Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

On indulgence: Patrick O’Sullivan, the head of the Jesuits for Australasia and whose father, Sir Neil O’Sullivan, was the leader of the Senate, addressed a large conference in Brisbane and said that Mount Carmel school was successfully getting the Christian message and achieving what we want to achieve in Catholic education in Australia. In discussing this recently with Tony Chappell, a long-serving Christian brother, I said that St Vincent de Paul at the University of Queensland was run by a Mount Carmel boy, the YCW was run by a Mount Carmel boy and the Newman Society was run by a Mount Carmel boy and his girlfriend, who later became his wife. I said that all of the organisations at this huge university were run by people from that small Mount Carmel school. Tony Chappell said, ‘They were not from Mount Carmel; they were from Cloncurry, and it was Sister Thomas.’ I thought about it afterwards and he was right. I have diligently watched the television coverage of Mary MacKillop’s canonisation and all I found out was that she had a lot of fights with bishops. I was deeply disappointed because I did not think it got any sort of message across at all. I watched three separate programs I was that interested in finding out about her.

I have never had any doubt in my mind since I first heard of Mary MacKillop 40 or 50 years ago that Sister Thomas was Mother Mary MacKillop revisited, and she is the lady I am talking about here. I tried to put my finger on her characteristics. I tried to remember what I could of Sister Thomas. I can remember my mother saying: ‘Oh, isn’t it wonderful that Sister Thomas is coming to Cloncurry. She’s a very famous lady. She’s a very famous educator.’ One of the things I remember is that if you went to mass every morning during Lent you got a holy card with lace edged on it, and I can tell you, Madam Deputy Speaker, that some of the roughest kids got that holy card because she had inculcated in them this great Christian faith, this great belief. She also told us that, if we were not able to get up early in the morning because it was too cold, we were sooks and that we should be wrapped in cotton wool. Cloncurry boys do not like to be told that they are sooks, which also helped us to get out of bed to go to mass during Lent.

She told us in very great detail about the miracles of many of the saints. She told us in such a way that you would never doubt for one moment that those miracles had taken place. She told us that God could do anything, that you could pray and God could do anything. She was a good example of God doing anything. She was the hand of God, looking back on it. Bobby Glass, who was just below me at the Cloncurry Convent School, topped the state in the scholarship exam, which was in the eighth grade. In those days in Queensland you had to pass the scholarship exam or you were not allowed to go on to secondary school. If you got a good pass you got a government scholarship which helped you to go away to boarding school, because we did not have any local high school in Cloncurry.

In all her years of teaching this remarkable lady had never had a single student fail scholarship. The failure rates were about 30 or 40 per cent, and we were kids from very rough backgrounds in Cloncurry. I think it was there that I learned to fight very young because I was the only kid sent to school wearing shoes. It was a fast way to learn how to fight. As to her characteristics, yes, she was very liberal with the cane, and I was most certainly on the receiving end of it on many occasions.

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