Jim Chalmers (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I want to tell the House and the nation beyond about a remarkable CEO who has had a bit to do with my electorate. He is the co-founder of a global software company. What makes him a bit different is that this CEO and founder of a global software company is 17 years old. He graduated last week from one of the great schools in my electorate, John Paul College. His name is Taj Pabari, and his company, which is called Fiftysix Creations, is a social enterprise that produces build-it-yourself computer tablets and coding kits for kids, which are being used in schools right around the world. Taj describes it as the 'Lego of the 21st century'. If you want to read more about it, check out today's Courier-Mail. He employs about nine full-time staff and 15 to 20 part-timers. They work out of Melbourne but also out of San Francisco and London. His team have educated 43,000 students around the world. They have ambitious plans to expand that to a million by 2020. He was acknowledged overnight as the 2017 Queensland Young Australian of the Year. When he was at school, he would get up at 4 am to do his CEO work before he went to school to do the usual curriculum.

Ms Brodtmann interjecting—

He is an extraordinary person, as the member for Canberra just said. We congratulate him; we commend him; we thank him for being such an inspiring, remarkable, extraordinary young person.

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