Youth Parliament

The Hon. A. PICCOLO (Light) (15:22): Last night, I had the privilege and pleasure of hosting in parliament a group of young people from some local schools in my electorate and also from schools that service the electorate. These young people have been selected for the Youth Parliament for 2017 run by the YMCA. All nine of the young pollies came along as my guests to have a meal at Parliament House and also to undertake a tour.

The team I sponsor in conjunction with the three participating councils—the City of Playford, Town of Gawler and the Light Regional Council—is named the Enlightened team of course, coming from the electorate of Light. I am pleased to say that, as a firm believer in the philosophy that it takes a community to educate a child, the three mayors, the six participating schools and myself are jointly sponsoring the team to ensure that young people can participate in the Youth Parliament.

Light Regional Council Mayor Bill O'Brien said that he believes that the opportunity for young people within our communities to learn about and take part in the Youth Parliament is an excellent initiative and provides young people with a wonderful opportunity to learn more about all forms of government and the operation of our government. Mayor O'Brien has been a strong supporter of the program, and he strongly supported the initiative, which was supported by his council in the process.

The way this came about was that secondary schools in the electorate of Light, as well as those schools just outside the electorate that have a significant number of students who live in the electorate, were invited to nominate students to be a part of the team. As I said, six schools have nominated a total of nine students to be part of the Youth Parliament program this year. The YMCA SA Youth Parliament is a nonpartisan program that seeks to empower young people to be advocates for their community.

The program is focused on personal development, youth leadership and connecting parliamentarians and decision-makers with youth voices and opinions. Young leaders come together in this place every year to learn about public speaking, parliamentary procedure, the development of bills for debate and advocacy. It is interesting to note that one of the bills that was debated in the Youth Parliament last year dealt with the topic of euthanasia.

I read the report put together by the office of the Minister for Youth, which is sent to MPs, and the vote on the euthanasia debate by the young people was actually fifty-fifty; they split right down the middle. I thought, 'Isn't that interesting?', because essentially the same thing happened in the grown-up version of the parliament last year when the house divided fifty-fifty and the Speaker used his casting vote to break the deadlock. So, these young people clearly are a broad reflection of their community.

The team will spend the weekend of 6 and 7 May training for the Youth Parliament. They will then be in this place between 9 and 14 July when they undertake their activities. The Youth Parliament decisions are then referred to the state government for its consideration. I look forward to working with my team of young parliamentarians and supporting them through the process.

I would like to mention the names and schools participating in the program: from St Columba College, Arek Mel and Brianna Hartwell; from Gawler and District College, Crystal Christie-Golding and Sebastian Trudgen; from Kapunda High School, Elijah Smith; from Xavier College, Finnian Whisson; from Trinity College, Gawler, Ryen Archer; and, from Mark Oliphant College, Tyson Thomson and Atiu Madut.

Atiu, who is a refugee from South Sudan, came along last night with her dad. Her father made the observation at dinner that, 'It's one thing for politicians and leaders to have views,' he talked about the situation between South Sudan and Sudan, 'but it's important that leaders actually bring the community along with them'. In his opinion, the ongoing conflicts in that country are a result of their making a political decision that is not actually supported by the whole community and so the conflict occurs. Having said that, though, he has also noticed that we resolve our conflict through words and parliaments, but unfortunately in a lot of places throughout the world they still use the gun. I would like to wish my Youth Parliament team every success.