CONSTITUENCY STATEMENTS

Mr HAMILTON (Groom) (10:10): On the 8th of this month, I received an email from Nicole Carlile. This was after the budget. She wanted to reach out to me and share with me her concerns.

She's a small-business owner in Toowoomba who owns Freedom Lifestyle and Fitness, which is just down the road from my office. The tax changes that she'd seen come through caused her to write in. She has three employees in her team of 10 who own their home already, but she was really concerned for the other seven, following conversations with them about what their hopes and dreams were for the future and what this budget did for them.

She wrote to me, and I thought it was important to go and to hear her concerns, so, two days later, I was down in her office, meeting with her team. We had most of those seven in the room. I asked them, 'How politically engaged are you?' because it was interesting to see in that group—from about 24 to 27 in age—how switched on they were.

They all said the same thing. They've never been switched on to politics before, but this budget drew them in. They were genuinely concerned about what the impacts would be.

They'd seen a lot on social media—they'd seen all the memes go through—from other small businesses in the area, in Toowoomba, that were raising their concerns that this incredibly coordinated fear campaign Labor dreamed up was happening. Small businesses in my region were saying, 'We're really worried about where this is going.' So I went out to see them and I spoke to these kids.

The No. 1 message I got back from them was that they were concerned about what was laid out in their future; they could not see the pathway to prosperity that had been laid out for previous generations—the way that they could have the same things that previous generations had. They didn't want to take it away from those who'd got there. They wanted their own pathway and they wanted a future laid out for them.

They made that very clear. The other thing that they said that really struck home was that they just wanted there to be some structural advantage to being an Australian—some in-built way that gets us ahead because of the hard work we do. They wanted structural advantage for trying hard, and they felt that was being removed from them.

They wanted some structural advantage from working and saving their money. And, goodness me, when we got to the heart of why this stuff mattered—for some of them, it was starting businesses, but, for all of them, it was starting families and how this impacted their chances of having not just the prosperity but the same happiness that previous generations had had.

I was encouraged, as I always am when talking to the younger generations—I'm incredibly optimistic. They see the dangers of just wallowing in protest; they want to get involved. So my message to them was very clear: get involved in politics.

It's the same thing I say to all kids who reach out and talk to us. Get involved; don't protest. It's fun.

It feels good. You can vent your anger. Get involved.

Join a party, whatever side you feel inclined towards. Get involved in politics. Make a difference.