STATEMENTS BY SENATORS

Senator DAVID POCOCK (Australian Capital Territory—Independent ACT Whip) (13:40): The speeches submitted for this year's Raise Our Voice in Parliament campaign by young people in the ACT were passionate and thoughtful, and I'm privileged to be reading a speech to the Senate written by Chase: Hello my name is Chase. I'm 12 years old. My electorate is Bean and the problem I am researching is food waste which is a big problem with billions being wasted in a year.

Food waste happens for many reasons. A good example of food waste is grocery stores throwing away fruit because of its shape, or size or even its straightness. The issues shaping the future is that we are using resources inappropriately.

The government and parliament could educate people through things like social media. If it gets too bad, a law could be introduced to stop waste of food. They could also make policies for farmers that if they sell products, the shape, size etc shouldn't matter.

They can also influence the companies because of the control they have. If we don't stop wastage this could be an extreme issue particularly for climate change and can deeply affect the environment and people who need to eat. The government should be a leader in this space and if needed make policies to influence stores to ignore the shapes of food and focus on feeding people.

Unfortunately, there were so many submissions that you obviously can't read them all out, but I want to thank all of the young people who've sent in speeches to be read by senators and parliamentarians. It's great to have young people putting forward problems, and, really importantly, solutions to those problems, to their elected representatives. I sincerely hope that, as elected representatives, we will spend a lot more time dealing with the root causes of some of the problems that we're facing and, for the young people up who come here, setting them and their futures up for success.