Page 1847 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 2 May 2012
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of support to non-government schools here in the ACT. That is why ACT non-government schools continue to get the lowest level of government support in the country, as Mr Doszpot has outlined.
Let us just be honest about it. If that is your position, then be honest about it. Do not hide from it. Do not pretend your position is something different. If your position has changed, recant your previous votes and statements, back it up and give fairer funding. But until you do that with actions, we can only assume that that continues to be this government’s position, as expressed by the Chief Minister in her vote, and the Greens’ position, as expressed in their policy documents that were put out before the last federal election.
I do want to say a few words about what a wonderful sector the Catholic sector is and the wonderful contribution it makes. It has educated tens of thousands—in fact, hundreds of thousands—of people over the years here in Canberra who are mostly not wealthy. They are people who just have chosen to send their children for a Catholic education. That is something that we believe in, that we believe they should have the right to do. We believe they should have the right to do that with real, genuine government support.
We know that there are many activities occurring for Catholic Schools Week. We know that Good Shepherd in Amaroo have celebrated with a cooking competition where students had to cook dishes using only two ingredients from the school’s garden. We know there is Holy Spirit primary in Nicholls who use Catholic Schools Week as an occasion for their robotics team, the small particles, to show off their skills at the G-Gungahlin shopping centre. They participated at the international RoboCup competition in Turkey last July.
I would also like to acknowledge some of the recent activities of some of our Catholic schools. At St Mary MacKillop college, my old school, principal Michael Lee has been nominated by the college as secondary principal of the year in the inaugural Australian awards for outstanding teaching and school leadership. These events are conducted by the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership. I think that Michael Lee has shown some outstanding leadership at MacKillop college.
We know that at MacKillop college Nelson Mendonca was the college dux who scored an outstanding ATAR of 99.85, one of the highest in the territory, and that 18 per cent of students received an ATAR above 90, with 45 per cent earning over 80. Well done to MacKillop college, which continues to do good things in the Tuggeranong Valley.
St Anthony’s parish primary school in Wanniassa recently had a link up with Commander Dan Burbank at the international space station. Peter and Loretta Menham and Leah Malpas and her team of teachers all worked hard to coordinate this extraordinary event.
We have got St Thomas the Apostle Catholic primary school in Kambah, which is also my old primary school. It has a wonderful school community. We know that they will be holding their Mothers Day on 4 and 10 May. In their words, “Mothers Day is
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