Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Mental Health) Share this | Hansard source

I'm delighted today to read out the speeches of two entrants in the Raise Our Voice initiative from my electorate of Flinders.

Matilda, who is 14 years old, from Padua College in Tyabb, says:

I write to you today as a young person in Australia, with concern for our education system. Over my two years at high school I have noticed time and time again that the modern classroom is only built for one type of student, someone who can easily focus in large groups or noisy classrooms, however this is not the case for over 570,000 students who suffer with neurological disorders such as autism, ADHD, dyslexia, dysgraphia and more, for majority of these students they have an extremely hard time remaining on task or focused when in loud classroom settings resulting in them not getting all the work completed and having piles of home work.

Furthermore, common issues with these disorders include zoning out even when your teacher is in the middle of explaining the task or concept, which results in the student being unable to complete the task and having to rely on his or her peers to get the relevant information, as unfortunately, the teacher cannot cater to everyone. This is not good enough.

I strongly believe some of these circumstances could be mitigated through better government funding for schools, higher pay for teachers and smaller class sizes.

I now go to a speech from Cooper, who is 16 years old, from Padua College at the Mornington campus, who, I am thrilled to say, is in the audience today with his mum and his sister. He writes:

We are in the midst of a crisis. Young people are facing a crisis. I'm Cooper, a 16-year-old from the electorate of Flinders. And I know that young people today are facing a serious mental health crisis.

These issues cannot be ignored any longer. We cannot pretend that they simply don't exist. If this parliament doesn't act now, we risk the lives of thousands of young people. If this parliament doesn't act now, we risk losing our next Olympians, our next doctors, our next ministers. My question is: if we can see the issue, why can't you? If we can see what needs to be done, why can't you?

Our parliament needs to invest further in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of young people. Whilst there are policies in place already, these are quite simply not good enough. We need this government to invest in better mental health education for both young people and adults, lower wait times for online and over the phone crisis support, and more youth advisory groups to shape Australia in terms of mental health.

These actions cannot wait. We need this to happen now. This is not about just feelings, this is about the lives of your fellow Australians. So please, I call on this government to make change and invest now in the mental health of young people in order to make Australia a better place for all not just today, but also tomorrow.

Thank you, Cooper and your family, for joining me here in parliament today. It brings these words to life would have such a critical program—the Raise Our Voices program—so that you can come here and express your views directly to the Australian people. What a joy and an honour for me—for all of us—to have you and your family here.

See this speech in context