ADJOURNMENT

Ms McKENZIE (Flinders) (12:02): Today I rise to congratulate three outstanding athletes from Flinders who represented Australia at the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Glasgow. One is Thomas McGough, who's a year 10 student. He became the youngest male in our Commonwealth Games athletics team at just 15.

Tom ran the race of his life in the men's 100 metre T38 final, missing the podium by less than two-tenths of a second. But that is not a defeat; that's a down payment on a very bright future indeed in Australian sport. Eileen Cikamatana lives and trains on the Mornington Peninsula.

She claimed gold in the women's 86 kilogram weightlifting, with a games record of 248 kilograms. It was her third consecutive Commonwealth Games gold, a feat matched by only two other women in our history. Emily Whitehead, born and raised in Flinders, competed in her third Commonwealth Games in women's artistic gymnastics, helping the Australian team win gold.

A career that began at the age of four in a local gym has become one of the great sporting stories of our region. All three did Flinders and Australia proud in Glasgow, and so did the local clubs, coaches and families who backed these athletes long before. It's a reminder of what you can achieve in this country with talent, hard work and a supportive community behind you—none of which, incidentally, the Victorian government required to set the world's record for the most expensive way in history to watch someone else's opening ceremony.

I nevertheless commend these extraordinary athletes and their endeavour. Children sit at the heart of everything we do in this place. It's why visiting schools is such a favoured task amongst all of us who are in this place, regardless of which side of politics we represent.

Last Wednesday I had the enormous pleasure of spending an hour with half-a-dozen student leaders from John Paul College in Frankston, a secondary college which services families in the seats of both Flinders and Dunkley. Together with the member for Dunkley, I met these extraordinary young women at an event hosted by the Committee for Frankston & Mornington Peninsula a couple of months earlier.

That event brought together politicians from federal, state and council levels, and we listened to what these future leaders from schools across the peninsula wanted us to know about their generation. The three speakers that day from John Paul spoke with poise, grace and an awe-striking sense of responsibility and commitment to their communities, to their families and indeed to the future of Australia.

One said, 'I am my parents' hope, and I carry their sacrifice.' Thinking about her life after school, another said, 'If I leave, who helps my family at 4 am?' Finally, another beckoned to all of us and said: 'Don't just listen to these stories. Use them.' I was so blown away by what I heard that day that I asked them, and indeed their teacher Jack Charleston, if I could come up to Frankston and have a proper conversation with them.

Last week we sat down with no agenda and no predetermined topics for conversation—just an afternoon in the classroom, speaking and listening to each other. We compared stories about our upbringing, about being grateful for our first job and the discipline that it gave us to manage both school achievement and professional development while still being teenagers.

They told me about their experience at being first-generation Australians, navigating an education system that's worlds away from what their parents knew and being the interpreter for their parents of that Australian system, and of their extraordinary achievements in it. They told me stories of balancing work with studies. In one case that work included caring for NDIS recipients in the few hours between finishing and starting school each day.

I thank these young women—Harlene, Alicia, Molly, Rhianna, Rena and Charlotte—for trusting me and for speaking freely with me and not finding me odd to be both so interested in them and inspired by them. These young women showed leadership and intellect well beyond their years. If you're ever in doubt about the future of this country, I strongly recommend that you sit down with a group of school students and listen to them, by which I mean really listen to them.

You will leave with a strong sense that what we do here really matters and that in their generation we will be even stronger.