Joe McCracken - Life towards Politics / Des Hudson Induction 6 April 23 Gallery

it was an honour to induct City of Ballarat Mayor, Cr. Des Hudson as an honorary member. Des' induction was especially notable as he is a Paul Harris Award recipient from our club and is the coordinator of our involvement in the fantastic Force Blue program at Phoenix College. In receiving his membership, Des underlined his strong relationship with our club and the high regard the City of Ballarat has for the work of Rotary in general and our club in particular.

t was an honour to welcome Joe McCracken, the MLC for Western Victoria to our club last week. Joe spoke with passion about his desire to engage with, and support rural communities. He traced much of his enthusiasm for community engagement to his family's tradition of local government representation in Stawell. Joe outlined his interesting journey to becoming a parliamentarian including his schooling in Beaufort and in Ballarat at St. Patrick's College and his university education at Federation University. After training and working as an accountant and then working as a secondary teacher in Colac for 10 years, Joe entered local government as a councilor in the Colac-Otway Shire in 2016. He was rapidly elected as Mayor of the Shire at the age of 29. Joe emphasized the importance of mentoring during his tenure as a local government councilor and the importance of learning about the needs of the Colac community. He concluded by emphasizing that he saw his recent election to the Victorian Parliament as an opportunity to continue to learn and to expand his service to the broader community of western Victoria.