Stephen Bates (Brisbane, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

Earlier this year, I participated in the Raise Our Voice parliament campaign, which invited young people to submit a speech to be read in parliament. Raise Our Voice do amazing work engaging young people—particularly women and non-binary people—in politics, and there were many fantastic submissions. While it was hard to choose, I have narrowed my submissions down to two speeches from young people in Brisbane.

This first speech was written by nine-year-old Olivia:

Hi my name is Olivia Binesh, I am 9 years old and a grade threeier. I want to speak to the Parliament about the environment. We at school are doing term three plastic free, which means that we are reducing plastic in our lunch boxes. Do you know that it takes over 300 years for plastic to decompose? Our states are doing a lot to reduce single plastic use but we need our Federal Parliament to take a stronger stand for the environment. I don't want our land to look like a rubbish bin. I do not want our precious animals to disappear from our land because they don't have a place to live. I do not want all trees to be cut off to give room to more buildings. I want you to help me to change the negative climate impact. It is time for action. Please act now. Thank you for listening to me.

This speech was written by 11-year-old Leila:

Good afternoon, My name is Leila … I am 11 years old and in grade 6. There are two topics I am raising here with you and I want your help to create positive change. First I want your help to raise the age of child imprisonment. At 11 years old it is my worst nightmare to be locked up. Children shouldn't be imprisoned. We need to be supported and lifted to fulfill our potential. We are the future of this nation. I want your help to make sure no child is imprisoned in Australia. The other topic of importance to me is achieving gender equality. I am grateful for the opportunities we girls have in Australia but we still haven't addressed all barriers. I want your help to make sure that when I am an adult we girls have similar access to housing, superannuation and health outcomes. I also want us to lead the way to address child marriage which is impacting many girls my age or younger in other parts of the world. Our international aid work should focus on improving outcomes for all children. I know we can achieve this if we have all our parliamentarians' support.

I want to thank these young people and all those who participated in the Raise Our Voice campaign for engaging with politics at such a young age and for having the confidence to demand a better world and future for themselves. I hope the government will listen to the voices of young people and act on these issues that are so close to their hearts.

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