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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fourth Parliament, First Session (54-1)
2019-07-02 Daily Xml
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Mawson Electorate Schools

The Hon. L.W.K. BIGNELL (Mawson) (15:35): I want to send a shout-out to all school students in the electorate of Mawson. I love getting out to visit the schools in our local area, and it is something that I have been doing now for 13 years. Those kids I visited in reception back in 2006 are now of voting age, so it is very important that you get out there and talk to the students right from the get-go and then maintain those relationships.

I love that I can be driving down the street and get out of my car at McLaren Vale, Willunga or Aldinga and kids will just come up and start having a chat with so much confidence and polite demeanour. They are inquisitive, and they have good ideas as well. I remember being in McLaren Vale in the December-January school holidays this year when someone came up to me on their scooter (there were about three of them) and said, 'Mr Bignell, Mr Bignell, we need a new skate park because Johnny just broke his arm. You should have seen it—it was gory and there were bones sticking out,' all that sort of stuff. These are the conversations I love having with the students.

We have all sorts of schools in the electorate of Mawson—government schools and non-government schools, area schools, primary schools and secondary schools. All of them are full of obviously wonderful teachers and leaders, but the students just blow me away all the time with how confident they are and how good they are at their academic and other pursuits. Just in the last week or so, I had the pleasure of visiting two schools on Kangaroo Island: the Kingscote campus of the Kangaroo Island Community Education school and the Penneshaw campus.

Last year, the Kangaroo Island Community Education system, which oversees Parndana, Penneshaw and Kingscote, was named the best regional school in Australia. I am delighted to inform the house today that they have been short-listed again for the finals, which will be held in Canberra in August, so we wish everyone there, including Maxine, Peter and Leanne—everyone in terms of those who run the school and all the students—all the very best.

It was really amazing to hear a young Aboriginal student, Jasmine, get up at the school assembly in Kingscote without any notes and give an amazing briefing on an Indigenous STEM seminar she went to, including a visit to the Botanic Garden here in Adelaide. They had to cut it short by a day because the rough weather was coming and they had to get back before the ferries were cut. Again, that is something that the students learn about—the resilience of island life and that sometimes you can be cut off.

I also heard very exciting recaps of the SAPSASA netball and football competition from the students in Kingscote and down at Penneshaw last week when I talked to some of the students there as I gave them some flags for their flagpole. They were so proud of everything they were working on at school. They showed me their STEM centre and their art lab and told me all about the musical they were working on. They also said during the assembly that they were going to do a sleep-out this week to raise money for homeless people and to raise awareness about those who are homeless. I slipped them 50 bucks and said, 'Good luck with that, and I hope you get a nice warm night.' It is unlikely in Penneshaw in July, but good luck to them anyway.

On the subject of homeless people, about three weeks ago the Tatachilla Lutheran College grade 6s came here on an excursion. There were 62 kids, but I did not hear a peep out of them, except for excellent questions. When they left, they encountered a homeless gentleman out the front of parliament and they felt sorry for him. He looked a bit hungry and cold, so they gave him some of their packaged food and started talking to him.

It turned out that normally he busks, but his saxophone was broken, so these grade 6 kids from Tatachilla Lutheran College went back to their school and talked about what they could do to help him out. They got together with some of the parents and other students and raised $180 for this gentleman not only to get his saxophone fixed but also to buy him a bag to protect the saxophone and keep it dry. Well done to those wonderful kids at Tatachilla Lutheran College.

I was also there on Friday talking to the year 10 students and looking at the work that they had done during Business Week. They had split into groups of 10 or 11, 10 companies were formed and they had to come up with a business model, they had to come up with an app with a video—all these things about running a business. It was held over four days and there were eight quarters, as in financial quarters, so they had to make big decisions twice a day on the future of how their company was going.

There were some great stories and some immense failures that were celebrated as much as the victories were because what it did was to teach these year 10 students at Tatachilla Lutheran College about running a business and what it is like to interact in a business. Those students are out doing work experience this week in our local area. I wish them and everyone at all our schools the very best.

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