somerville, founder of the Methodist Nursing Service, who died on 30 September 2009 at the age of 89 years. Marjorie Wilkinson was born in 1920 to Cecelia and George Wilkinson.

The ever-vexed issues of the fluoridation of our water supplies and immunisation of our children have returned with great force in the past few weeks due to the waging of some online campaigns.

Tonight I inform the House of the important and innovative work being done at the Macquarie Centre for Cognitive Science at Macquarie University. The centre is conducting a number of research projects into dyslexia and other reading difficulties that are of vital international significance.

Today I speak about a wonderful Australian-based women’s organisation that I have admired and supported for many years, and which has just celebrated its fiftieth anniversary. Formerly known as Christian Women Communicating International, it now goes just by the initials CWCI.

I rise today to give tribute to the Reverend Frank McInnes, founder of Southern Cross Crusades, who died in Sydney on the 9th of August 2009, at the age of 89.