Maria Vamvakinou (Calwell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I had the opportunity recently to visit some of my fabulous local primary schools that are part of the broader Community Hubs Network in my electorate. I was accompanied on that visit by the member for Scullin in his capacity as the shadow assistant minister for education, and I want to thank him for spending that time with me. Community hubs deliver local information around education, health, community and settlement to families that are in need of those services, and they do so in a familiar space—usually a primary school, because schools, by their very nature, are already attached to the everyday life of parents and children in our local community.

Calwell has the highest intake of Syrian and Iraqi refugees in Victoria, as part of the Special Humanitarian Program. That's why I guess 70 per cent of the school hubs in Victoria are found in my electorate, responding to the needs of our newly arrived constituents and, in doing so, giving them a chance to live a full life here in Australia. I want to thank the CEO of Community Hubs Australia, Dr Sonja Hood, for organising the visit to two of our local school hubs—St Dominic's Primary School and the Meadow Heights Primary School.

The St Dominic's Primary School community hub is led by hub leader Caroline Menassa, who does an outstanding job in supporting the families of the school community, especially the mums. While we were there, the member for Scullin and I got the opportunity to call in on an English class, and we saw firsthand the enthusiasm and the commitment of both the mature-age female students as well as their very, very committed teacher. I want to commend St Dominic's Primary School Principal Gayle Connor, who is so incredibly hands on with the school's hub program. In fact, Gayle is often known to take time out of her very busy schedule to provide the women with art classes—about which she says, 'The art created is secondary; it's about the conversation and getting to know the women. That comes first.'

In addition, every Tuesday, the community hub provides an oral translation of the school newsletter. It does so in Arabic, Vietnamese and Chinese. This initiative enables the families to immerse themselves fully into their child's learning and growth by creating a dialogue between the school and the parents. This also gives the school an opportunity to talk to the parents on other issues in addition to their children's education.

The other hub that we visited was at Meadow Heights Primary School, a great public school where hub leader Salwa Salem does a fantastic job in creating a safe and harmonious space that promotes building strong and meaningful relationships with the school community and their families. This hub is very busy and very proactive. The weekly timetable is filled with activities, including Arabic playgroups for pre-schoolers as well as culturally nuanced in-house childcare services to assist the mums. This hub has a strong emphasis on health care, teaching mums how to be healthy and how to keep their families healthy through proper nutrition and exercise. The hub also employs a speech pathologist to assist the refugee families with any issues they may have with speaking and learning a new language. I want to thank Meadow Heights Primary School Principal Margaret Leach and assistant principals Yasher Duyal and Domenica De Fillippis for the love and dedication they put into the hub to make sure it works well for their community.

On our visit we also took the opportunity to visit Sirius College, which is in my electorate. It's always a great pleasure to visit Sirius College. It's one of the most successful academically-oriented schools in my electorate, with a very high success rate at VCE each year for at least the last 20 years—certainly in all the time that I have been the member for Calwell. On this occasion, the member for Scullin and I got the opportunity to meet with some of the VCE girls at the school.

As our visit was held directly after the last parliamentary sitting week in August, Senator Hanson's burqa stunt was an issue that the girls were very keen to talk about. These confident, intelligent young women could not comprehend how the dignity of our Australian Senate could be so publicly disgraced by the opportunistic actions of Senator Hanson. These young Australian girls of Muslim faith were very unimpressed that their faith, as they put it to me, was mocked in this undignified and uncalled for way. I reassured them, of course, that Senator Hanson would be but a passing phase, and the future of this country lay in the intelligence, resilience and dignity of its young people—young people such as these young women, who aspire to go on to make a positive contribution to the future of Australia as others have before them. (Time expired)