Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I was very pleased earlier today to meet with the 2023 Australian of the Year, Taryn Brumfitt, who's in the gallery this afternoon. Taryn has made it her mission to empower Australians to contend with body image issues, which are so deeply intertwined with eating disorders. Seventy-seven per cent of young Australians aged 16 to 25 experience body image distress, making them 25 times more likely to develop a psychiatric illness. With the advent of social media, is it any wonder? According to the Dove Self-Esteem Project and the Butterfly Foundation, 70 per cent of girls take their beauty standards from social media, and over half spend one to three hours on social media every day. Fifty-two per cent wish they looked better. Forty-eight per cent wish they looked like someone else.

These numbers tell a troubling story. But our girls are more than numbers, and so are our young boys. Real young people, but girls in particular, are losing their identity in a digital world, which is rating them and dehumanising them. I say to young Australians: you are more than a number. You are valued. You are loved, and, like all of us, you are perfectly imperfect. Please remember that normal is nothing other than a cycle on a washing machine.