Portfolio — 30 March 2026

The Minister for Veterans' Affairs and Minister for Defence Personnel, Mr Matt Keogh, convened the ninth annual Burt Youth Leaders Forum on 30 March, hosting two student representatives from each of 18 high schools across the Burt electorate — 36 students in total [TA-260330-house-326949c748de:s117]. The forum's breadth of student concern was notable: participants raised issues spanning cost of living, housing affordability, AI deepfakes, education, innovation, community division, global instability, overseas qualifications recognition, and mental health, and worked through proposals to address each [TA-260330-house-326949c748de:s117].

The Minister intends to present a report on those findings directly to the Prime Minister and Western Australian Premier Roger Cook, framing the exercise explicitly as substantive policy input rather than token consultation [TA-260330-house-326949c748de:s117].

The student focus on AI safety and deepfakes is the most policy-resonant signal to emerge from the forum. The Minister connected that concern to existing government action — specifically, anti-deepfake legislation passed in 2024 — positioning the government as having already moved on the issue the students raised. That framing serves a dual purpose: it validates student concern as legitimate and grounds it in a legislative record.

The observations layer flags that the anti-deepfake laws and broader AI overreliance concerns are under-tagged in the corpus, suggesting this forum may be the clearest recent ministerial statement linking youth engagement to the AI safety legislative record.

The forum falls during Youth Week WA, running 10 to 16 April, with community events including Serpentine Jarrahdale's Youth Fest offering further engagement opportunities in the electorate. No parliamentary segment is present for this date, so this Note draws solely on the parliamentary contribution record.