Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Robertson for her question. She's a teacher herself—the daughter of a school principal, I think—and I know that she, like the member for Grey, knows that the national plan is important, not just to open our economy and our society but so important for our young people also, because, when we reach those 70 to 80 per cent vaccination rates, the national plan says that only low-level restrictions are required. That means that we can now open the schools, the sporting grounds and those other things as well—absent those hotspots being present. This is so important for our kids and parents, to give them that confidence and hope that we can get back to normal life, like we used to have 18 months ago.

As everybody in this chamber knows, our young people have missed so much in the last 18 months, and particularly so in my home city of Melbourne. It's not just the face-to-face learning that they've missed but the school formals, the graduations, the camps which they'd so much looked forward to, the trips away, the local sport—I could go on. These were just normal parts of being a kid and of going to school, and our young people have had to endure those sacrifices over all that time. We know the mental health impacts of all of this have been devastating. Professor Patrick McGorry refers to it as the 'shadow pandemic', such is the extent of it.

This national plan is so important to give that hope and confidence, to be able to address those things—to get back to normal for those kids. And we are so close to achieving those milestones that are outlined in that national plan.

I've got enormous confidence and pride in our young people. The NAPLAN results released today show how resilient those kids have been, at least in their learning, because the results from May of this year when the tests were held are actually the same as they were two years ago. So no loss of learning had occurred, despite the fact that, in some cases, almost six months of face-to-face schooling had been lost. It's such a testament to the kids' resilience as well as a testament to the parents' resilience and to the teachers' expertise, to be able to adapt and ensure that those kids continued to learn.

Our government's here. We are backing our students 100 per cent. We've backed them with the hope through this plan. We've backed them with record funding in schools. We're backing them with extra funding that we're putting into mental health that they can access, and, importantly, we're backing them with hope and opportunities of what they can do post school as well—with record youth unemployment—with more university opportunities than ever before and many more training opportunities than ever before as well. (Time expired)

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