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House of Assembly - Fifty-Second Parliament, Second Session (52-2)
2012-02-14 Daily Xml
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MORIALTA CITIZENSHIP AWARDS

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (16:04): I would like to take five minutes this afternoon to talk about the winners of the 2011 Morialta Citizenship Awards. In doing so, I should note that this is the first day that we have our proceedings webcast in audio format and, with that in mind, I would like to say hello to my constituent Michael Mormina, who has just sent me a Facebook message to say that he is listening this afternoon. I hope that he is enjoying it along with everybody else.

Previous members for Morialta have for a number of years sponsored Charles Campbell secondary school, which is now known as Charles Campbell College, and Norwood Morialta High School in two Morialta Citizenship Awards. In my first year in this place, I took the opportunity to have a bit of a think about this. Of course I continued the tradition of supporting them, but I felt that the idea of nurturing and encouraging citizenship in our school students was one that should be extended to all our school students, not just withheld to the public high schools. So, at the beginning of last year I wrote to all my local schools and described the idea that, if any of them would like it, I would be happy to sponsor a citizenship award—something to give a bit of recognition and encouragement to those students who had gone above and beyond.

We have academic awards, sporting awards and, in some of our schools, we have spiritual awards as well. I felt that it was appropriate for a local member of parliament to support an award that encouraged citizenship and, with that in mind, most of my schools were very happy to do so, and it became a tremendous part of their graduation ceremonies at the end of last year.

I want to particularly acknowledge those students who were successful in being awarded the Morialta Citizenship Awards in 2011, all of them selected by their local schools for different purposes. I will just go through them, and I have more information about some of them than others. The first one is Brooklyn Saliba, the Morialta Citizenship Award winner from Charles Campbell secondary school for her volunteer work at the Campbelltown Library and Toy Library. She has been involved in welcoming ceremonies for new City of Campbelltown residents. At school she has been involved in Student Voice and Kiwanis, and all this while she kept up an excellent academic record through her year 12 studies. She cared for others and was a role model through her community involvement and commitment.

At Norwood Morialta High School, we had two awards, one for year 12 and one for year 10. The year 12 Morialta Citizenship Award winner was Aaron Dela Paz. Aaron came to Australia from the Philippines in 2010 with his family and he immediately integrated into the local community where he contributes a great deal. Last year, he stood somewhere near where the member for Goyder currently sits, and I saw him making great contributions to the youth parliament. He is also involved in the United Nations Youth State Conference; he attended the Institute of Justice Studies seminars; he represented Norwood Morialta at the Annual Hawke Lecture and the Elliott Johnston memorial lecture; he is a member of the advisory board of the Youth Affairs Council of South Australia; a mentor for Multicultural Youth SA; and he continues to volunteer in our community. The year 10 student awarded from Norwood Morialta High School was Nikki Lombardi and, while I have less information about her, I met her and she was a fine contributor.

The primary schools had some terrific awardees. At Campbelltown Primary School, Monique Baker was the award winner for her house captaincy at sports day, contributing in SAPSASA netball, and for being a member of the school choir and other things. At Sunrise Christian School, they had two award winners: Jai Kenyatta Wakombe in year 6, and Naomi DiGiuseppe. If I had more time I would go through their inspirational achievements, but for the moment I will have to leave it at that. Elizabeth Monk was the winner at Thorndon Park Primary School, and I should also acknowledge Elizabeth's older sister, Penelope, who won a Queen's Scout award from the Tranmere Sea Scouts last year.

At Rostrevor College, Conor MacDonald was the awardee. Stradbroke schools had three: Lawrence Mancini, Claudia Parrella and Jacinta Mustaca. The Athelstone schools nominated the entire kitchen garden team as the Morialta Citizenship Award winners for 2011. This group of students came together in their school time and in their spare time and redesigned the garden and play area at the Athelstone primary schools. It is now a kitchen garden that produces food and is also integrated into the school's curriculum. It is a terrific initiative, and I commend the school for that work. In presenting the Athelstone schools awards, there were a lot to hand out, and it was an enjoyable afternoon.

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