Matt Thistlethwaite (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

The students of Ntaria School wrote the following speech with me when I volunteered at their school in August. They said:

We are the senior students of the Ntaria School. We are proud Western Arrernte women. We live in our community 125 kilometres west of Alice Springs. Our people have lived on Arrernte land for about 4,000 years. Famous Australian artists Albert Namatjira and Otto Pareroultja are from our community. Many of the students in our class are related to Otto and Albert. We enjoy painting pictures on our country. We visit significant and beautiful sights in our area and paint and draw the landscapes incorporating sacred images.

Our students' paintings are displayed at the Araluen Arts Centre in an exhibition called Five generations: the strength of Namatjira’s legacy.

Michelle's artwork was chosen from the whole school as a gift for Queen Elizabeth. The Queen wrote a letter to us thanking us for doing the painting. The gesture re-enacts an event of Prince Philip being presented with a painting by Albert Namatjira.

We are in Canberra as part of an exhibition of our art works called New movements in Hermannsburg art. Our artworks are new because we are the first generation of Arrernte artists to display digital works.

We appreciate the education we get at the Ntaria School and the support of our teachers, particularly Wendy and Matt, who helped us with this speech. We like the NASCA ARMtour visits to our school and we enjoy the support of the role models.

I thank the students for the honour of visiting their school and their country and for the lessons they taught me about their culture. I encourage all MPs to attend their art exhibition at five o'clock this afternoon in parliament.

See this speech in context