Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It was a pleasure on Monday last week to celebrate Australian National Flag Day with a number of my local schools. Parramatta High School has hosted the National Flag Day ceremony for surrounding schools since 2001. The day commemorates that day back on 3 September 1901 when the Australian flag design was first displayed following a competition that attracted some 33,000 entries. Given that I was commemorating the day with school students, I thought it was worth mentioning that of the five original prizewinners in that flag competition in 1901 two were teenagers—a schoolboy, Ivor Evans, and an apprentice optician, Leslie Hawkins.

Last Monday the flag was raised by three very able flag bearers—James Feng, Anthony Liu and Mohammed Arif, who did a fine job. Also in attendance were Ali Al Zaidi, Meghna Alapatt and John Pinar Akin from Parramatta High School; Dwayne Medoca from Parramatta Public School; Alfred Aye and Ebru Sazak from Parramatta West Public School; Abbinesh Laguthaas and Ramya Sutheskumar from Westmead Public School; and Jack Morgan and Teannie Makdesi from Hilltop Road Public School. As in every year, they were joined by representatives from Legacy and the Parramatta RSL sub-branch. It was a great day once again and I thank them all for helping to celebrate National Flag Day.

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