Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There has been a lot said in our country in recent times about young people and their engagement with Australian national political life. Some are sceptical about the ability of young people positively to engage. In my own experience in my community on Brisbane's south side I simply do not subscribe to this view. My experience is that the youth of this country are looking to be part of the national conversation. They want their voices heard. They do not want to be told what to do—nor do they simply want to be ignored.

I will give you a few recent examples. In my community in Brisbane's south side we have been holding regular barefoot bowls events in a number of the local bowling clubs, in an effort to engage young voters and have a bit of fun at the same time. I chose bowls clubs because they offer an environment where young people now feel comfortable enough to express their views on politics and on any issues that are running, and they can do so in the company of friends.

I have been doing this with the support of bowls clubs right across my electorate on Brisbane's south side. We have held two such events so far, and we have had 400 local young people come along, just out of the blue. This has been a very successful engagement. These young people have come from all different parts of the electorate, from a variety of backgrounds, and with different levels of interest in politics. Some joined us because of the simple fact that they were looking for some fun on a Friday night, and others saw it as a real opportunity to get together with other young people and talk about things of concern to them in our national and local political life.

What I have learnt from these conversations with young folks is that they are far more aware of how policy decisions will affect their lives and their futures than we often give them credit for. They know the benefits that will come from the National Broadband Network. They talk to me often, and in great depth and complexity, about how the NBN will affect their lives and their work in all sorts of domains. We are currently connecting nearly 48,000 homes and businesses on Brisbane's south side with the NBN, better linking local businesses to customers and markets across the world as well as providing south-side families access to better health and educational services.

Of course, our local young people are concerned that, if the Liberal-National coalition are elected, these broadband services will simply be ripped up. They also feel quite personally the effects on their communities when accesses to public services are cut. This has been most recently manifest in decisions by the Queensland Liberal-National Party government proposal to cut local bus services. Far from being disengaged with local politics, again, last weekend young people took great pleasure going from door to door, having conversations with their communities about how these cuts will affect them. University students use these bus services and old people use these bus services to go to church, to hospital and to all sorts of other places. I am proud to have seconded a motion by the member for Moreton opposing these cuts to more than 100 bus routes across Brisbane. That is a lot of bus routes; it affects a lot of people.

Following my address to the parliament last week on these cuts to local services, I have been inundated by comments from young people across social media—comments such as: 'Increase bus services; don't cut them,' 'People need to realise that public transport should be there for the public, not as a profit-making business,' and—one of my favourites, tweeted from a bus just today—'Currently 20 people on the 192. Should not be scrapped. Stop the cuts.'

But is not all about bowling, it is not all about young kids just getting together; it is also about how our young people engage in some of the issues of the world. I was genuinely bowled over recently when at Churchie, on Brisbane's south side, we had a gathering of young people from across South-East Queensland and beyond who negotiated and voted upon a draft resolution relating to international foreign aid during a model UN that I conducted at the school recently.

I also recently hosted a leadership breakfast with the school captains from my local secondary schools including Sarah King and Rebecca Marshal from Loreto College and school captains and vice captains from across the south side.

Then there is Jemma from Brisbane State High School, who was recently selected to be a part of the Lord Mayor's Youth Advisory Council. She is in year 10 and is pursuing with her peers how to deal more effectively with mental health issues affecting young people.

Even the primary school kids at Mt Carmel Primary School, whom I visited on Friday, have been involved in Caritas Australia's Project Compassion raising money for children in developing countries. This is all good stuff. It is a bit in contrast to a controversy in my electorate with a Liberal-National candidate thinking it was a good idea to give a lecture at the Queensland University of Technology with the assessment subject being set as: how to defeat the local Labor member for Griffith. If the assignment was in fact going to be judged to be successful it was to be handed over to the local LNP—a bit of an odd way to engage young people. There are positive ways to do it instead. (Time expired)