Melissa Parke (Fremantle, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to congratulate Palmyra Primary School on recently being awarded the Troy Cook Youth Award from the Western Australian Department of Indigenous Affairs. The school received this award in recognition of its work in promoting and enacting reconciliation within the school community. The school took up the challenge of promoting reconciliation following the historic apology to the nation’s Indigenous populations on 13 February 2008. The school’s first action was a Sorry to the Stolen Generations and Acknowledgement of Country Assembly held in March. At that event they sang Sorry Song, written by Fremantle local Kerry Fletcher. Since this assembly, the school community has incorporated an acknowledgement of country into their assembly program, created a six-seasons Noongar garden which provides bush tucker year-round, explored the local area’s Indigenous heritage with artist Toogar Morrison and the students’ choir has sung at the Willagee Community Centre and the City of Fremantle’s Sorry Day event. As one of the students, aged seven, said, ‘The whole school sang Sorry Song and I wished that it never happened to you and I feel sorry for you’. The students will be singing again this weekend at the Wardarnji Aboriginal Cultural Festival, to be held at the Fremantle Esplanade. I would like to congratulate the students at Palmyra Primary School and the staff at the school—in particular, Kathy Stevens, the school’s music teacher; Mark Simmonds, year 7 teacher; and Hugh McCracken, the school principal.