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House of Assembly - Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1)
2022-06-01 Daily Xml
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Youth Week

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (12:13): I move:

That this house—

(a) recognises Youth Week, which runs from 13 to 22 May 2022;

(b) acknowledges the 266,000 young people between the ages of 12 and 24 years who live in South Australia;

(c) acknowledges the contribution that these young people make to our state's social, cultural and economic life; and

(d) congratulates the Malinauskas Labor government on its commitment to build five new technical colleges which will help more young people finish school with skills for their future.

I would like to speak to the motion regarding SA Youth Week, which was celebrated between 13 and 22 May 2022.

SA Youth Week is an opportunity for us to celebrate the lives, accomplishments and talents of young people. Young South Australians between the ages of 12 and 24, almost 266,000 of them, bring significant perspectives, talents and skills to this state. Across 10 days, SA Youth Week celebrated young people by hosting dozens of events across the state.

The Department of Human Services provided grants to 15 councils and organisations across metropolitan and regional parts of SA to host these events. These grants allowed young people from across SA—from the Adelaide Hills, the Limestone Coast, Eyre Peninsula, Victor Harbor, the Riverland, Gawler and the Mid North—to get together, to catch up with new and old friends and to have fun and learn new skills. From radio open mics and virtual reality parties, through to forums and educational events, it was a fantastic, inclusive week where young people's voices were heard by government, by the public and by each other.

One excellent event that many of my colleagues attended was with the Commissioner for Children and Young People's new statewide SRC at the Festival Theatre. This saw around 160 students from years 10, 11 and 12 from all corners of the state come together to talk about the issues facing them and their communities. Personally, I was particularly pleased to attend and sit alongside students from Modbury High School and Torrens Valley Christian School from my electorate, as well as the wonderful students from Endeavour College from the electorate of Florey.

We know as well that more and more young people are becoming politically engaged. We are seeing more young people look towards us as their local representatives to make decisions on their behalf that secure a better future for them and the following generations. Personally, I have seen a huge number of young women reach out and thank me and my colleagues for showing them a way forward in politics.

Amongst the young people in our state are future leaders, policymakers, healthcare professionals, tradies, artists, educators and, hopefully, MPs. This generation of young people will hopefully be one day sitting where we are in the Parliament of South Australia and creating policies for their communities. Hopefully, we leave strong democratic foundations for them.

Between January and March this year, over 14,000 young people enrolled to vote in South Australia for the first time. In total, almost 120,000 people aged 18 to 24 went to the polls in March and, as we know, lots of them helped elect this Malinauskas Labor government. Young people of South Australia have entrusted us across the chamber as their members of parliament to create policies that will leave behind a better future than we inherited.

The Department of Human Services is committed to working with young people to develop policies that best serve them. I wish to thank the Minister for Human Services and member for Hurtle Vale, Nat Cook, for her commitment to establishing a Youth Advisory Council in South Australia. This Youth Advisory Council will provide a direct avenue of communication between the young people of South Australia and the state government, and I hope that having so many young people in state parliament will also be an avenue for that communication.

Future youth-related policies that come through this parliament will have been significantly informed by the knowledge and views of young people in SA. It is vital that the policies that impact young people have been created with their voice. The views and perspectives of young people are important for our government. For me, personally, it is incredibly humbling to have the privilege to represent people in their 20s in this house, something that I take very seriously. I must also make mention of the member for Narungga, who apparently does not get mentioned enough as also being part of the lower house 20s club, so I thank him for his voice in this place as well.

Young people were disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 in South Australia, making up the largest age group in insecure work, with 44 per cent of jobs lost in South Australia in the first year of the pandemic held by young people. This left one in three either unemployed or underemployed, yet only 12 per cent were eligible for JobKeeper. Our hospitality, construction and arts sectors—some of the biggest employers of young people in SA—were almost entirely brought to a standstill in early 2020.

Whether directly or indirectly, through job loss, social isolation and financial insecurity, COVID-19 led to significant levels of mental health issues amongst young people in South Australia. That is why the Malinauskas Labor government is committing $50 million to employ 100 new mental health and learning support specialists to support school students across South Australia. I would particularly like to thank the Minister for Education for his work on that as well.

The Malinauskas Labor government is passionate about providing young people with the best opportunities to thrive. We are committed to helping young people achieve their goals right here in South Australia, to train here, to work here and, eventually, to raise their families here. Every young person can expect to be provided with ample education and employment opportunities under a Malinauskas Labor government, which is the exact reason why our government has committed to build five new technical colleges in South Australia, with $175 million set to be invested into three new metropolitan-based colleges and two in regional South Australia.

The locations have been announced as Mount Gambier, Port Augusta, Tonsley, Findon and The Heights school, which will benefit so many students in my area in the north-eastern suburbs. The first of these technical colleges is due to open in 2024. By 2026, all five will be open and operating with students undertaking courses in building, construction, community services, hospitality, engineering and information technology.

To the youth of South Australia, we as a government extend our gratitude. Thank you for your resilience over the last few years and for the exciting future that you are all helping to shape. The Department of Human Services will shortly begin developing the state's new three-year Youth Action Plan. I really encourage young people to watch out for the various opportunities to have input into this plan and to have your say on how you want to see our government supporting you.

Mr GARDNER (Morialta) (12:20): I thank the member for Newland for bringing a motion about Youth Week to the attention of the chamber. Obviously the opposition endorses much of the sentiment that was just expressed and enthusiastically supports (a), (b) and (c) in the motion. I will have some comments about (d), and I foreshadow that I will indicate an amendment that I will get to in due course to add an (e). I hope that will have the wholehearted support of the Labor benches, as I think it adds greatly to the motion and helps ensure that the people of South Australia, and the young people of South Australia in particular, can have full expression of their needs met. I will get to that in a couple of minutes.

Firstly, I want to talk about the things on which there is absolutely no contention, and Youth Week is an important week. As Minister for Education, I appreciated the engagement the Department for Education was able to have with a wide range of youth organisations around South Australia, from the large NGOs, the youth affairs councils to the smaller locally based ones; indeed, many councils, I also acknowledge, have engagement in Youth Week by running Youth Week events.

Youth Week is not the only week in the calendar identifying and noting the particular importance of young people in our state's quality. The motion ahead of us acknowledges that 266,000 young people between the ages of 12 and 24 years live in South Australia. I have not checked the stats, but I will take the member for Newland's word for it. I am sure that it certainly sounds about right. Those 266,000 young people, as the member for Newland says, do make a contribution to our state's social, cultural and economic life.

Again, as Minister for Education, it was an extraordinary privilege, on a daily basis really, to be invited into schools, childcare centres, preschools and kindies and engage with young people, including those aged under 12, but indeed all those young people of school age and up to 24, as the motion identifies, who do contribute in that way whether it is through their economic contribution and doing important jobs that help our society run.

We have also some outstanding young entrepreneurs in South Australia. I think of companies like Paolo Sebastian, who at school effectively saw that business start to flourish well before the age of 25 and not long afterwards was dressing Hollywood superstars at the Oscars and so forth.

Young people in South Australia are brilliant. There are so many extraordinary young people who are leading the way, and I acknowledge them. I acknowledge the extraordinary contribution that so many other young people make in their engagement economically with the community, doing jobs that people need done and engaging socially, building their experience that in many cases will lead them to other jobs in the years ahead.

The Marshall Liberal government worked really hard to help them along the way in developing improved pathways opportunities so that when children are in primary school, which is now tier 6, and they go into year 7 they are in high school as a result of the work done by the Marshall Liberal government. In high school, their engagement with the vocational education training and pathways now begins in year 7 as a result of the reforms of the Marshall Liberal government.

It gives them opportunities to engage in work practices from a young age, to engage in a project we called the World of Work Challenge, and I hope that the new minister will keep that going. I think it will serve him well in the four years ahead if he does and if he maintains those VET reforms.

That engagement between the Department for Education and employers and industry to give more opportunities to young people to explore what their passions might be in a real-world sense I think is tremendously opportune and should not be constrained to just schools that say they have a note of vocational education training pathways. It should indeed be something that all schools across South Australia are offering, and that was our plan.

Noting that the Malinauskas Labor government does have a particular commitment of $175 million for five new technical colleges, I do not want to be churlish and remove what is ultimately a self-congratulatory clause to an otherwise very strong motion. I thought we would leave that in there because I look forward to seeing the detail of what the Malinauskas Labor government will offer, but I move to amend the motion by adding for balance:

(e) congratulates the Marshall Liberal government on delivering five new public schools and developing more than 100 major school upgrades as part of a record $1.5 billion commitment to public education during its term in office.

It was not a motion that I was looking to bring on today purely in its own right but, having had the government introduce through (d) of the motion a pat on the back for the work they claim they will do, I think it is only reasonable to acknowledge that, alongside that $175 million commitment by the Malinauskas Labor government to what they propose to do over the next, I assume, four years, we should also acknowledge that an enormous amount of work has been done and that support for our public education system in South Australia, as an extraordinary enabler of opportunity for South Australia's young people to find their passion, explore that passion and connect it to a job and a career in the years ahead, is a bipartisan mission.

It is an ambition shared by everyone in the chamber, and I hope that the government will therefore see fit to support the proposed amendment, which will highlight something the community calls for and longs for: it wants us to work together. Rather than seek to remove the Malinauskas Labor government's pat on their back, I simply seek to add an acknowledgment that I trust the Malinauskas Labor government will acknowledge that there was a substantial legacy of work provided to them when they came to government.

Indeed, of those five new public schools, four of them were open at the beginning of this year and another one will open at the beginning of next year. I take the opportunity again, as I have a couple of times previously, to hold out the olive branch of friendship to the Minister for Education and thank him for reaching out to me and inviting me to turn the sod with him at the Rostrevor school, Morialta Secondary College. It was something that he did not have to do, but it was a good thing to do. I think that the community appreciated that the government did that. I got a lot of good feedback saying, 'This new Minister for Education, good on him,' and good on him and good on the government for continuing the work on that school at Rostrevor.

The Treasurer, the Premier and other ministers have been at pains to say that the Malinauskas Labor government is different from the Weatherill and Rann governments; indeed, the Weatherill government was proposing to sell that patch of land for housing. Minister Boyer and this government are going to continue the work started by the Marshall Liberal government and complete a school there, which will serve the children and young people in the eastern and north-eastern suburbs very well for decades to come.

There are five new public schools and 100 major upgrades, with a total commitment in the order of $1.5 billion. There are minor works to every single public education site in South Australia announced during the COVID budgets. This is significant work to upgrade our public education facilities to increase capacity, to build capacity and to help those important children and young people find pathways to successful jobs and successful careers.

I encourage members to support the amendment because I think that by supporting the amendment the house can demonstrate harmony, which is something I know young people in our community look to us as community leaders to do. To oppose the amendment, I fear, would reflect badly. To support the amendment will cost the government nothing. It is just a pure acknowledgment that the Labor Party has come into government with a large body of work in public education done.

I want to also take the opportunity to acknowledge some of the very important work done around the year by other youth organisations. Children's Week is another week that we will see later in the year. I think the Children's Week Association has already opened nominations for awards, and I am sure the minister will enthusiastically engage with that organisation in the period to come as well. I note that the Department for Education, in conjunction with Government House, now offers a substantial program of civics and citizenship awards. I understand the minister presented those awards at Government House several weeks ago.

I take this opportunity to apologise to the organisers of that event and to the recipients that I was unable to join them on that occasion due to an unforeseen diary problem with some people who came to see me a bit early. I did not want to turn them away, so I had to miss watching those awards be presented. I certainly did not mean any slight to the minister, the Governor or the recipients of those awards. I am sure they got on fine without me. I understand the minister was in attendance and was very well received.

With that moment of harmony and encouragement to the government, I look forward to the remainder of the debate. I put it to members that if they oppose the amendment for (e), then how can they hold their heads up and think that (d) is a worthwhile part of the motion? But we will support it in any case because we are supporting harmony and bipartisanship.

The Hon. N.F. COOK (Hurtle Vale—Minister for Human Services) (12:30): I rise to support the member for Newland's motion regarding Youth Week, which I will not repeat, but basically this is a motion supporting the great work of the sector that supports and works with young people to improve our society. It might be surprising to the member for Morialta to know that I will not be supporting his amendment. In the spirit of a lesson in history, I do not recall such generosity of acknowledgement of the expenditure of the previous Labor government prior to the 2018 election. In the spirit of equality and even-handedness, I think we will just call that part of it quits.

I would like to first of all commend the member for Newland for this motion. I would like to wish the member for Newland a happy birthday for 22 May, graduating from what is known as the definition of youth in many countries but, in many other countries and in my world, 'youth' still covers the age of 26. I say congratulations to her and a huge happy birthday.

I really want to speak to this fantastic motion to acknowledge some of the wonderful work and events that happened during Youth Week. Specifically, I want to talk about the National Schools Constitutional Convention that was held during the week before Youth Week. It is an incredibly powerful forum where young people from all across Australia get together, pre-COVID times in person, and debate many constitutional issues. This year, some of the debate I heard was about the bill of rights, so it is quite intense. It really is building very strong value sets and capability in our young leaders in their schools.

I was pleased to attend at least part of their session here in the Old Chamber with a dozen young people from across South Australia, including Duom Akuei from Trinity College Senior and Callum Barrott-Walsh from Cardijn College. Callum is one of my constituents, and he is someone to watch in terms of future leadership, let me tell you. There were Amber Brock-Fabel from University Senior College and Leela Cotton Kenny from Mitcham Girls High School. I am a proud Mitcham Girls graduate, I think the only one who has come into parliament. May many more follow.

There were Lucia De Ross-Field from Adelaide High, Kate Dospisil from Adelaide High, Joseph Holmes from Glenunga International, Emily Pilmore from Kingston Community School, Elena Scullen-Howe from Glenunga International High, Alessandro Tedesco from University Senior College, Tom Webster Arbizu from Marden Senior College and Masoumah Zaki from Roma Mitchell Secondary School. They are doing a great job, representing young people in their communities. This is how we need to do policy for young people. At the heart of the work we do is listening to our constituents, and these young people were outstanding. Congratulations to all of you on participating in that.

Also, I was very pleased to open Youth Week with the YACSA team that was at say.kitchen on a very cool Friday evening. There was a bit of rain as well, so we were lucky to have that event inside. The YACSA team partnered with the Department of Human Services to host that launch in say.kitchen, which is a terrific place if you are ever looking for a great social-impact type venue to hold an event.

The event saw a wonderful Welcome to Country done by Isaac. We had Adelaide-based Nukunu singer-songwriter Tilly Tjala Thomas, who is fantastic. I got the chance to talk to quite a few people in the room from different organisations, who are very keen again to engage and contribute towards improvements in our community, people from Kura Yerlo, the Enabled Youth Disability Network, Young Carers and the South Australian Youth Forum.

There were young people from all across Adelaide and some from regional South Australia, the YMCA. I was really pleased to open that Youth Week and kick off what was a great conversation at a whole range of events, which I am sure many members attended in their own communities. I cannot wait to participate in the planning and bring some of that vision to life for next year.

The Commissioner for Children and Young People hosted a statewide SRC, which I know many members also attended. That was held in the Festival Centre. I was at a table with young people from Port Lincoln, Kimba, Ceduna and Whyalla, and some of the insights that they were able to provide me on behalf of young people in their community were so helpful. I have since spoken to the Minister for Education on a number of matters, and I know that there is resolution coming to some barriers for success for young people in some of those regional areas.

I am really pleased to participate in being a conduit to get those messages across, and I look forward to visiting those young people we have set up a process to communicate with. I know other members talk to young people from across South Australia. It was a great event, so congratulations to Helen Connolly and her team on bringing that together. It was very good.

The fourth event that I attended that really was extraordinary was in my region, the Onkaparinga Youth Recognition Awards. Again, I am sure there were like awards in a whole range of other council areas. I attended that with Simon McMahon, the acting mayor. Also there was Amanda Rishworth, who is now the federal Minister for Social Services. Congratulations to our local federal MP. She is going to be extraordinary in that role. I cannot imagine anyone better. She was there on the night. The member for Kaurna, the health minister, was there and also the member for Reynell, the minister for multiple different portfolios.

There were 90-odd nominations for different recognition awards and the winners were Reef Fahey for contribution to community, who did 400 kilometres of waterskiing to create awareness for Down syndrome and Ski for Life. There was Amiria Mahuika for learning success. She has a passion for singing, writing and music, which has seen her doing tertiary studies towards a career path as a singer-songwriter.

Isaiah Muller, despite losing both eyes to cancer early in life is absolutely excelling at humanities, science and chess. He is very witty as well, I would have to say, having met Isaiah. I am sure the Speaker would appreciate those combinations and his success. Elsie Procter, winner of the Business and Social Enterprise award, loves baking. She is 11, I believe, and has a business venture utilising contactless delivery with some extraordinary brownies. I cannot get the gooey middle and she has got it nailed at the age of, I think, 11.

I have heard about Youth Worker of the Year, Leah Stacey, and come into contact with her across the years with my history of working with youth in the not-for-profit sector. Leah supports young mums to re-engage with education and help create a brighter future for them and their children.

With my last little bit, I would just like to say that the Youth Action Plan is underway. We will be, as a department, releasing a new Youth Action Plan and it will be one that means something. It will not just be a tick list of success or list of things that were already underway under the previous government as was the last Youth Action Plan—and I challenge members to tell me otherwise. This new one will be saying something, it will mean something, it will be informed by young people and it will help to contribute towards resilience, strength and a successful future. I commend the motion. I will not be supporting the amendment.

The Hon. B.I. BOYER (Wright—Minister for Education, Training and Skills) (12:41): I rise just to speak very briefly in support of the member for Newland's motion and to reflect on the short time that I had at the statewide SRC at the Festival Centre. This has already been referred to by the member for Newland and the member for Hurtle Vale as well but it was a really impressive event.

Unfortunately, I was pressed for time, as you often are in these jobs, and was racing from one event to get there and then leave quite promptly to get to another one, so I only had about 45 minutes. In hindsight, I would have liked much more. I am also often pretty nervous about events where politicians sit down with young people and do the old it is good to be with the youth and pretend that you are really up to date and up to speed and in touch with all the things that people younger than myself are, which I do not think we ever truly are even when we have kids of our own.

I am always starting from a point of being very cautious in how I engage with young people like that and take care not to patronise them, not to pretend that I understand perfectly the issues that they are dealing with but also be really keen to listen. If my years in different roles in government have taught me anything, they have taught me that so much is always lost between the views of anyone in the community, I guess, but more than any group I think young people, as that is communicated and translated and passed through the line until it gets up to cabinet ministers and the Premier. The honesty, frankness and detail of that message is often watered down and lost, and what decision-makers end up with at the cabinet table is nothing like what is actually being expressed by young people in terms of what they actually want their elected representative to do for them.

I guess what I am saying is that although I am always careful when entering something like that not to be patronising, I do think they are incredibly valuable exercises and I want to commend the Commissioner for Children and Young People for putting it together and giving us the opportunity to be there. Before I finish, I just want to mention that there were some really valuable things that I took away from the 45 minutes I had with the 10 or so young people at my table.

We went around in a circle, and I explained to them, 'I am a bit short on time, but I would like you just to be completely frank with me about what you would be doing if you were in my job to better assist you in your pathway through school.' That was all I said. I gave no preamble about what the Malinauskas Labor government was doing. I held off on the politics and left the floor open to them and there was an incredible theme that arose which was consistent as we went around.

That theme was about a desire from these young people to have possibly not part of the curriculum but at least something offered in high schools to assist them with a number of basic life skills—that was how they put it to me—the kind of life skills that they feel they need and are sometimes missing now in 2022. They were things like how to fill out your own tax return and how to better understand contracts, particularly mobile phone contracts.

Of course now, from a very young age, kids have their own mobile phone. I remember when I got my first mobile phone in 2002. I was at university. The member for Newland scoffs, because she may not have been alive when I got my first Panasonic mobile flip phone, which had a colour screen so I could play Snake in colour; it was very impressive. That was the first time I had had to enter any kind of contract, and I was just shy of 21 years old. I had never had to enter any kind of legally binding contract before, so I had never had to turn my mind to that issue. Of course, that is not the case now.

Other life skills mentioned include understanding the basics of a contract and what your obligations are, understanding how things like credit work, how you might pay off a loan, how you understand the pitfalls of things like Afterpay, which is now a really popular and commonplace method for people to buy something and pay for it later with. These people at the table explained that often they do not know before going into agreements like that, or even lease agreements on cars, that there might be a balloon payment or something like that at the end, where a larger sum of money is then owed, and they quite simply did not understand and were possibly taken advantage of by an overzealous salesperson.

They were the themes from the 10 young people I got to engage with, which were really consistent around making sure that the offerings in terms of equipping our young people with the life skills they need in this day and age are up to date and not still stuck in the past. I will finish by saying that I really appreciated their feedback and that I was pleased to say we had turned our minds to some of these things in terms of the commitment that this government made before the state election to update our financial literacy curriculum that is taught in schools and to make sure that there is no place for any financial institutions to teach financial literacy in our schools anymore.

Some members of this place will be familiar with the findings of the banking royal commission, which had some pretty strident remarks, which have been echoed by the 'barefoot investor', Scott Pape, about what has been found to be predatory behaviour on behalf of some banks and the Dollarmites accounts, which I had as a kid.

I am still scarred by the experience when, at the end of grade 6 in 1993, mum and I went into the Portland branch of the Commonwealth Bank, as I was finishing primary school—that is where it finished in Victoria then—to withdraw what I think was $26, which, if I recall, was almost enough for me to buy a V33 cricket bat, which was the poor man's version of what Viv Richards and the Waugh brothers were using at the time. They came back out and said to mum that there was nothing left in the account because it had all been eaten up by fees. That was the first time I ever saw my mum really take someone to task like that. She was upset.

That stuck with me, and I read closely the findings of the royal commission, which spoke about the way financial institutions were using financial literacy programs in schools to make lifelong clients of people and to teach them. They had characters called Addy and Spen, who would teach you about saving money and spending money, and then Cred appeared as well, who was about teaching them the benefits of having credit.

I explained to them that we are moving to a curriculum in South Australia that we have committed to as the Malinauskas Labor government where financial institutions will not be able to do that work anymore. We will work, I hope, to be able to engage Scott Pape personally, if he is interested, to work on having an updated financial literacy program so that we deal with some of the things these young people mentioned around how to understand a mobile phone contract, how to understand how you might do a tax return yourself, how to understand the pitfalls of things like Afterpay.

I just wanted to add that to this debate today and commend the member for Newland for this motion and also commend the Commissioner for Children and Young People for convening the SRC and letting us all be a part of it. I hope it continues for many years to come, and I will make sure next time I set aside more time so I can sit down and hear these fantastic ideas from some of our young leaders.

Ms SAVVAS (Newland) (12:49): I would like to thank the Minister for Human Services and the Minister for Education for their supportive comments. As to the speech by the member for Morialta, in the spirit of harmony I would like to thank him for his support on paragraph (d). However, we will be opposing the amendment to add the additional (e).

As the members opposite are aware, many of those commitments to new public schools were indeed funded by the Weatherill government and not funded by the Marshall government. I will acknowledge, however, that the amendment does use the term 'delivering'—a term I am very familiar with, as similar wording was often used regarding Labor's commitment and Labor's funding at Modbury Hospital, in my electorate. The term 'delivering' was used by the members opposite. I acknowledge that they have used the term 'delivering', but the fact remains that many of those school upgrades were funded by the previous Weatherill government. As a result, we will not be supporting the amendment today.

Amendment negatived; motion carried.

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