QUESTIONS WITHOUT NOTICE
Mr CLARE (Blaxland—Minister for Education) (14:46): I thank my friend, the awesome member for Jagajaga, for her question. I also give a shout-out to Tammy Anderson, the principal of Briar Road Public School, who's right up the top of the gallery there today. You might remember I told the story to parliament last week about the school that saw their phonics results jump from about 20 per cent to 80 per cent in just three years.
That's Briar Road Public School, and Tammy is an absolutely awesome principal, leading a fantastic team and winning an award at the Schools Plus Teaching Awards tomorrow night. Yesterday the New South Wales government announced that they're going to set screen-time limits for kids at school. This is brilliant.
This is what I was talking about last week when I said we need a digital detox in our schools. The evidence is pretty clear that, the more time kids spend behind a screen at school, the more their results decline. That's why what New South Wales announced yesterday is so important.
For kids in kindergarten to year 2, they're setting a limit of 15 minutes a day. For years 3 and 4, they're setting a limit of half an hour a day. For kids in years 5 and 6, they're setting a limit of 45 minutes a day.
They're going to set the same sort of limits for kids at high school. Victoria are doing the same sort of thing. The next step is what happens across the rest of the country.
And this will be discussed when education ministers meet in the next few weeks. That's what we do inside the classroom, but it's also important what happens outside the classroom. Last week I quoted Michael Blake.
He's the principal of Saint Joseph's College. He gave a speech that went viral to the boys at his school saying that he wants girls in Australia to be safe, not from them but because of them. It was a powerful speech.
What's also powerful is what he said to the Daily Telegraph on the weekend. This is what he said about the algorithms that we want to crack down on: The content you can get through these algorithms is just horrific. It's sexualised violence, and it normalises it and pushes it onto the feeds of girls and boys.
He's right, and so is the member for Flinders. She said last week—this is unarguably one of the best and brightest members of the Liberal Party. This is what she said about algorithms last week: People claim that algorithms are actually freedom of speech.
They are not. They are force-fed speech. It is not what you are choosing to look at.
It is what the platforms think will keep you there for longer. The member for Flinders is right. Teachers and principals and parents are right too.
They expect us to come together and crack down on these algorithms and help to keep our kids safe.