Aaron Violi (Casey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I want to commend the member for Reid for this motion. All of us have great memories of our teachers, and we understand how important education is not just for the current generation but for future generations as well. I was at my old high school, Mount Lilydale Mercy College, for their graduation ceremony in December. Mr Rogers, who was my year 9 homeroom teacher, was there, and I couldn't bring myself to call him John. I still had to call him Mr Rogers, 25 years later, which he thought was a little bit weird! But it was a reminder to me of the impact that he'd had on my life as a young man. I know everyone in this House has stories about the important work that teachers do—and not just teachers but teachers aides and the administrative staff. Everyone within a primary school or a high school comes together.

So I want to start by thanking all the teachers and all the teachers aides, and I've got family who are teachers and teachers aides. I want to thank not just those in Casey but those across the country. Thank you all for everything you do. Many of us know firsthand—I've got a seven-year-old and a nine-year-old—that the last three years have been extremely tough for all families and all students, but teachers have really been on the front line in schools and for learning from home. They are overworked. They are stressed. There are a lot of factors that bring this all together, and I just want to thank them for all the work they've done in our community to make sure the students were able to get through the last three years.

But it's also really important that we acknowledge and understand that we're not through the challenges. Last week, I was at Healesville Primary School and Healesville High School, and Warowa college, which is a boarding school for Indigenous female students. From talking to the principals and the teachers, there are many students that are struggling because of the isolation and some the challenges they had through COVID and the lockdowns. So it's an ongoing challenge. It's really important that we recognise that, while we're back out and about in the community, schools are still feeling the impact. That's why it is so important that we continue to support schools. It's not always just about the money; it's about supporting those teachers.

There are some initiatives we can look at. The coalition government linked federal university funding for teacher education to course quality. We initiated the Quality Initial Teacher Education Review, which was delivered in February 2022, and it made 17 recommendations. So there's a strong blueprint for meaningful reform, and it's sitting there, ready to go. In December 2022, the education ministers agreed on the National Teacher Action Workforce Plan, and this is a step in the right direction. The 28 recommendations largely mirror the coalition's teacher education review. We really can't have these delays. We need to initiate them straightaway. A lot of them are being pushed back to mid to late 2023, and that's too late for a lot of these schools. We need to look at rolling out these initiatives as soon as possible.

But we also need to look at other opportunities to make it easier for teachers. My mum is a teacher, and I know that there is a lot of administration and a lot of paperwork outside of school hours that teachers do that they don't get paid for. How do we unlock technology and allow systems where they can have more uniform class lessons? How can they use things—dare I ask it? It's a bit controversial in education at the moment!—like ChatGPT and artificial intelligence to actually help them prepare their work plans? It would not be to do the work for them but to give them a baseload, so that a lot of that administrative workload would be taken off them. And that's what we need to do.

We know teachers face challenges. They're overworked. They're stressed.

There is a bipartisan initiative to support education—to support our teachers and our teachers aides—because, once we invest in those future generations, they deliver returns today but also returns for the future. It's important that we acknowledge and recognise that, for teachers, it's not just the education that they deliver. There's a lot of care that teachers and teachers aides provide, whether that's through breakfast programs, or providing lunch, or buying gifts to give to students whose families just aren't able to provide them for those students. So teachers and teachers aides do amazing work. It's important that we continue to support them. It's important that we recognise that action needs to be delivered at a systemic level. It's important for the federal government to work with state governments, to make sure we're addressing these shortages and keeping the teachers that are in the system there as long as possible. I commend the motion to the House.

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