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

Earlier this week I had the great joy of meeting year 6 students from my electorate. The girls from Toorak College came with open and curious minds. Among their many questions came why I sought to be a parliamentarian. I told them the story of my first visit to Parliament House with my mum when I was eight. It was love at first sight—one might say maths: the democracy edition. I stuffed my bag with all the parliamentary education brochures and I learnt all the names of the prime ministers. This week I explained to the girls how great the responsibility is to stand here and contribute to how this nation looks and works not just today and tomorrow but also in their future. It is those girls and the millions like them who must be front of mind while we occupy these benches on all sides.

On weeks like this, it is easy to get lost in the beating drum of politics. Social media has no off switch in the 24-hour news cycle. An increasingly unpredictable political landscape requires that each of us be even more mindful of not getting lost in the fury. We are but six weeks into 2026, a year which started mourning the loss of life at Bondi. Severe bushfires weaved through the Victorian countryside in between cyclones, flash-flooding and heatwaves. And last week the Reserve Bank raised interest rates, squeezing pockets. Many look at the year ahead with a degree of real fear and uncertainty, but a different future is possible. In March, when students set off on their Easter holidays, they may just spend more time with their family and friends, not the persistent consumers of endless online content—instead, maybe outdoors. This is the result of a bipartisan commitment to limiting social media for those under the age of 16.

We in this place agreed that the wellbeing and mental health of our young people was above politics, In May, who knows, the Treasurer might have the opportunity to limit the surging, repetitive spending that has been fuelling inflation. Executed properly, his budget could halt the predicted series of rate rises that have been eating away at family budgets. And in November we could finally see a change of government in Victoria—a fresh start for our state led by a team who are eager to rebrand Victoria as a place worth investing in again, as opposed to further cementing our status as the nation's most indebted and high-taxing jurisdiction.

Finally, for the days between each of these milestones, imagine that we make a clear case to Australians which restores trust across our institutions: a sustainable budget that avoids us falling down a cliff of intergenerational inequality, preventing interest on debt from being the dominant budget item; and evidence that we are helping aspiring Australians to buy a home of their own, not complicating or deferring that time line. When you think about it, our time on these benches is not about us; it's about those students that I spent Tuesday morning with and the many like them who are counting on us to do a better job.