Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to put on record my support for and recognition of one of the schools in my electorate, Sebastopol College. There was a fairly awful incident that occurred at Sebastopol College last Friday, one which made the national news—the stabbing of one of the students. I do not wish to dwell on the incident that occurred there at all, but I do want to put on record that in the time that I have been involved in the school—some nine or so years now—I can say that the events that happened on Friday bear no resemblance to the school that I have seen develop and grow under the very fantastic principalship of Garry Taylor. It is really an absolutely terrific school.

The school has close to 1,000 students, and every time I have been into the school or interacted with students outside the school they have shown themselves to be a respectful, energetic, interested and terrific group of young people. The principal, Garry Taylor, is probably one of the best secondary school principals I have seen across the country. I am extremely biased, but Garry has really done a fantastic job in leading his team of teachers in growing and developing this school. The school has been absolutely active in pursuing government funding of late. They have had some fantastic announcements and there is another one soon to come. They have been a recipient of the computers in schools fund—195 new computers will be going into Sebastopol College—and I would say that probably once every three weeks, Allan Dennis, from the school, has rung my office to make sure that they were going to get the funding for this program. They have been absolutely determined to increase the number of computers at their school.

I am also particularly pleased that they are one of the recipients of the Local Schools Working Together program. That program has sought to encourage schools to work together with their local communities to develop shared education facilities, and $2.476 million has been allocated to Sebastopol College as the host school—alongside Redan and Sebastopol primary schools—to develop a community hub in this very, very important area of my electorate. I really want to reiterate that this is a fantastic school. The students have worked incredibly hard to make sure that people in the district know what a terrific school it is. It is host to a thousand school students. It was once a much smaller school and, every time I go to their assemblies each year, there is more and more that is on show, whether it is their drama and performance, their hospitality, their engineering trades areas, some of their academic and sporting qualifications or the Army cadets program that they have in the school. All of it shows that the students are a great credit to the school. I really do want to put on record my support for the school. It was a terrible incident that occurred last Friday, but I know that it does not in any way reflect the strength and good conduct of Sebastopol College generally.