Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On indulgence: I too am feeling quite blessed to be here tonight to speak on the canonisation of Mary MacKillop. As a teacher of proud Catholic roots, to be able to join with other members of the House in marking the birth and recognition of our first Australian saint is a great honour. This is a great time for Australian Catholics and I have been humbled by the well wishes of people from other faiths and indeed from people without a faith who simply have wished us Catholics well in our celebrations.

There is so much that is universal and admirable in the life St Mary of the Cross. Her inspirational life has been well documented over recent days, as it has in this chamber and in the House in recent days as well. She was a woman of incredible faith and a woman of great courage. She was a great teacher and a great leader with a burning passion for social justice. She stood up to bullying authority. It is becoming apparent that she knew how to lobby as well and to persevere. St Mary’s work touched many people in her lifetime and beyond. In fact, many of the Josephite girls that I have known who live on the Central Coast have said to me that one thing they recall from their years of study at St Joseph’s at East Gosford is the statement from Mary that you should never see a need without doing something about it.

I turn in my remarks now to a reflection on Mary’s influence in the seat of Robertson. Mary MacKillop actually arrived in the seat of Robertson in 1887 at a beautiful place not very far from where we live in Bensville. She and several other sisters arrived by ferry at Kincumber with 22 homeless boys in March of that year. It is said that the community was established fairly quickly and they certainly were very industrious. One of the most longstanding stories concerns a boy named Philip O’Brien, who was extremely ill at age 15. He had such affection for Mary MacKillop that he asked for her as he was dying at Kincumber. I am sure that Mary was very caught up in many other works but she travelled from Sydney—which was no small journey in those days, the last part of which was by ferry to the orphanage at Kincumber—to be at Philip’s side to comfort him in his final hours.

One of the things I have spoken about in this House is the beauty of the area in which we live. I can actually see the orphanage at Kincumber from our home at Bensville. Each day when we get up and look over the mangroves to Brisbane Water, not far off to the right over the oyster leases that sit in Cockle Bay we see a Celtic cross on the Holy Cross Church and we also see the orphanage, which now operates as a Josephite spirituality centre. There are a number of really important old buildings on the site and if any of the members here or people from other areas of Australia come to visit Robertson they will be able to take a tour and see the first brick building that was erected there in 1900 and formed the schoolrooms for the children to learn in. Very interestingly, there is a swimming pool there and a water tank. This was built to make sure that the whole place was completely self-sustaining. So she was not only a woman of vision in terms of education, she also had a sustainability angle, which was very sensible. The sewerage and septic systems were installed along with electric light, as Mary MacKillop and the people who followed her made sure that the care of the young men who ended up in that orphanage was taken on very well.

One of the great joys of living in Kincumber has been the picnics we have had with our parish on the grounds of the orphanage. John Smith is a gentleman who came into our lives and is a deacon in our parish. You may have seen a story in the weekend’s edition of the Sun Herald in which he shared his story of being an orphan. John Smith is actually the deacon who attended each of our children’s baptisms and he is a regular parishioner at Holy Cross Church where we attend. Mr Smith had this to say:

The nuns were my parents. I never saw my mother in my life. I’ve never even seen a picture of her and I don’t know where my dad is. The sisters are the only mother I ever knew.

I have brothers and sisters who live up here but I haven’t seen them. I might be a twin.

…            …            …

It was tops growing up here … A lot of old boys have come back over the years.’

Mr Smith said that he ‘felt good’ about the canonisation, as many of us do, and declared that:

[Mary] deserves it, there’s no doubt about that. What she’s done for Australia is unbelievable.

Apart from the orphanage that we see at Kincumber, there is a local school that the Josephites have established. It provides great Catholic education for girls on the Central Coast. It is diocesan school and it serves all of the communities from the parishes of East Gosford, Mangrove Mountain, Kincumber, North Gosford, Wyoming, Terrigal, Erina, Woy Woy and Umina. For those of us who know where the Donnison Street entrance to the Union Hotel is—it is a car park these days—apparently that was the site on which the school was established. It then moved to East Gosford, not far from the current site of the secondary school that continues to offer this profound education in which young women are taught to follow the college motto, which was established from a reading of Micah: to act justly, to love tenderly and walk humbly with your God. Certainly those qualities of just action, tender loving and humility are things we have heard about Mary MacKillop in the last few weeks.

The current principal is Stephen Walsh. I had the pleasure of going to the school during the most recent campaign with Simon Crean to have a look at the developments that are underway there. I think Mary was a visionary for the future and at that school there is still a sense of really making sure that there are the very best opportunities for young people to be educated in things that they are passionate about. We have heard the member for Kennedy speaking about the influence of a Josephite education in enabling him as to his life—and, yes, we did hear about the cane but I cannot tell you that that has been the experience that I have heard about to do with the Josephite sisters. These are the words that the college articulate as to what they are trying to do at St Joseph’s and I think they epitomise what Mary MacKillop and her story tell us as Australians:

Much of what we are trying to do at St. Joseph’s is related to the development in our community of the spirit of Mary MacKillop.

Hers was a uniquely Australian spirituality of a lay woman whose tremendous faith gave her a clear vision of how to minister to the needs of Australians in those difficult days of settlement.

Her single-mindedness in making education available for poor children, rather than the relatively better off town and country children, brought her, at times, into conflict with the institutional Church. She wanted to see her sisters ‘up country’ in twos and threes serving small communities and living in solidarity with them. In this sense, the Josephites took the Church to where the people were.

There is a real pride developing amongst the girls at St. Joseph’s belonging to a Josephite school where the name and works of Mary MacKillop—

now St Mary of the Cross—

are honoured. In our curriculum and in our awareness of the needs of the community in which we live, we try to carry on in the spirit of Mary MacKillop. Many girls—

at St Joseph’s—

work ... in school service in ways as diverse as counting the newsletters and covering books—

and serving the local community. Also:

Our students and their families generously support a number of charitable appeals throughout the year. Many of the students commit themselves to service to the local, national and global communities through a variety of social justice initiatives.

One of the important things that the canonisation of St Mary of the Cross, our Mary MacKillop, has liberated in the public space is a recognition of the place of faith and spirituality in the current lives of ordinary Australians. It also reminds us of the place of faith in the Catholic Australian tradition that was instrumental in providing education to many Australians who were likely to miss out on receiving it. The schools today of Mary MacKillop, St Mary of the Cross, carry on her founding mission: to relieve suffering and to bring hope in today’s world. These are such Australian aspirations. In the mission of St Joseph’s College we see Mary’s inspiration. Today, in my seat of Robertson, men and women are working together to help form young women who will act justly, giving them a Catholic view of the world, enabling them to learn the highest standards achievable within a nurturing community, creating authentic relationships based on Gospel values, empowering them to make a difference in the world in the spirit of Mary MacKillop. The values they articulate are friendship, truth, respect, forgiveness, justice, love, compassion and hope. They are ones that the Josephite community are sharing with all Australians at this time.

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