Feast Day of St Joseph

Mr WILLIAMS (MacKillop) (15:20): Before I address the matter that I want to bring to the house's attention today, I just want to make comment about something that happened in the house earlier this morning in private members' time when the government, at the behest of the member for Elder, used its numbers to wrest control of private members' time from the members. This is something I have argued consistently in the many years I have been here. Private members have very limited time and very limited opportunity to bring matters to the attention of the house and—

The Hon. J.M. Rankine interjecting:

The ACTING SPEAKER (Hon. S.W. Key): Order!

Mr WILLIAMS: —when the government uses its numbers to take control of private members' time away from private members, it is a travesty of the use of the house. I would just warn members opposite, you will be in opposition one day—the sooner the better—and you will get what is coming to you.

I do rise here today to bring something much more important to the attention of the house and it is a much happier set of events. The Feast Day of St Joseph is celebrated, certainly by Catholics, on 19 March and this year, the community of the Josephites, or the Sisters of St Joseph, celebrated 150 years since their establishment by St Mary MacKillop in Penola in my electorate. Indeed, 19 March 1866 is recognised as the very day that Mary MacKillop, then a young woman, decided to form a sisterhood of like-minded women to support particularly needy children and also needy women.

It was a great day in Penola. Penola is very proud of the heritage that it has due to the work of Mary MacKillop and celebrates it whenever it can and, indeed, there was great celebration in the town that day. It started with an open-air mass in the Mary MacKillop Stable School park which is not near what is now the Mary MacKillop Interpretive Centre or the Catholic church or the schoolhouse. It is on the other side of the town, but it is where she started her work way back in the 1860s.

An open-air mass was attended not just by many of the sisters from throughout Australia but also the current bishop of Adelaide, Archbishop Wilson, Emeritus Archbishop Faulkner and indeed the Governor of South Australia, who unveiled a plaque in that park. The mass was celebrated by a significant number of priests, virtually all of whom had previously been stationed in the Penola parish, and it was truly a wonderful day of celebration. It is a life worth celebrating and Mary MacKillop has been described as one of the greatest female Australians ever.

I invite anybody to visit the interpretive centre in Penola and stand where she stood as a young woman and read about and learn about her story as a very young woman coming to Penola as the governess for the family of a cousin of hers—the Cameron family—to educate their children. Mary MacKillop, as a very young woman, realised that not only were there children of the family she was governess to but also there were a number of children of local farmhands and other people who were working in and around Penola Station, and these children had neither the means nor the opportunity to be educated.

She saw this as something that she could do and dedicate her life to, and indeed she did. Whilst undertaking that work, she met and formed an enduring friendship with Father Tenison-Woods, who was a local priest stationed in Penola, and from that, together, they grew this idea of forming the sisterhood. The sisters of St Joseph, I understand, are now all over the world. The members of the order number between 800 and 900 and they operate in all states in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Peru, East Timor, Scotland and Brazil. I invite all members to take the opportunity to come to Penola and learn the story of our St Mary MacKillop.