EVERY CHANCE FOR EVERY CHILD

Mrs VLAHOS (Taylor) (15:18): Thank you, Mr Acting Speaker. I would like to speak today about an Every Chance for Every Child cabinet task force public forum that recently occurred in my electorate of Taylor at the Lake Windermere B-7 School in Salisbury North. I was very happy to be involved with the school in planning this event, and they actually did a wonderful job under the leadership of the principal, Angela Falkenberg, to bring it all together.

Visiting with us on the day was the Hon. Grace Portolesi, the Minister for Education and Child Development and the taskforce chairperson; the Premier, Jay Weatherill; the Hon. Ian Hunter, Minister for Communities and Social Inclusion; and the Hon. Russell Wortley, Minister for Industrial Relations and Local Government. Also joining me was local MP, Susan Close from the Port Adelaide electorate, and the Mayor of the City of Salisbury and a good friend, Gillian Aldridge.

Along with Mrs Falkenberg, the school community and the school governing council chairs and parents, families and children put on a wonderful afternoon for us. One of the key things that happened apart from the public task force forum, which I will speak about in a moment, was the community barbecue. Considering this school had been amalgamated two years ago and had come together in a wonderful new community under a new name, they had school choir performances, safe cycling tracks for the kids to be involved with, and a community food trail, with a newly planted garden that the parents, schoolchildren and community friends were experimenting with produce and recipes from. All this came together just after we finished our task force public forum.

The important thing about the community task force is that we saw a couple of movies about the Every Chance for Every Child priorities, which is one of our seven strategic priorities for this state government. The movie that we were shown from Hendon Primary School showed us that, by starting with the whole child and starting at the beginning and connecting all the aspects of a child's life, we can support a child's early development and, in fact, their brain wiring.

We all know that experience in the first five years of life is the greatest determinant on a child's future health development and happiness in our society, and that, by the age of three, 85 per cent of a person's brain development has already occurred. We also know that too many of our children are falling behind in these critical early years. One of the great things about the public forum was providing opportunity for mothers and fathers, grandparents and community members to come forward to the table and give us feedback about what would make our society better for their young children in the space between the ages of zero and five.

We know the importance of these early years in the development of our children and that, if we do not take action early, those who are vulnerable in our community are at risk. This is a challenge, and we are now trying to bridge the gap between what we know and what we do, and that was the reason for the public forum. We also know that our state invests nearly double the national average in children's services, and this is a great thing.

Our government has a vision for achieving all this work to make sure that we are recognised both nationally and internationally as a great place to raise healthy and creative children. We also want to give parents the services and support they need, starting from the birth of their child all the way through to their adulthood to ensure that they nurture healthy, capable and resilient children.

We want our schools to be the community hubs for services for our families and children, and certainly Windemere has become that over recent years with the amalgamation. We also want to be able to intervene early to provide the assistance and support where it is needed, because we know that dollars invested early in a child's life when there are early challenges for development are a good investment as opposed to the end when there is criminal justice and other poor outcomes in the employment, health and education stakes further down the track.

By expanding our network of children's services and supporting people in the north through a cabinet task force like this and hearing first-hand from parents, grandparents and carers what they need to ensure that things happen, as well as the educators, we hope to bring our children into a greater and brighter future in South Australia.