Jenny Ware (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the motion brought forward by the honourable member for Bonner. I thank him for bringing this motion and I support this motion. This motion concerns education, particularly in the field of financial literacy. We need to be empowering our students, our children, our youth, to be financially literate, to better understand our financial institutions and to be confident dealing with their own finances now and into the future.

Many have spoken about education, probably more elegant eloquently than I will tonight, but there are three particular quotes that I wish to raise. First of all, Nelson Mandela said:

Education is the most powerful weapon you can use to change the world.

Centuries before Nelson Mandela, Socrates said:

Education is the kindling of a flame, not the filling of a vessel.

And, one of my personal favourites as a West Wing tragic was Sam Seaborn, played by Rob Lowe in TheWest Wing:

education is the silver bullet. Education is everything. We don't need little changes, we need gigantic, monumental changes. Schools should be palaces. The competition for the best teachers should be fierce. They should be making six-figure salaries.

I should have brought my glasses!

Schools should be incredibly expensive for government and absolutely free of charge to its citizens, just like national defense.

How good is Aaron Sorkin's writing?

I will, whilst ever I'm in this place, speak on education whenever I can. I say this, as well, as the daughter of a teacher. My mum, Jan, was a primary school teacher, and I thank her particularly for imbibing in me a lifelong love of learning, something that we as a community should inspire to do in our younger Australians. Teachers are doing this every day.

I first acknowledge the fabulous teachers within my electorate of Hughes and the incredible work they do every day, both within and without the classroom, to educate. I have my good friends, Carolyn Ryder, a primary school teacher from Heathcote, and Murray Collis and Marina Collis, high school teachers from Loftus. As I engage with my electorate, it has been a pleasure and a privilege to meet with leadership teams and students at my local schools. Recently, these are Inaburra School, Como Public School, Shire Christian School, Wattle Grove Public School, Hammondville Public School, Minerva School and St Joseph's Catholic primary schools at both Como and Holsworthy. Excellent work is being done at all of these schools. Students are engaged and interested.

Broadly, however, Australia's education standards on the world stage have been declining for many years. We can look at recent NAPLAN results to see that. I know those results have been spoken about in this place, and I don't intend to reiterate all of them. However, we are falling behind. It should also come as no surprise that student enrolments in STEM based subjects are at an all-time low.

When considering financial literacy, a 2021 Reserve Bank of Australia study found that almost two-thirds of year 12 economics students and around 95 per cent of other year 12 students did not preference an economics course for university. But financial literacy is not just about getting into university to study economics. It's not just about becoming an investment banker. It is about empowering our youth to understand, for example, how they budget, how they manage pay as you go, how they understand whether or not they've been paid the right amount, how they can negotiate a car loan or a home loan and how they can ensure that they don't pay a 24 per cent interest rate on their credit cards. Funding alone is not enough to support this.

So much of Australia's modern economic growth and prosperity depends on the cultivation of STEM skills in our students, and our education system, as it currently stands, is not providing this. Financial literacy is not just for students wishing to pursue an economics career. It is an important social issue that we empower our youth with the ability to manage their own money. The Albanese Labor government has now been in government for a year, and it's time that they look at what they can do to incentivise other governments to provide financial literacy within our curriculum. (Time expired)

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