House debates

Tuesday, 26 October 2010

Constituency Statements

Cowan Electorate: St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School

4:18 pm

Photo of Luke SimpkinsLuke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | | Hansard source

On 15 October this year I had the pleasure to once again attend St Anthony’s Catholic Primary School in the suburb of Wanneroo within the electorate of Cowan to congratulate the school on their success in the Dorothea Mackellar poetry awards. This is a national set of awards for schools across Australia. There were over 8,000 individual entries and hundreds of entries by schools from the east coast all the way to the west coast. St Anthony’s for the second time has done exceptionally well, so I would like to congratulate the staff and students today. The responsibility for the program at the school goes to Sandra Corcoran, one of the teachers, but also ably assisted by Carolyn Papotto, Marie-Anne Bond, John Topliss, Brett Love and Ben Wynne.

The students who actually did the work and were the creative ones, and who did so well, were: Kristina Magoutus, Sian Douglas, Keisha Omar, Melanie Maroney, Thomas Murray, Annette Briffa-Healy, Kate Drummond, Shanelle, Lauren Kincaid and Alex Briffa-Healy. The identified talent group also did very well. The Australian runner-up in the junior primary category was Connor Harrison, so an excellent job by Connor. Others in that group who did very well were: Tiana Puglia; Aoife Corry, who got a commendation for her work; Kelly Shenton, Sophia Corrie, Abigail Maroney and Claire Chong. That is the whole list of students who did very well across the whole competition.

This is not just a school that operates merely in the poetry band; it also has a strong community involvement. The school has operated for 75 years—last Friday was their 75th anniversary. I hope they go very well in their fete this Friday night, the 29th, and can raise quite a bit of money for school projects. This school is very progressive and is very strong in portable digital technology. Also, the year 5 teacher, Mr Brett Love, is one of 81 finalists from Western Australia in the National Excellence in Teaching Awards. This school is well regarded by the people in Wanneroo, because it continues to grow. It has around 360 students and every year more and more students are coming to the school because parents recognise that this is a school of outstanding capacity and doing very well. I congratulate the staff and students and the school community.