Page 2075 - Week 07 - Thursday, 24 June 2021
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activism; and bringing them to fight against injustices, the biggest being the continued abuse of the planet by the human race.
Mr Hanson and I had a good go at one another yesterday, and I am doing my very best not to do that today, but I do seek to take issue with one point, about some of the posters you might see at a climate rally that are a bit colourful. They are certainly a bit colourful. Nothing invokes your emotional temperament quite like pending climate doom. In those instances, I forgive some of those young people for their colourful use of language.
I would caution members, though, against being too selective in their evidence. As a young person, I spent way too much time walking past anti-marriage equality rallies in the city when there were some very interesting posters and things said.
I can still remember conversations in our family, particularly with female members of my family, during the period that this nation was led by a woman for the first time and some of the choice poster art we saw—not held up by a frustrated 10-year-old in Glebe Park but held up right next to the head of the Prime Minister at the time and not condemned. We do owe honest and earnest engagement in the debate to be not selective in our evidence.
I cannot speak to the experience of being a parent. I will say that all members who have spoken, irrespective of their party, have spoken quite well about their experience as a parent. It relates slightly to the conversation that we had yesterday about schools. As someone who is not a parent, it is my responsibility, as one of the 25 members of this place, to genuinely listen to parents and seek to understand the challenges that they face in raising children in a very complicated world. I can truly appreciate how difficult it must be for parents to try and navigate all the new and complex challenges that their young people are facing.
I would encourage all parents—not just members of this place but all parents in the Canberra community more broadly—to really engage young people in their households on all these issues: to engage them earnestly and honestly in these conversations and to explore them. The best civics and citizenship education on democracy starts at home. There is only so much that this Assembly and this government can do.
I encourage every member to pick up the phone tonight to a young person or go home to a young person and talk to them about this motion today and ask them what it means to them. As cited in my comments earlier, I know that my conservative friends have many young people they can talk to. During our committee inquiry it was put that the Young Liberals are the biggest growing political movement, so there will be lots of conservative young people with whom to have ferocious and robust debates in the future.
In my time here, I look forward to bringing more motions to this Assembly that empower, encourage and celebrate young people’s activism and that empower, celebrate and encourage young people’s continued contribution to public life in this
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