I rise to remember a titan of the surf lifesaving movement, a member of my community who, sadly, passed after almost a decade in a wheelchair. Dave Zemek was an absolute giant. Unfortunately, some years ago, he dived into the water at Mermaid Beach Surf Club, hit the sandbank or a piece of flotsam in the water and snapped his spinal cord.
Our young people represent the future, and they deserve our attention, our guidance and, of course, our support. It’s a great privilege to be going into my second term as the shadow minister for youth, and I want to highlight that the new Opposition Leader, Sussan Ley, opted to elevate youth into the shadow cabinet so that young people have a louder voice when it comes to Coalition policy.
Many members in this House may not know this—I will start with a small snapshot of my life—but I grew up in South Australia and spent my childhood playing on the beaches of the Yorke Peninsula, crab fishing in Ardrossan, eating King George whiting for breakfast and flattening out calamari with beer bottles. Mum used to fry them in the pan for breakfast, freshly caught in the Gulf of St Vincent.
Former treasury secretary Ken Henry said just last week that Australia’s environment protection laws have both failed to stop the degradation of Australia’s natural environment and held back economic growth, and they are undermining productivity. It’s true that, under the Albanese government, not only are Australians worse off, with soaring cost-of-living pressures, but Australia’s environment is also worse off.
Nothing is more important than the safety of our children, and early childhood education plays an incredibly important role. It provides our littlest Australians with a good start in life, a chance to learn and a chance to make friends. Early childhood education is also crucial for parents who are studying, training and working. Our early educators are so very important in shaping these young lives.
That was a frightening last thought from the member for Brisbane—the Greens with the balance of power in a minority Labor government. I couldn’t think of anything worse as a nightmare scenario than that being the case when we return from the federal election, apart from the fear that my community felt during the effects of Cyclone Alfred.
Last year, the Prime Minister promised Australia’s early childhood educators—200,000 of them—that they would receive a pay rise by the end of the year. But, in typical Labor fashion, it was just another broken promise. On 5 December, the education minister declared it was ‘payday’ for hundreds of thousands of early childhood educators. But this was yet another misleading headline, because we know that, by the end of 2024, fewer than 30,000 of those educators had received the promised pay rise, and, as of last month, only 19 per cent of eligible educators had received it.
It’s quite hard to believe that we’re nearing the end of the 47th parliament. It seems like yesterday that I came to this place in 2019 and again in 2022, and I’m very proud to be the member for Moncrieff and advocate for you, my community, and, of course, for the Liberal National Party values of equality of opportunity, reward for effort and freedom of association and conscience.
Australian families do not believe the Prime Minister when he says that they’ll be better off under Labor again. Aussies are not mugs. They know they’ve been fooled once, but it won’t be twice. His promises that life will be easy have simply not come true.
Early childhood education is an essential service that families rely on to study, to work and to pay the household bills. That’s how the minister introduced her bill last week. And I must say, I found myself agreeing profusely with that statement, as that is exactly why this legislation should be voted down.