Michelle Rowland (Greenway, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Communications) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

One of the great privileges of being a member of parliament is the opportunity one has to spend time with local schools and, when we have a non-sitting week, as we did last week, it is often a very busy time. So I would like to share with the House some of the fantastic experiences I had with some of the local schools in Greenway, which started off on Monday with the launch of the Ride2School event at Glenwood High School where a number of young people were encouraging their peers to start riding to school and to do so safely.

It was also a pleasure later on that morning to join with Holy Cross Primary School at Glenwood for their celebration for the start of Catholic Schools Week. It was wonderful to see so many parents and caregivers attending that event, but I think, most of all, to see the pride that young people took in dressing in some of the traditional outfits of their heritage—so, national dress: everything from saris to some Pacific Islander outfits—and to see them giving such a wonderful sense of and sending such an important message of inclusiveness to our society.

Later on that day I was very pleased to join an International Women's Day event at Girraween High School. Girraween High School is a selective high school, and they hosted a number of young people from around the area—female students as well as male—to participate in a forum on International Women's Day and what leadership means for women. It was a fantastic event to attend. I commend Girraween High School and all the schools that participated in that, which demonstrates that Girraween High certainly is very high achieving in an academic sense but also has such great all-rounders.

I was also very pleased on Tuesday to join in the official opening and blessing and the renaming of Terra Sancta College in Schofields to St John Paul II Catholic College. Again, this is a growing, once rural, area in my electorate which is now subject to much land development.

It was wonderful on Friday to attend the whole school mass to celebrate Catholic Schools Week at St Bernadette's Primary Lalor Park, which was once my school, and to round that off with the attendance at the St Anthony's liturgy at Girraween.

I always have great hope, as we lead into Harmony Day in particular, when I see the calibre, the quality and the confidence of these young people. I pay tribute to each one of them, and to their teachers and their caregivers—but, in particular, to those young people themselves, who are able to hold conversations and to be so courteous and so prompt, and who I know are learning so well. I congratulate all of them.