Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about some of the schools I had the pleasure of visiting over the parliamentary break and some of the fantastic young people I have engaged with during this time. Earlier this year I began visiting the many high schools in my large electorate of Brand to meet the many students studying politics and law, as well as students in general humanities and social sciences classes. I visited them to talk about my role as a federal representative and, more broadly, the role of a modern parliamentarian in Australia.

On these visits I met with year 9 humanities students from Gilmore College in Orelia as well as year 12 political and legal students from Living Waters Lutheran College in Warnbro. Let me assure you that the future is brighter than ever and rests comfortably in the shared grasp of these great young students. Their intelligence, their attitude, their willingness to learn and engage with wider society, and their curiosity and eagerness to understand the Australian political system fill me with great optimism for our younger generations into the future and their participation in this parliamentary system.

It is clear though that much of the credit for the superb attitudes and inquisitive nature of these students comes from the guiding hands of their respective teachers. So I must pay credit at this time to Ms Leslie Brown from Gilmore College and Ms Lauren Webb from Living Waters Lutheran College—two fantastic examples of educators helping mould our young people into critical thinkers who are driven to succeed and who listen to and are conscious of the opinions of others. I have a strong commitment to all forms of education in this country and I am pleased to contribute in some small measure to inform students about what we as members of parliament do in this place to serve our respective communities, our states and the nation as a whole.

As well as visiting these schools for an engaging discussion, I have had the opportunity to view some of the outstanding achievements of the students in and around Brand. The community of Living Waters Lutheran College that I referred to earlier in particular are to be commended on sending their young 'Digibots' team across the country in order to pit their creation against robots belonging to teams of students from other states in the Digibots national competition held in Sydney in March. As their teacher Ms Yolanda Redpath commented, the national competition is a 'varsity sport for the mind'. The program is a fantastic way to showcase the engineering skills, innovative nature, ingenuity and enormous competitive spirit of WA kids, as well as kids from around the nation. Congratulations to Ms Yolanda Redpath and Mr Reg Murugan and the Digibots team. You should all be very proud of your achievements.

I would like to add, however, that these successful programs and these positive learning environments are under threat from a mammoth $22 billion cut to schools funding that the Turnbull government is proposing. How can anyone expect these schools to maintain these high standards when on average $2.4 million is being cut per school over the next 10 years? That is to be added into a $50 billion tax break to big business. I really wonder what is going to happen to the six Catholic schools in WA in remote areas that are the only schools providing education to young people in those communities.