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PM coup for trailblazer
Man charged over court bomb threats
By Goya Dmytryshchak A Williamstown High School student has become the first female elected youth prime minister for the National Indigenous Youth Parliament. Year 11 student Aretha Stewart-Brown made national headlines when she addressed an estimated 50,000 protesters in Melbourne on Australia Day calling for the date of the national holiday to be changed.
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A Williamstown man has been charged over alleged bomb threats to Melbourne’s busiest court. A Victoria Police spokeswoman said that a 21-year-old man was arrested in Williamstown on Thursday, in relation to bomb threats to the Melbourne Magistrates Court in the CBD. He has been charged with hoax-related offences and using telecommunications to threat menace. Fairfax Media understands that all court proceedings in the building were temporarily adjourned on Thursday morning, with lawyers and their clients asked to leave courtrooms while police searched the building for potential bombs. The spokeswoman confirmed that police conducted safety checks at the building just after 11am. “The building was deemed safe after midday and no evacuations were required,” she said. One lawyer said that Magistrate Michelle Ehrlich had asked everyone in her courtroom to leave after receiving a note, saying there had been a “bomb threat”. People were blocked from entering the court building for several minutes. The Williamstown man has been bailed to appear at Melbourne Magistrates Court on August 9.
I no longer want my history to be elective
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- Aretha Stewart-Brown
Aretha Stewart-Brown is putting her focus into Aboriginal education. (Andrew Taylor)
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congratulated Aretha, saying: “She follows a long line of trailblazing women in leadership from Melbourne’s west, including our first female prime minister, Julia Gillard, and our first female Victorian premier, Joan Kirner. “No pressure Aretha, but I know that you’ll achieve great things.”
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everyone else’s history. I think it should be mandatory. “To all my non-Indigenous allies, the most important way that you can help Indigenous people at this point is just to listen to what we have to say.” Federal Gellibrand MP Tim Watts
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A couple of years earlier, she addressed an indigenous dawn service at the Shrine of Remembrance and attended the 100th anniversary of the Gallipoli landings in Turkey as the state government’s indigenous representative. Her Aboriginal great-grandfather was a machine-gunner at Kokoda in World War II, but didn’t have the right to vote when he returned. Aretha, a Gumbaynggirr woman, fought off 17 candidates for the prime ministership at last month’s 50-member parliament, which debated issues important to their community. Now the one-time aspiring model has her sights firmly set on politics and education. “The area that I’m focussed on at the moment is education, and especially the reforms that I want to see placed within schools,” she said. “I’m focused in on the actual teaching of Aboriginal history, or the lack of it. “I want a set curriculum – I no longer want my history to be elective, I want it to be with
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7 MARIBYRNONG & HOBSONS BAY STAR WEEKLY \ JUNE 14, 2017