Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Late last year I was delighted to hear that Palmyra Primary School had been chosen as the Western Australian demonstration school for the $12.8 million national Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program. Palmyra Primary School is a school with a strong community focus, as I have had cause to mention in this place before with regard to their work towards reconciliation and celebration of the national apology.

During my visit there in December the enthusiasm for the kitchen garden was palpable as Principal Hugh McCracken and four students led me on a tour of the grounds and garden site. Tucked in a hollow at the edge of the playing fields, the established herb and vegetable garden is impressive and already benefits from the input of local residents, who tend the plots. But the Kitchen Garden Program will expand and enhance the plot further and, crucially, connect the produce it bears with the cooking and eating experience for students. In the new kitchen, students will be able to take their harvest through every stage of preparation before sitting down together to enjoy the fresh fruits and vegetables they have nurtured. This hands-on learning will instil healthy eating habits and provide the kind of essential life knowledge from which Palmyra students, their communities and ensuing generations will benefit well into the future.

I am also pleased to say that two other schools in the Fremantle electorate, Spearwood Alternative School and Harmony Primary School, were among the first 37 schools nationwide selected to participate in the Kitchen Garden Program. Like Palmyra, Spearwood Alternative School has an existing garden, and I visited the site in the company of parents and children a week before the start of term. As a rare state alternative school established and run on the basis of deep parent and community involvement, it was no surprise to see that the garden had been well kept and watered over the dry Perth summer. It is clear that the Spearwood Alternative School community has a great deal of deal of time and energy invested in their patch, and the Kitchen Garden Program will provide the funding for the construction of a kitchen in which the students can join the dots between their garden, its fruit and vegetables, and the creation of fresh, healthy food. Spearwood is a small school with a big heart. They are overjoyed at what this funding support will mean, and schools like Spearwood around the country deserve this kind of innovative education policy.

Finally, the six-year-old Harmony Primary School in Atwell, a fast developing suburb on the urban fringe of the Fremantle electorate, will, thanks to the Kitchen Garden Program, be building a brand new permaculture garden to complement the school’s passive solar design and its guiding ethos of environmental responsibility. As the garden beds are dug, the first seeds planted and the kitchen built, this project will become a central focus for Harmony students and staff; but the creation of a garden and the cooking of its produce will also serve to enhance the connections that exist in this burgeoning community as its students, teachers, parents and extended families involve themselves in making the garden and the program their own.

The life knowledge acquired by the year 3 to year 6 students in these schools will spread beyond the immediate bounds of the schools’ kitchen gardens to bind and strengthen the broader community. The Stephanie Alexander Kitchen Garden Program is an example of forward thinking and preventive policy in action. (Time expired)

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