Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There are 50 schools in Moreton, one I particularly love to visit is Milpera, because they produce people like Corporal Husham Hamid, who is here in the chamber. He was born in Egypt of parents from Sudan and then ended up in the Australian Army. Milpera educates the children of refugees and people from migrant backgrounds. It's essentially Brisbane's intensive English language preparation centre. Milpera aims to facilitate good settlement and a strong sense of belonging through carefully chosen learning experiences. Students learn how to thrive in an Australian classroom. In some cases, these children have never, ever been inside a classroom or taken any formal education classes in their first language or even their second language.

The teachers at Milpera are very experienced and qualified to teach English as an additional language. Milpera also has a number of bilingual teacher aides, who provide cultural support as well as helping students with their acquisition of English. Children learn the ways of working in an Australian classroom through the school's key values of being hardworking, respectful, kind and ready for learning. The student centred curriculum uses highly contextualised language learning experiences and ensures that students develop the English language needed for their future learning pathways, whether that be in the Army or other directions.

The school has also developed one of the Queensland Department of Education's largest volunteer teams. Children spend about 18 months at Milpera, on average, before they are then able to attend a school closer to home, such as Yeronga State High School. I went to Milpera for their recent NAIDOC Week celebrations and had a quick talk with acting principal Julie Peel. She introduced me to two students, Ang and Rachel. Ang had arrived from Vietnam and Rachel from France via Canada. Ang and Rachel took me through a PowerPoint they'd prepared as part of their assessment to build an argument and convince the audience of their point of view. Ang and Rachael had carefully structured their arguments and provided well-researched evidence to support their points of view in their new language, English.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives

Sitting suspended from 09:52 to 10:05

After meeting Ang and Rachel, we then joined Milpera's NAIDOC Week celebrations. It was wonderful to see the voices of our oldest living culture speaking as well as this nation's newest voices. To quote the poem: 'Irrespective of where my ancestral village is, the earth feeds the heart—great affection for there, loyalty to here. To tell people they can't serve two masters starts with the assumption that they are a servant. The free serve no-one. The good ones help all but serve nobody.' Thank you, Milpera. Thank you very much to Ang and Rachel. Thank you, Milpera, for a wonderful experience at NAIDOC and for all the many students you have turned out over the years, including for giving us Corporal Husham Hamid, who I hope will go on to have a long, healthy career in the ADF and not be scarred by his time here at parliament.