Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to pay tribute to one of the great schools of Australia, Scotch College. Located in the heart of my electorate of Kooyong, Scotch is a tower of learning; a hub of sporting activity and excellence; and an educational institution which graduates young men with the very best community values of respect, responsibility and good citizenship.

Last year the Old Scotch Collegians Association, under the presidency of Bruce Brown, celebrated its centenary year. The association produced a wonderful book titled, With a Keen but Loving Eye, detailing the school's transition, from its inception with the support of Reverend James Forbes in 1851, then with just 40 students, to the current day with its student cohort of nearly 2,000.

Like their predecessors, these Scotch boys will go on to shape the future of our country, as Scotch alumni are represented in the Who's Who and the Australian Dictionary of Biography more times than students from any other school in Australia. From the armed forces to academia, from politics to the professions, Scotch graduates have made their mark on the national landscape. Tragically, over the course of the two world wars, more than 500 'old boys' gave their lives so we could enjoy ours.

Great figures like Sir John Monash, Sir Zelman Cowan, Sir Arthur Robinson, Sir James Balderstone and Jeff Kennett all attended Scotch. Indeed, of my six predecessors in the seat of Kooyong, three were Scotch College graduates, including William Knox, one of the founders of BHP; Sir John Latham, former Chief Justice of the High Court; and Andrew Peacock, a former foreign minister and Liberal leader.

One of the great characteristics of Scotch is the quality of its leadership. Remarkably, in its first hundred years the school was served by just four principals: Robert Lawson, Alexander Morrison, William Littlejohn and Colin Gilray.

They were succeeded by Richard Selby Smith, Colin Healey, Philip Roff, Dr FG Donaldson and the current principal, Tom Batty. Tom, a former head of house and mathematics teacher at Eton, is an outstanding leader and with his wife, Lee, a real asset to the school.

So too at the council level, the school is exceedingly well served by the work of its chairman, the Hon. Dr David Kemp, and his committee. David and his brother, Rod, who both attended the school in the 1950s, and David's son, Charles, who was recently school captain, are all passionate defenders of the best interests of the school.

I conclude by saying how much I have enjoyed my interaction with the Scotch community since becoming the federal member for Kooyong. I have had the opportunity to speak at speech nights in the impressive Memorial Hall, to attend OSCA nights replete with haggis and bagpipes, and to meet many of the parents and leaders of the school, including my good friends Michael Robinson and George Swinburne.

Just as Scotch was synonymous with the early years of Melbourne in the 1850s and made history as one of the two teams—the other being Melbourne Grammar—that participated in the first recorded match of Australian Rules Football in Australia, it will as a school be synonymous with the future of Melbourne, producing as it does the young men who will shape the destiny of our country.

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