Anne Urquhart (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

While our students are preparing to return to school in Tasmania, the students, teachers and community of Hillcrest Primary School in Devonport and the wider Tasmanian community remember Peter Dodt, Jalailah Jayne-Maree Jones, Addison Stewart, Jye Sheehan, Zane Mellor and Chace Harrison. Their families now live forever with the tragic event that occurred on 16 December last year, when these six young children were playing on a jumping castle and with inflatable balls at their end-of-year break-up. Something happened that day that threw the castle and balls into the air, causing these children to fall from a great height. The community was rocked by the loss of these six young lives.

Tragically, the parents of these six young children will live with the loss of their child forever, a grief not all of us understand. My deepest condolences go to the families. The staff, the other children, the parents and the first responders were all faced with such a tragic event, which they will carry with them always. The Devonport community and the wider community of Tasmania, of Australia and in fact of the globe reached out with gestures of love and support. For the Hillcrest community, the start of school this year will be unlike any other. The school is working hard to manage the return to school carefully and sensitively.

I send to the Hillcrest community my thoughts and best wishes in healing the loss and hurt, which will be present for a very long time, as many of us still come to terms with that tragic day.