Anthony Byrne (Holt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week I was pleased to meet with a group of very bright and capable year 11 students who were participating in the 2017 City of Casey Australia Day Study Tour. Each year, the City of Casey encourages youth in year 11 to nominate for an Australia Day Study Tour Award. This award enables students to learn more about how our country is governed. For those students who wish to pursue a career or further their studies in the areas of politics or law, this tour, organised by the City of Casey, provides an excellent insight into the world of Australian politics and legal affairs.

I want to commend the City of Casey for organising this wonderful program each year. I certainly enjoyed meeting the young people, and I would like to read their names into the parliamentary record: Georgia Bennett, Jordan van Rhyn, Jane Russo, Shivam Singh, Assad Sultani, Abdul Mohammed, Lissette De La Motte, Natalia Girvasi, Mitchell Pateman and Ciara Smith.

They will also be participating in National Youth Week, which is 31 March to 9 April. We will be running a forum on 20 May, in conjunction with Google, talking about issues to do with young people, including mental health and use of the internet. There is a lot of discussion about young people in the City of Casey, in my area. Every year that I meet them, I see incredibly impressive young people who are going to be future leaders. Congratulations to those young people and to the City of Casey for making it happen.