Page 772 - Week 03 - Tuesday, 17 March 2015

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St Michael’s motto is “Live in harmony”. It symbolises their desire to live in harmony with God, self, others and the environment. Last week, St Michael’s Kaleen was once again one of the more than 615 Catholic schools across New South Wales and the ACT to celebrate Catholic Schools Week. I know from past experience at St Michael’s how very proud they are of their history and the many achievements to date, the excitement and the challenges that St Michael’s growing school community generates while continuing to evolve to meet the diverse and complex educational needs of the current generation of young people.

There is also a particular focus on developing innovative and creative learning experiences and environments. St Michael’s Primary School is well placed to look ahead with hope and confidence to be able to meet the learning needs of future generations of children for many years to come. And that is the theme for 2015 Catholic Schools Week: “Catholic schools: educating for today and tomorrow.”

I congratulate principal Judy Walsh and her dedicated teachers, students, parents, the parish and the school communities on their contribution to Catholic education and thank them once again for sharing their event with all of us during Catholic Schools Week.

Sport—events

MR RATTENBURY (Molonglo) (5.42): I rise tonight to reflect on some recent sporting events taking place around the community that I have been able to attend, particularly a range of multicultural community sporting events. I mention these because in respect of each of them a particular part of our community has gone to some effort to put the event on and really brought a fun spirit to these matches.

We have had the Canberra cricket sixes, played at Nicholls playing field on 8 February. I would like to congratulate in particular Daminda Solangaarachchi from Canberra’s Sri Lankan community for organising that event. We also had the ACT mini multicultural cricket world cup. I attended the final at Lyneham on Saturday, 22 February. This was made up of a range of communities, including the Indian, Pakistani and Irish teams and an Indigenous team. I would particularly like to acknowledge Krishna Nadimpalli from the Federation of Indian Associations in the ACT, who was a driving force behind that one.

In cricket, I would also like to mention the Akram-Tendulkar shield T20 cricket and the friendship cup event, which took place at Holt on Monday, 9 March. Ms Fitzharris was also at that event. I would particularly like to acknowledge Syed Jaffry from Sports for Health and Wellbeing for Indians and Pakistanis—SHIP—for putting the effort into organising that event. I must say that at that event the teams looked particularly resplendent in their full international team uniforms, exactly reflecting the Indian and Pakistani teams playing in the World Cup.

Each of these cricket matches was also strongly supported by Cricket ACT through the provision of umpires and other support. All of them brought many of our migrant communities together here in Canberra in a fun spirit of friendship as well as, I might


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