Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to endorse the eloquent remarks made by the member for Casey on that matter.

It is a great pleasure to be able to speak today about the Narre Community Learning Centre, a great learning centre in my electorate, and its annual high achiever awards. I had the honour a few weeks ago of attending these awards. The Narre Community Learning Centre is an organisation that provides new pathways of learning and provides alternative opportunities in life for people who go through those pathways. Headed by its chief executive officer, Wayne Hewitt, Narre Community Learning Centre helps people to undertake vocational training in areas like computer courses for over 50s, certificates in business, aged-care work, first aid, and health and wellbeing courses.

The centre employs a number of full-time and part-time staff in Melbourne south-east, which is one of Melbourne’s largest growth corridors, as well as its trainers and assessors, and it is ably supported by its many volunteers. It is a registered training organisation that provides a very valuable and needed service to the whole electorate. The centre also has programs for adult learners, such as certificates in adult education, that have later-year high school equivalence. In this context, the Australian government was able to provide just under $1.5 million recently for the Narre Community Learning Centre to construct new educational facilities and additional training space to meet the high demands that the centre experiences.

I want to focus on a very extraordinary young person that I met at the high achiever awards, a young constituent of mine called Emily Kilpatrick. She was awarded the 2009 Courtney Park Memorial Youth of the Year award, which is named in honour of Courtney Park, a 70-year-old who died in 2006 after suffering from an asthma attack. Emily’s mum was also at the awards. Emily was enrolled in the year 10 equivalent certificate II course in adult education at Narre. This young person, at 16, is about to become a mother, and she has endured significant other difficulties and hurdles in her life. But, due to the quality and incredible strength of this young woman, she has never used the challenges that she faces as an excuse to neglect her education. She shows great maturity, great strength and great courage and determination in her approach to life and to her studies, and as a result has completed her certificate II in adult education.

Emily is a wonderful example of what can be achieved by a young person. She is a wonderful young person with a tremendous work ethic, a work ethic that has been very pervasive, rubbing off on her classmates, among whom she has formed a reputation as someone who is always willing to lend a helping hand. Even through pregnancy and illness, Emily has strived to ensure that she is educated and she is setting up opportunities in her life. What an exceptional young individual I met at those high achiever awards. (Time expired)