Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to acknowledge the new student leaders within the schools of Fadden. I believe it is important for the Commonwealth to recognise the roles and responsibilities of our young leaders as they represent the very future of the Commonwealth itself. Australia’s young leaders play an important part in the life of our communities. Their actions have the potential to influence their peers, an influence that should not be underestimated.

These young leaders have been selected by their school communities for their potential to make a positive and lasting contribution. For many of them it is the start of a leadership journey. Our young people represent 100 per cent of the future of our great nation, and their recognition marks a significant point in their journey towards being leaders outside their schools. They may choose to do so on the sports field, in the boardroom, within community organisations or within their families or peer groups. They may even seek leadership within state and federal parliaments.

I urge these students to recognise the need for true leadership and to view the opportunity they have been handed as a stepping stone to a greater and broader role. I urge these students, as Australia’s emerging young leaders, to strive to achieve their very best in their current roles. Through their influence they now carry a torch of responsibility. Winston Churchill once said to a gathering of students:

Never give in. Never give in. Never, never, never, never—in nothing, great or small, large or petty—never give in, except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force. Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.

They are wise words from one of the nations of the world’s greatest leaders that we have seen. There is nothing more important than great leadership. It is at the heart of all achievement, all advancement and the betterment of society. Nothing will ever replace great leadership and nothing can fill the void that the absence of leadership creates.

I regularly visit the schools whose leaders’ names I seek to table today. I am regularly welcomed by members of the schools’ leadership groups and am universally impressed with the young people the schools have chosen to represent them. It is clear that the calibre of young people on the northern Gold Coast is of an extraordinarily high level.

Some of the students I seek to recognise today lead in areas of expertise or passion. Others have been recognised for their commitment to their school as a whole. Some of these students have been elected by their peers, an experience I think all members of parliament know can be difficult; however, rewarding. Some have been appointed by consensus with the members of the schools’ staff, who are watching these extraordinary young people grow up and recognising the contribution they can make for their schools, families and community.

I believe it is important for the Commonwealth to recognise the role and responsibilities of all our young leaders in school communities, which is why I publicly recognise their achievements in the federal parliament today. I wish these students well in their important positions, and trust that they will represent their schools and communities to the best of their abilities. Above all, they should remember that leaders can only truly lead by serving those they seek to represent. This rule is universal, without exception. It was Theodore Roosevelt who once said:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

Such is the tale of leadership. Mr Speaker, I request leave to table the names of Fadden’s school leaders, knowing that one day some of them may indeed fill the seats of this great parliament.

Leave granted.

See this speech in context