Warren Entsch (Leichhardt, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to highlight the magnificent achievements of a youngster in my community who's making waves around the nation and overseas. Eleven-year-old Molly Steer, who is the founder of the highly successful Straw No More campaign, has been selected to attend the Ocean Heroes Bootcamp in Vancouver in Canada. In fact, Molly was the inspiration behind my commitment towards introducing plastics legislation in this term of government, because this is a young lass who is all about solutions and not slogans.

Molly is only one of 50 youngsters across the globe selected to attend the boot camp, being held at the University of British Columbia. The Ocean Heroes Bootcamp aims to empower existing and emerging youth leaders to create their own ecocampaigns to take action against ocean plastic pollution. It will also feature keynote presentations from international influencers such as UN Environment Programme Goodwill Ambassador Adrian Grenier and Bye Bye Plastic Bags founder Melati Wijsen, who was recently named one of CNN's top five most influential youths on the planet.

For many years now Molly has been a most vocal and passionate environmental advocate. Molly said that she is extremely excited to be given the opportunity to attend the boot camp and to be surrounded by like-minded people from across the world who have achieved so much in their own plastics campaigns. I have absolutely no doubt that it will be a huge learning experience for Molly and will allow her to further expand and enhance her already successful no-straw campaign.

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