Page 4667 - Week 11 - Tuesday, 19 October 2010

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particularly thank the chairman of the school board, David Homesby, for the wonderful work that grammar does, for the contribution that it makes to our community and the contribution that it makes to the education of many Canberrans and Canberra families.

I would also like to pay tribute to Peter Cooke-Russell from the Naval Association of Australia who was the master of ceremonies at the annual commemoration service at the national naval memorial on 7 October this year. Peter does an outstanding job there. Peter and I, as we chatted at the memorial, talked about how many different groups there are representing veterans.

There are so many of them who do a sensational job for the veterans community, but they also contribute in a broader way to our community. They contribute in terms of charitable donations and charitable functions and, of course, look after our vets and provide social functions for many of our vets.

It must be said that many of our vets are ageing. Many of our vets are from World War II in particular. That was the largest group. While many of those have passed away, many still remain with us. There is also, of course, a large group, but not as large, of Vietnam vets and there is a strong Vietnam veterans community in Canberra.

I thank Peter Cooke-Russell and Chaplain Owen Davies for the welcome that they give me when I attend their events and for the sensational contribution they have made as veterans representing our nation, serving on behalf of all Australians, and for the contribution that particularly Peter Cooke-Russell continues to make in his role as the president of the Naval Association of Australia.

Mental health—mindfulness exhibition

Drugs

MS BRESNAN (Brindabella) (6.02): I would like to talk about a couple of events I was able to speak at in the last couple of weeks. First off, I had the honour of opening the mindfulness exhibition for Mental Illness Education ACT, who are also known as MIEACT. This was on World Mental Health Day on 10 October, the beginning of Mental Health Week at the Huw Davies gallery.

The exhibition was the coming together of the Moving minds and mindfulness projects, which are a collection of films and portraits involving MIEACT photo access in the Tuggeranong arts centre. Moving minds was a short film project coordinated and given artistic direction by Jenni Savigny from MIEACT through which 13 courageous volunteers tell their stories about their lived experience with mental illness.

Moving minds is a very unique project because while we have had people telling their stories about their lived experience with mental illness on film before, these films actually have very strong and powerful visual images that accompany them which indeed do make them very unique and also quite powerful. I understand from MIEACT that the films have already been used as a resource by a number of organisations in the ACT and also interstate for people recovering from mental illness and exiting psychiatric services.


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