Heysen Electorate

Mr TEAGUE (Heysen) (15:33): I rise to celebrate the fact that we are able, as members in this place, to welcome visitors. I think almost daily certainly the opportunity is frequently taken up by members, on behalf of their communities, to bring to the chamber and, indeed, through the parliament, visitors from schools in our electorates. It is one of those opportunities to work with school-aged children that I welcome very much.

I want to bring to the house's attention, in particular today, visits in recent weeks from two schools within Heysen: first, 27 year 6 students from St Catherine's at Stirling, who came along and who were seated where we all sit in the chamber. By experiencing and being in the place, we had the opportunity to go through the way in which the parliament functions, to think about the history of the place, things that have been achieved in the parliament and the sorts of things that they as students, thinking about life ahead, might bear in mind, as they have an appreciation of one of our most important public institutions.

I want to pay tribute in particular to the students of St Catherine's, because we worked through a whole range of different moving parts of the place, how it works and all the rest of it. We then wanted to put into practice the functioning of the place by having a debate on a topic, as is often the case. There was a keenness in the cohort to say, 'Right, actually what we want to debate is nuclear energy.' Often schoolchildren will debate whether or not homework is a good idea or whether we should have school uniforms, whether we should go to school every day or not, but on this occasion St Catherine's year 6 students wanted to debate whether or not nuclear energy was a good thing for South Australia.

We proceeded then to have a series of contributions from the students, views expressed for and against, that certainly did the school a great service, did the speakers and participants in the debate a great service. I think it would have actually reflected well in terms of a debate that we might have about that matter. It was certainly memorable, and I want to praise the students for their thoughtfulness in that and the entirety of the visit, and so it is a shout-out to St Catherine's and particularly those year 6 students who were visiting.

Also in recent weeks, I was fortunate to welcome back to the parliament students from Norton Summit Primary School. It is always a very special occasion to have students from Norton Summit come to the parliament. This is special about the South Australian parliament, which is unlike the federal parliament, where the history only goes back as far as Federation, and it is a relatively modern thing, and then if we sit in the new parliament, then all the more, the history and the opportunity to think about those members past really only goes back to 1988 and the opening of the new parliament when it comes to sitting in the seat.

Students from Norton Summit, however, in this place that has been here throughout the course of the last century, going back to 1890, were able to sit in the very seat that Sir Thomas Playford sat in and look up at the portrait of Sir Thomas on the wall of the chamber. Of course, Sir Thomas Playford came from Norton Summit, and his statue sits outside of Norton Summit Primary School. I can tell you that it is particularly meaningful to those students.

In this case, it was all of the student representative council students of all ages through the school who were here. They participated as well in a debate about whether dogs or cats were better. This was one of those fascinating debates, because even after opinions were expressed on both sides, there was a division that proved up that there was unanimity; there was a unanimous outcome. All voted in favour of the proposition that dogs are, in fact, better than cats. It was very revealing, and so we moved to the Legislative Council to prove up the merits of that particular proposition. So a shout-out to Norton Summit Primary, and welcome back again, I hope, soon.