We had Judy & I, Susan & Larry, James & Cheryl, Sainab, Manjula, Andrew, Ida, Kammy, Ted, and past member Mahad. As well Mahad's work colleagues Nasteha and Herbson also attended.

I won't go through all the detail of our Board meeting discussions here but we did agree to contribute $300.00 to transfer to the Cosmos Erode Rotary Club in India to purchase 20 body bags.

As well we confirmed to proceed with opening a bank account with Bendigo Bank and Ted is following up on this. Ted also updated us on his strategy for the John Hanley Scholarship by presenting draft guidelines for the Scholarship for the school to issue to the students.

To me the highlight of the meeting was at the end when the topic was membership Mahad advised he wants to rejoin and Nasteha and Herbson both also advised that they would like to join as well.

With Kammy joining only a few weeks ago this could be the start of a very welcome membership surge. I know there are others considering membership as well. This is a good sign for the start of Sainab's year.

As well in regards to membership, I can confirm I have spoken to Fr Joe Giacobbe and he has confirmed he will attend our changeover and retain his membership.

Since that meeting, Judy and I and Susan attended the Rimern Zoom meeting and good progress is being made and I think we now have the keys to the premises now.

Today, we received our first account for our commitment of $1,000.00 and have immediately made the payment.

It won't long before it is off and running and we will be on the lookout for volunteers.

Susan Robb has worked well again making purchases for June and July with more activities for their residents. These purchases were selected as they were specifically requested by them

As you can see it focuses on trying to get nominations for this year's Phonse Tobin Awards.

Yesterday, Sainab and I represented our club at the last Batman Cluster Meeting for the year. We all had a good chat and each club was well represented with both incoming and outgoing Presidents. The only exception was that Marion Macleod, unfortunately, had to go to Tasmania as her mother passed away and so she did not attend. She has been a great supporter of our club during my term as president and so I offer her my sincere condolences. A number of older members will remember Bernie Gerlinger who with his wife Marjorie was a member of the Central Melbourne Rotary Club. They have been stalwarts of that club and our district with at least one year when Bernie served as District Treasurer and Marjorie as District secretary. Well, sadly Bernie passed away over the weekend so condolences to Marjorie and the Central Melbourne Rotary club. Though over the last few years they moved north to Queensland they remained with strong ties to that club.

I thought as a supporter of the State of Israel that with the amazing political events there recently resulting in a change of government some members may be interested to know what actually has happened.  Well, unlike Australia, Israel is far from a 2 party system, rather they have numerous small parties, and with proportionate representation, even very small parties get members into their parliament which is called the Knesset. The Knesset comprises of 120 members and so 61 members are required to form a government.

For the last 12 years, Benjamin Netanyahu has been Prime Minister by being party leader of the Likud Party with the help of a few minor parties. After 4 elections in the last 2 years to try and get a government, there was the real move from within those elected to get Netanyahu out of government and they have succeeded with quite an amazing mix of parties as follows:

Yesh Atid -          17 seats              (a Centralist Reform Party - the name means There is a future)

Blue & White     8 seats               (a Centralist Liberal Party)

Yamina               7 seats               (a Right-Wing Part led by Naftali Bennett)

Labour Party      7 seats               (a Social Democrat Party)

Yisrael Beiteinu 7 seats               (a secular center-right Party)

New Hope          6 seats               (a National Liberal Party)

Meretz                6 seats               (a Social Democrat Party/Green Party)

Total                    62 seats

Benjamin Netanyahu's Likud party got 29 seats themselves but with the 4 other parties, they formed as a coalition could not get enough seats.

Their new Prime minister is Naftali Bennett and on 27 August 2023, he will be replaced by Yair Lapid of te Yesh Atid party until the next election in November 2025.

You may be interested to know that the opposition coalition now led by Benjamin Netanyahu also includes an Arabic Islamic party with 6 seats meaning that there are 10 Arabic members of the Israeli Parliament and they are actually representing about 20% of the population of Israel that are Arabic.

I better follow that heavy intellectual stuff with something a bit lighter so a guy goes in for a job interview and sits down with the boss. The boss asks him, “What do you think is your worst quality?” The man says “I’m probably too honest.” The boss says, “That’s not a bad thing, I think being honest is a good quality.” The man replies, “I don’t care about what you think!”

Some people say the glass is half full. Some people say the glass is half empty. Engineers say the glass is twice as big as necessary.

Just remember as Rotary clubs are about to change their teams. Teamwork is important; it helps to put the blame on someone else.

Again at this point, I would like to urge everyone to book for our Changeover.

Bookings have now surged into double figures with me and Judy, Susan & Larry, Ted & Judy, Andrew & Amanda, Kammy, and Ida.