Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We're all trying to summit a different horizon in our lives. Many young Australians are looking to the future with confidence, as they should be, but few would say the pathway to success is scaling Everest. Bianca Adler from St Leonards College, though, is one. Since she was little it has been her dream to summit the tallest mountain in the world—the 8,849 metres of ice and altitude between her and the top of the world. She tried to summit once before and got within 400 metres before, sadly, being turned around. She spent months acclimatising and rotating through camps in Nepal. She didn't face it alone. Her family, her school community and her coaches and mentors gave her the tools, the belief and the preparation to do something truly extraordinary.

On 20 May, Bianca Adler stood on the top of the world, becoming the youngest Australian ever to summit Mount Everest, something that should make her incredibly proud. On behalf of the entire Parliament of Australia, congratulations, Bianca, on your record feat. Our community is cheering you on for what you have done but also for what is yet to come. Keep going!

One of the most important things is to encourage young Australians to become self-starters and to get on with their lives and achieve great things. Every time people open a new small business, they are encouraging commercial hope and encouraging others to get ahead and to back themselves in. This isn't a speech about the budget; though it could easily be. Let's talk about good news for a change, because what we know in the Goldstein electorate is there are so many self-starters and small businesses that want to get ahead, so the Sandy Street Art Project and Bayside City Council set out to encourage young Australians to be able to get ahead. Last Saturday in Melrose Street in Sandringham, the council ran the Young Creators Market, a real market with real stalls and customers, and 12- to 18-year-olds discovering what it actually feels like to run a business before they've even finished year 12. There I met so many different young creators, from those creating crocheted items for sale to young people who go to their friends' birthday parties and bend balloons. I even now have in the Goldstein office in federal parliament some of Felix's smoked salts. He not only smokes the salt—it goes beautifully on food; I can confirm that—but he also plants trees for offset. There were many stallholders there who shared what they learned about set-up cost, product ideas and how to make things work out commercially. It worked. I was there, and it was something they should be immensely proud of. So, to all the young creators, keep going. We believe in you.