On the 25th of August, thirty-five participants from the Victorian Parliamentary Internship Program joined with their MP’s in Queens Hall, Parliament House to participate in the graduation of the first semester class of 2016.
Fiona and Sofia at Queens Hall. Photo: David Peake
Now in its 26th year, the internship program provides students with the opportunity to prepare research reports in consultation with members of the Victorian Parliament.
The students from Monash University, the University of Melbourne and Victoria University were presented with their graduation certificates by President of the Legislative Council Bruce Atkinson and Speaker of the Legislative Assembly TelmoLanguiller.
Sofia Zudova from the University of Melbourne was the intern allocated to Ms Patten’s office and was unfortunately not successful in winning the Presiding Officers Prize. She did, however, receive an honourable mention for her report: ‘On Taxation of Religious Charities and the Public Benefit of Charitable Exemptions.’
“A purpose for society is to facilitate conditions for the pursuit of reasonable, divergent conceptions of the good. In a pluralist society like ours, this can be accomplished by permitting an overlapping consensus of all the reasonable opposing religions, philosophical and moral doctrines likely to persist over generations and to gain a sizeable body of adherents.”
This report was established in consultation with Ms Patten and her office and will likely be drawn upon in future Parliamentary debates and members statements.
Ms Patten congratulates Sofia on a wonderful report she describes as “concise, yet in depth, and completely original research.”
Full report below.
[pdf-embedder url=”http://fionapatten.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/DOC050916-05092016164344.pdf”]
