Community Events July 2026

Dr RAHMAN (Fong Lim): Mr Acting Deputy Speaker, June and July are action-packed months in the Territory, as we all know. Tonight I recognise the people and events I had the opportunity and good fortune to spend some of the months with. 

On 4 June in my capacity as the assistant minister for Education I attended the Kids in Space showcase, a national education program for primary schools to encourage STEM pathways. It was a fantastic event. I was delighted to judge it, speak at it and check out all the cools things the kids had made to look at how to solve problems in space. 

Anula Primary School did amazing work, as did Nightcliff Middle School. Ultimately, the winners were from Alawa Primary School. It was great to see our public schools well represented in this competition. Alawa Primary School created multi-sensory devices to help astronauts feel at home from space. I look forward to seeing how well they do at the national final in Adelaide shortly. 

On 5 June my team Darwin colleagues, the Members for Fannie Bay and Port Darwin, and I hosted a community movie night at the Botanic Gardens, watching the Minecraft movie. Thanks to my colleagues for doing so much of the heavy lifting for that. It was a wonderful event that was well attended. The attendance was even better than the year before, I might add. We raised a good amount of money, and we look forward to doing another one in the coming months. 

On 6 and 7 June many of us would have enjoyed the wonders of Greek GleNTi. There are so many people to shout out to for that event that it is almost impossible to isolate anyone. Many volunteers make that such a special, magical event. I certainly filled my boots over several days, and I do not regret anything. My favourite thing was seeing the ‘diet starts tomorrow’ shirts all around the place, which I thought was apt. 

I make small mention of two groups from that. The Arafura Music Collective piggybacked on GleNTi this year, with a concert featuring beautiful Greek music, called The Unbroken Thread, following the end of GleNTi. A lot of Agapi Care’s members are involved with the organisation of GleNTi. Agapi Care is doing excellent work to promote healthcare and aged-care solutions in the Northern Territory, and I look forward to working with it ongoing. 

Another movie night that I was a part of was held on 13 June. It was the Northcrest movie night that the DCOH team and I put on annually. It was wonderful to watch Kangaroo, which everybody raved about. What a lovely movie it is. We bucked the trend this year: we did not do a sausage sizzle; we did nachos. I tell you what, folks, they flew out the door. I recommend nachos for quick slinging and plenty of time to have a chat with everyone. Amongst the barbecues, popcorn and the nachos we all had a fantastic night. It had huge attendance. Congratulations to Ibukun who won our jellybean competition. Her mum, Mayowa, was kind enough to bring her to the office. She is one of the trainee doctors at CDU. We have an amazing community of people at Northcrest. It is lovely to support them. 

On a similar note, I thank the CEO and Managing Director of DCOH, Shane Dignan, who met with me last week to try to accelerate plans to improve playground equipment in Northcrest. As everybody knows, the decision to finalise council affiliation is taking time, and we all hope for a quick resolution. In the meantime, we have to be committed to improving facilities in that community, and Mayse Young Park is in need of swings and improved playground equipment. I am grateful that the DCOH team was willing to commit to making that happen. Thank you to the DCOH team. 

Like many of you, I enjoyed the World Cup and the Socceroos enormously, not least because suddenly everybody got on the refugee bandwagon for about three minutes. I loved the fact that happened because it is a great reminder that Australia is a multicultural nation and we have people from far and wide, including some who end up becoming Socceroos and some who live everyday lives like the rest of us and become great contributors to society. 

The World Cup coincided with Refugee Week and Fusion Fest which Melaleuca held at its premises, which was a beautiful event. I say to everyone in this House that sometimes people have ideas of what a refugee looks like; it is not people from one specific part of the world. A lot of people whom we celebrate in this parliament on a regular basis—for example, the Latin Americans a couple of days ago. Tonnes of Latin American refugees are in the Northern Territory. It was good to support Melaleuca which supports people to rebuild and settle their lives constructively in the Northern Territory. 

My family did not come to Australia as refugees. They came as skilled migrants, but they were refugees at one point when war broke out. Last week we celebrated 54 years of coming to Darwin and making it our permanent home. My grandad, who was a hydrologist on the Snowy Mountains, met another excellent Swiss Consul-General Peter Fuchs and Nancy Fuchs, his wife, who is the oldest member of the CWA in Darwin at 96 years old and still going strong. Nancy and Peter were kind enough to bring my grandparents and their three kids out here. It is lovely to be part of that lineage, and support refugees ongoing. 

The other thing I was glad to do at the time was support Mariia Shevchenko, a Ukrainian refugee who settled in Darwin and was the winner for her artwork, Code of a Nation at the Melaleuca festival. I happened to buy the artwork before it was awarded first place, and it is on display in my electorate office. I encourage you all to come and take a look at it when you get a chance. 

On 21 and 22 June we had the V8s at Hidden Valley. Everybody was there, but it is important to remember that throughout the rest of the year associations like the Drag Racing Association and the North Australian Motor Sports Club keep Hidden Valley going. I was delighted to hand out community benefit cheques on behalf of the government to those excellent organisations recently. 

On 23 June it was great to recognise UN Public Service Day, representing the Chief Minister in my capacity as assistant minister for Public Service, and launch the IPAA Young Professionals Network. It is important that we have young people moving into our public service. 

On 27 June there were 7,000 people at the Botanic Gardens for the DSO’s amazing outdoor Movie Hits concert. What a great event. My thanks to Jon Tooby, Richard Mills and Claire Kilgariff for having me as a part of the concert; it was special. 

Likewise, on the same day I attended the COTA Seniors Expo. I am grateful to Sue Shearer for having us all there putting on the event and working with me subsequently to put on a Q&A session about VAD laws in Australia and around the world shortly thereafter. We will do another of those shortly for the Australian Independent Retirees Association. 

There have been brilliant lectures recently at CDU. There was one by Bernard Salt, which I will talk about later about demographic trends and data for Australia, and the excellent Austin Asche Oration by Justice Marcus Solomon where we talked about the implied freedom of communication in Australia and social cohesion; things that we need to have honest conversations about. That was a good crowd with tough questions and erudite answers. I am glad that CDU is putting on excellent events like it. 

On 10 July it was great to get to Tennant and see the amazing crowd there. A big shout-out to NT Health for giving me my diphtheria shot. NT Health also proceeded to do vaccinations at the Katherine Show which I loved being at. What a wonderful country family show. Just quietly, I think I might even like it more than the Darwin one. I will probably get in trouble for that. In saying that, I very much look forward to being at the Darwin Show this week, as will everybody else. I will spend the majority of my time at the CWA stall volunteering with the CWA members. They make the best cakes, which I can never hope to replicate.

Speaking of families, on 14 July it was great that at the same time as the Investment Summit, at the other end of the spectrum, the Family Business Association held its drinks. It is important to see those small firms which make a massive contribution to the Northern Territory as well. Thank you to CEO Catherine Sayer and to Angus Kennard, the former CEO of Kennards, who was the guest speaker. It was wonderful to bring all our important small, medium and large enterprises that are family owned together. 

Speaking of important family-owned businesses, it is my great privilege and pleasure to recognise Kerry Ambrose-Pearce of Kerry’s Automotive. A couple of days ago the Australian Automotive Dealer 

Association awarded Kerry a Lifetime Achievement Award. That is no small thing. Kerry has been there since 1988, as many of you know, and he has been a supporter of many local charities and sporting clubs. I was pleased to acknowledge that. 

On 18 July we had the Viking Funeral, the largest shebang in the Fong Lim electorate, with 2,000 people. It was great to give tickets away. I look forward to promoting the Darwin to Banda yacht race which will happen on 1 August. My thanks to Commodore Adam Gollow, Wendy McCallum, Rear Commodore Sarah Meldrum and Verity Hawkins for having me on the merchandise stall in that tiny space for so many hours. 

Finally, I will not talk about it at length tonight, but we just recognised the 60^th anniversary of Stuart Park Primary School. It was an amazing event. The music was joyful; the choirs, the dancers and the school bands. My thanks to the NT Music School, to the Chief Minister and the Education minister for making time to go there, to my electorate staff and to Ton’s Bistro for all their help putting on that massive souvlaki and the cakes. What an amazing event at Stuart Park Primary School, and what an amazing electorate.