Page 1036 - Week 03 - Thursday, 21 March 2019
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These include Arabic, Bangla, Cantonese, Croatian, Dutch, Filipino, Finnish, Greek, German, Hebrew, Hindi, Indonesian, Italian, Karen, Khmer, Korean, Macedonian, Mandarin, Maori, Mon, Japanese, Persian, Polish, Punjabi, Russian, Samoan, Serbian, Sinhalese, Spanish, Swedish, Tamil, Tongan and Vietnamese. What a wonderful gift to our community this is.
On 9 February this year it was my privilege to attend a fundraiser in support of one of these organisations, the Monaro Portuguese School, held at the Queanbeyan showground. I rise today to thank Sara Dias, the school’s coordinator and teacher, for the generous invitation to attend. More than that, I wish to thank Sara for her passion and her determination to enhance and spread the use of the Portuguese language in Canberra and the surrounding region.
She is certainly doing something right. Monaro Portuguese School began with two classes—one for children and one for teenagers—but it now offers four classes—two for beginners, one for intermediate learners and one for adults. I congratulate the entire school community on this success and wish them much more.
The passion and commitment of the school’s supporters were evident on the evening of the fundraiser. I enjoyed the time I got to spend with them. One of the best ways to enter another culture is to enjoy with them their food. The Portuguese dishes available on the evening were all delicious, especially my favourite, a rich egg custard baked in a buttery pastry. Even sweeter, however, were the voices of the young students who entertained attendees by singing in the Portuguese language.
In a motion last November, the Canberra Liberals sought to call upon the ACT government to “work more closely with the Community Language Schools Association to share teaching resources so that language education can be offered in a school setting where needed”. I still believe that to be an important objective. I also think that this government could make it easier for community language schools such as Monaro Portuguese and others to provide evidence of achievement on a student’s school record, something that I have been told is much easier in other jurisdictions.
A multicultural society is also multilingual. I love that aspect of our city’s social landscape and hope that more can be done to increase the acquisition of other languages and to support those already engaged in this task. In the shadow of this year’s International Mother Language Day, I give my very best to Monaro Portuguese School and all other community language schools. “Muito obrigado”, or many thanks.
Yerrabi electorate
MS ORR (Yerrabi) (6.37): I rise this evening to update the Assembly on what has been happening in my electorate of Yerrabi since our last sitting in February. Members may remember that in my last Yerrabi yap I congratulated a number of local cafes on taking the straws suck pledge. I am very pleased to report that since then Sunday in Canberra has officially signed up on the Actsmart website, becoming the first ever Yerrabi business to take the pledge. I would like to reiterate how pleased I am to see the ball rolling on this campaign in my electorate.
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