ADJOURNMENT
Mr LEESER (Berowra) (19:50): Tonight, I want to put on the national record the story of a remarkable little boy who's inspired people right across the Berowra electorate and beyond. His name is Levi Roodenburg. Levi was the youngest of three children to Luke and Natalie and a brother to Olivia and Sofia.
Levi was born on 21 April 2017. He was full of energy and full of life. He loved his family, he loved his mates, and he absolutely loved sport.
His teachers at West Pennant Hills Public School remember his incredible competitive spirit. If there were any way to turn something into a game or a competition, Levi was in. Whether it was earning table points, taking part in a class quiz or playing a maths game, they remember his cheeky smile and infectious laugh and how much joy he found in doing things alongside his mates.
He loved to joke and had a wonderful way of finding fun wherever he was. And what a sportsman! Football, rugby league, AFL cricket, Oztag—if there were a ball involved, Levi wanted to be part of it.
He played with the West Pennant Hills-Cherrybrook Football Club, the Penno Stags, Westbrook AFL and the Kenthurst cricket club. His AFL coach described him as an absolute gem of a kid who adapted naturally to whatever sport he played, made every teammate a better player and was always a positive spirit amongst the team. One story captures Levi perfectly.
The Stags were playing the North Sydney Brothers, the top team in the league competition. They were trailing 20-18 with only minutes remaining. One of Levi's mates kicked the ball down the sightline, and Levi did what Levi did.
He chased. He chased it down. He scored and he won the game.
You can imagine the celebrations and that enormous smile on Levi's face. He was also left footed—a little detail that's now become part of the way his teammates remember him, with young footy players wearing pink laces on their left boot in his honour. Levi's family believed he had genuine sporting ability, the sort of natural talent that made them wonder just how far he might go, but sport was only one part of Levi.
His coach said that he loved dressing up and performing—a showman as much as a sportsman. His family remembers how much he loved his sisters, Olivia and Sofia. He loved fishing with his cousins and his family holidays, whether overseas or down at Mollymook.
Those are the things that tell you who Levi really was—a son, a brother, a friend, a teammate, a nine-year old boy with enormous potential and a whole life ahead of him. Then came the moment no family could ever imagine. Only a week after taking a hat-trick in cricket, Levi was diagnosed with DIPG, diffuse intrinsic pontine glioma, a rare, aggressive and incurable childhood brain tumour.
One week, he was out taking wickets with his mates; the next, his family's world had completely changed. Suddenly, Luke and Natalie were learning a language no parent wants to learn—scans, treatments, clinical trials and research. They explored experimental treatment and clinical trials, but those opportunities weren't available to Levi.
Levi was just nine years old when he lost his courageous battle with DIPG. His family have taken the unimaginable heartbreak of Levi's passing and turned it into hope. They've established Livin for Levi.
Livin for Levi raises funds for childhood brain cancer research, helping to ensure other children have options that just weren't available to Levi. Something Luke and Natalie said to me has really stayed with me. They don't want people to feel uncomfortable talking about Levi.
They want people to say his name. They want his friends and his teammates to tell stories about him. They want people to remember the funny things he did, the games he played and the person he was.
That's what Livin for Levi is really about—keeping Levi's spirit, his name and his love of sport alive. People want to be part of this because Levi mattered to them. Levi mattered to so many.
In August this year, the Penno Stags, the West Pennant Hills-Cherrybrook Football Club and the Westbrook AFL hosted the inaugural Livin for Levi Round, designed to keep Levi's memory alive. They encouraged the community to donate your age to childhood brain cancer research, and I was privileged to be at one of the sporting grounds where they were collecting funds and made a donation myself.
Livin for Levi has already raised $68,860, with a goal of $100,000. The hope is to change the future for children with rare cancers like DIPG. Behind every conversation about research funding, about clinical trials or about new treatments is a person, a family, a school, a group of mates, a sporting team, a little boy like Levi and a family.
I'm incredibly honoured to stand alongside his family as an ambassador for Livin for Levi. I hope that through their courage, through our community and through the extraordinary work of our cancer researchers, Levi's legacy will give other children more options, more time, more hope and ultimately a cure. In that sense, we will all be living for Levi.