Page 3600 - Week 11 - Thursday, 23 October 2014

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The 4/3 choir then entertained us. Year 3 and 4 students, accompanied by Mr James Huntingford, performed Joshua Fought the Battle of Jericho and Alexander the Cat in simple two-part. The senior choir students from years 4, 5 and 6 then performed The Rescue by Alice Chance and Turkey in the Straw, two-part. The year 5 band performed Cuban Sun by Zorbie Botretos and Majestic March by Paul Lavender. The finale was by the year 6 band, performing Gathering in the Glen by Michael Sweeney and Funky Town by Steven Greenberg.

I would like to quote Zoltan Kodaly, the founder of the world famous Kodaly Institute, about the spirituality of music, which I think may explain a lot about the success of the educators connected with Arawang Primary School and, indeed, the special reputation of the school itself:

Music is a spiritual food for which there is no substitute. There is no complete spiritual life without music, for the human soul has regions which can be illuminated only by music.

In closing, I would like to thank Jeni Page for her invitation to visit her school again and congratulate Jeni and her teaching staff on their great contribution to Arawang primary. It was also evident that the praise comes not only from people like me but from the number of parents who turned up to watch the school assembly. Over 80 parents filled the hall to bursting point. Their joyous reception of the performances by the students was indeed great to see. Congratulations, Arawang primary, once again.

National Week of Deaf People 2014

MS LAWDER (Brindabella) (4.27): Today I would like to talk about the National Week of Deaf People. Thank you to members for agreeing to have an interpreter here today. I would like to introduce interpreter Mandy—this is her sign name—and I will hand over to her to interpret the rest of my speech.

The National Week of Deaf People is a week-long national celebration of deaf individuals and the deaf community. It is a week when deaf people in Australia and around the world celebrate being deaf and being part of the international deaf community. It is an opportunity to celebrate the community language, culture and history of deaf people in our country. It is an opportunity to make the public aware of local, state and national deaf communities that are part of us, and to recognise the significant achievements that are made by those within our deaf communities.

The theme of the National Week of Deaf People for 2014 is “strengthening human diversity”, and it runs from 18 to 24 October. Deaf Australia is the driving force behind National Week of Deaf People. One in six Australians experience some form of hearing loss and, as a subset of that, there are approximately 30,000 Auslan-using deaf in Australia.

We have come a long way with Auslan interpreters on TV during emergency broadcasts, and with captioning available on more and more programs on free-to-air


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