CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr GORMAN (Perth—Assistant Minister to the Prime Minister, Assistant Minister for the Public Service and Assistant Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations) (16:51): In this place we have an important responsibility to listen to the voices of young Australians. I had the opportunity to do that last month when, alongside my colleague Senator Dorinda Cox, I hosted a schools youth forum.

What the students from schools across the Perth electorate said to me was that they wanted to have more opportunities to engage with their elected members and to feel that they were genuinely heard in those discussions. Today, through the Raise Our Voice campaign, I have the privilege of raising the voice of one young leader in my electorate. I'll be sharing the words of Chloe, who is a student at Perth Modern School.

She has chosen to write about the importance of making sure that we invest in education. Her speech is as follows: I am Chloe, a 15-year-old Perth Modern School student from the Perth electorate. And I would like to begin with a story.

Graduating from a middle-class primary school, it is often the little things that I reflect on. I remember a friend who brought the same Vegemite sandwich for lunch every day. Another could not buy new stationary until her mum finished TAFE.

Another courageously shared her parent's experience with cancer. Looking back, I realise how much I overlooked these signs of struggle. The same schooling system that was meant to support my friends never acknowledged the tangible effects of socioeconomic barriers.

Whether it be nutritionally, academically, or emotionally, my friends were left to navigate in the dark. Now in high school, I see how those early disadvantages snowball. While I attend a selective school with specialist programs and university pathways, my primary school friends got funnelled into under-resourced schools, pushed toward … dead ends.

Our education system prides itself on giving every child a "fair go", but what our kids really need is equity. They need you to recognise that some of them need more support to reach the same starting line. To our representatives in Parliament—children's futures should not depend on the postcodes.

Fund schools based on need and ensure every student has access to the same opportunities regardless of where they live. Their futures, Australia's future, depends on you. Those are Chloe's words.

That is one of a number of outstanding contributions from students in the Perth electorate that were put forward to me to choose from. What it reminds us of is that, when Chloe speaks about fairness and opportunity, there are people who are listening to those calls. I want to thank Chloe for participating.

I want to thank every young Australian across the country who participated in the Raise Our Voice campaign. I think what you see across the parliament here is that it's a reminder that young people do have a voice in this parliament. Many of them aren't able to vote yet, but they still have all of the democratic rights of representation and the ability to contact their members of parliament and put forward their views about the decisions we make.