World Teachers Day is a great time to recognize the positive contribution teachers make to the future of each and every Tasmanian child.  Great teachers make learning fun, they inspire, encourage and bring out the best in every child.

Clear links have been found between participation in Education with higher wages, better health and increased life satisfaction.  This means a good teacher can help determine a child’s opportunities beyond school.

For parents, today is also a good time to reflect on that special teacher who stood out when you were in school and made all the difference in your own learning pathway.

I urge all parents and students to find a way to thank their teachers (both past and present) for the important and worthwhile influence they play for our families.

I thought I would tell Parliament what I got up to between last week’s sitting and this week’s, because of course last Thursday was a day off for the southerners. The northerners quite properly went back to work, just not in the company of parliament.

I would like to draw the House’s attention to a few of the quite touching things that occurred in those four days between Thursday and Sunday of last week. I do want to touch on one in particular – the conclusion over the weekend of the North East Rivers Festival. It is actually an evolution of what was the Derby River Derby. I think that has been going since the mid-1970s. It only missed one year when there was a flood, I think in 2005. It has evolved in the last five years. The North East Rivers Festival is now a festival of 10 events. It was a great success.

It culminated, as always, in the Derby River Derby last Saturday, Mr Speaker. My modesty prevents me from showing off about the fact that the team I was a part of in the Derby River Derby – the super maxi category – won the 7 kilometre race, so I will not be able to skite about that but there you are, I have just dropped it in.

There were also nine other events – the Bridport 10 Fun Run; the Winnaleah School Fair; the Pioneer Trout Fishing Competition; the Men’s Shed Markets; the River of Life celebration, which a combined church service in the region; the Pipers Brook Vineyard Concert; the Golf Challenge; the art exhibition; and the Derby Bike Challenge. I wanted tonight to pay special tribute to Lynden Russell who is the coordinator of the festival. He has done a marvellous job with his committee and I think something around 100 volunteers as well who have given up their time – nobody gets paid – and it has been a great success. I also want to thank the sponsors tonight.

I have time for one other matter. On Sunday afternoon I had the privilege of accepting an invitation from the Door of Hope church. It was a gathering of people who had been involved in a homeless program that members of the church had organised. The vision which has been brewing now for about six years was to develop a family-based homeless shelter.

The Door of Hope is, of course, on the site of the former Coats-Patons Woollen Mill and it is a massive site with old derelict buildings and the vision was to build and establish a shelter. That vision has been achieved now, particularly with the support of Federal government infrastructure funds.

In the intervening years, Mr Speaker, because that committee of people could not afford to wait, such was the passion for supporting the homeless in Launceston, they actually set it up as a drop-in centre which meant that there was a bed for the night for many homeless people around Launceston. I was a volunteer for that cause in the two years that I was out of Parliament and when I was elected to this place I asked to be excused, but I could not believe it when I turned up on Sunday afternoon to find that 120 people had contributed to that project. There are just too many to mention tonight obviously, but I want to take this opportunity to thank the visionaries and the volunteers for the wonderful work that they did which I know made such a material impact on a small but important segment of our community.

The mindless vandalism of the wooden carving of Simpson and his donkey is a crime against the community because it offends absolutely everyone. The destruction of the lone pine tree is a selfish and insulting assault on the work of those people who worked to establish a living memorial to the losses at Gallipoli.

Clearly, these are calculated and evil acts which have done what they were designed to do: to anger and distress others.

Whoever did these low acts should be found and are made to feel the full force of the law. I appeal to anyone who knows anything about these terrible crimes to immediately inform police.

Hopefully, in the case of the damaged carving, it may be possible to recover the stolen parts and repair this treasured icon which commemorates our servicemen and women while also giving an important reminder to onlookers of the grave consequences of war.

These are no small matters because of the importance of these types of objects to the community. I will be investigating the introduction of laws in Tasmania which make specific provision to deal with malicious damage of war service and other symbolic monuments. We have to be sure that our current system is in line with community sentiment and ensures that there are more serious consequences when vandals deliberately target war service memorials. We need to prevent these acts occurring in the future by having a more serious deterrent in place.

Mr FERGUSON (Bass) – I will choose not to respond to the politics previous speakers have brought to the debate, except to say that I support the minister for bringing the matter forward. It is great that parliament is sitting on this day so that we can mark this day in 1997 when the Bringing Them Home report was presented to the then Federal Government. I want to make a couple of comments in relation to the general issue.

It has unfortunately been an issue that many Australians have not felt well-connected to or well plugged into. I think there has been a historical sense of alienation between white Australians, and for that matter migrant Australians, with the first Australians – Aboriginal Australians. It is simply stating a matter of historical fact that there were some terrible mistakes made, not just throughout Australia with the coming of European settlements, but even right here in Tasmania. One might say unforgivable acts were committed against the first Tasmanians.

It is also sad for me to reflect that not always but very often those tragic mistakes, what might be called unforgivable mistakes, were often well intentioned but more often acted out of ignorance.

I want to bring one new thing to this issue. I do not think former Prime Minister Mr Rudd missed the point when he said sorry on behalf of Australia in respect of the stolen generations. I do not think he missed the point at all but I do think it has narrow-cast the issue somewhat. I think we as Australians have a lot more to be sorry about than just separating children from their homes. What really occurred with European settlement was total dispossession of the first Australians from their land, and with that dispossession came disadvantage.

In recent years we have seen the apology. When one offers an apology, in response you cannot demand forgiveness, but hopefully when an apology is freely offered one hopes in time that forgiveness may be offered in return. That is when healing can take place. It is my hope that Australia can move beyond a National Sorry Day in the future and that one day in Australia 26 May can be known as a National Day of Healing between our first Australians and current-day Australians from whatever background. It is my hope that the shame that has been talked about today by a couple of speakers can give way instead to pride, that we have been challenged by our history and been willing to challenge our own assumptions and beliefs that perhaps we grew up with and went to school with and that that healing can allow all Australian to reach their own potential and succeed and feel proud of their heritage and the country to which they belong.

Madam Deputy Speaker, what I want to talk about tonight is something that really moved me earlier this week. On Saturday night I took my three children along to something which – I should not say surprised me because it certainly did not surprise me to go along to Scotch Oakburn College’s performance of The Arrival and find that it was a quality production.  What surprised me was that I did not really know what I was walking into, I received the invitation and thought it would be great to go but I was really dazzled by the production.

Some members here may be familiar with The Arrival by Shaun Tan. It is a book with no words. It is entirely a picture book, a very substantial picture book as well. One of the school’s own teachers, Anne Grainger, a teacher of drama, humanities and English, had written an entirely original script around the messages of the book. It was an absolute delight to see and hear the script and music and wonderful performance by the students, who are all middle-school students. Their talent, their singing voices, acting prowess, wonderfully crafted costumes, their committed teachers both in the audience and in the wings of the stage were on display and I was surrounded by a proud school community.

It was a real shame that it was only on for two nights. It is my fervent hope and wish that other Tasmanian school communities and indeed around Australia might be able to get access and opportunity to perform and/or enjoy that musical as a patron. I hope that the script catches on in the community. It is a story about refugees, about individuals who have escaped tortured backgrounds and it is done in a way which is entirely at the appropriate level for children. It was a story of refuge and refugees and of course it was a story of pain, healing and hope for the future.

Tonight I really want to use this opportunity to commend Scotch Oakburn College, the senior staff there and the students involved, but I have to give my highest praise to Anne Grainger. What a wonderful inspiration she has shown to me and hundreds of other people in coming up with something that is quite inspirational, entirely original, very humane and something which I firmly believe will catch on like wildfire in the Australian community. So I commend them to the House today.

Members – Hear, hear.