Visitors

The SPEAKER: I would like to welcome to parliament today students from 17 different schools throughout South Australia who are guests of the Minister for Education and myself. They are all winners of Muriel Matters Awards after showing great leadership and advocacy for topics that are very near and dear to their hearts. It was terrific to spend the lunchbreak with them hearing some of their stories and to hand out their awards alongside the Minister for Education. Some people might call you future leaders; I think you already are quite clearly the leaders of today in your school community and wider community. I congratulate you all on the great work that you have done.

I would also like to thank Frances Bedford, the former member for Florey, for the 25 years she spent in this place, never wasting a day or an hour in educating the rest of us about how important Muriel Matters was to not only South Australia but the world. I think these awards have been handed out for the past four years. We have the former education minister to my left, and the Speakers who went before me who agreed to bestow these awards on great leaders in local school communities also need to be congratulated on the hard work that they have put in.

Nat is here from the Parliamentary Education Office, and everyone from the education department and from the schools who have made this possible: well done. We expect to see at least a few of you 17 in here some time in the near future as members of parliament.