ADJOURNMENT

Mr SOON (Banks) (19:34): Over the winter recess, I had the opportunity to welcome a number of ministerial colleagues to my great electorate of Banks to meet with locals and see some of the amazing work going on in my community. Following the announcement that the government will be expanding the Commonwealth paid prac payment to 10 additional allied health professions, I was able to welcome the Minister for Health and Ageing to Enunciate Allied Health Services in Mortdale.

The minister and I met with the founder and general manager, Chauntell, and some of her team, including speech pathologists and occupational therapists. While they all spoke about how valuable their placement experience was to their professional development, they also noted how hard it was to have to give up paid work to make it possible. Importantly, thanks to this Labor government, from 1 July next year, speech pathology and occupational therapy students along with those students training to be paramedics, pharmacists and more will be eligible for paid prac payment.

This is a $158 million investment in our healthcare workforce, which provides much needed cost-of-living relief to 21,000 students each year while also ensuring that we can train local students for in-demand jobs to support our communities. The Labor government is committed to ensuring every student gets a high-quality education. It was my pleasure to welcome the Minister for Education to St Luke's Catholic Primary School in Revesby, near where I grew up on Beaconsfield Street.

We had a chance to tour the school's grounds, observe the school's multitiered approach to reading and teaching instruction, as well as watch some musical performances by students. Thank you to the entire school community at St Luke's for welcoming us and to the principal, Justin Coupland, for helping facilitate our fantastic visit. While my time working in education policy focused on how we can make the education system better, so many solutions require our schools to be properly resourced in order to achieve a successful implementation.

It is why I am so proud that this government is delivering the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement to fully fund every public school across our country. In mid-July, the Prime Minister announced a world-leading artificial intelligence framework that will allow Australia to capture the opportunities and share the benefits of AI while keeping Australians safe. Following this announcement, I was able to bring together community members, small-business owners and workers from my community for a discussion about the implications of artificial intelligence for small business alongside a panel featuring the member for Parramatta in his capacity as assistant minister and Tania Katsanis for Business Chamber South.

This Labor government is setting the terms to ensure new technology benefits the Australian people, is aligned with our values and advances our interests. Thank you to everyone who came along to that event in the community as well as to the member for Parramatta and to Tania for that thoughtful discussion. I look forward to holding more similar events in the future to make sure we're hearing feedback from our community, as well as providing the most up-to-date information about what government is doing.

Finally, I had the pleasure of welcoming the Minister for Aged Care and Seniors to Yallambee Village in Revesby to show the incredible work that our local aged-care workforce does in caring for older people with complex care needs. The Labor government remains committed to providing older Australians with dignified quality care, no matter what their means are, and we're delivering this through a $3 billion investment.

Older Australians deserve dignity in their care, and this government is doing the hard work to ensure the systemic neglect exposed by the royal commission is never allowed to persist again. It is always my pleasure to welcome colleagues to my community and to show them what we are doing as well as to hear from them about what the government's agenda is, and I look forward to continuing to do so well into the future.