Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about how phenomenal the schools in my electorate are, how engaged the students who attend them are and how dedicated the teachers who teach them are. In the weeks between sitting periods, I visit local schools—both high schools and primary schools—and talk to the students about my role as the federal representative for Brand and more broadly about the parliament and its role in our modern society. I'm always impressed by these sessions. I'm impressed by the attentiveness of the students, the preparation the teachers put into the students and the classes, and most of all the interest showed by the children, which is obvious in the questions I get asked. There are future leaders in these classrooms, and I pay tribute to the commitment of the teachers, the staff and the community around them, who build these students into the fine adults they will be.

In the parliamentary break I was lucky enough to be invited to Calista Primary School, Hillman Primary School and Golden Bay Primary School to talk about our system of government and the parliament as a whole. These three schools spread across my electorate from Calista in the north—near to where I was born—to Golden Bay in the south, and Hillman is right in the middle. The kids at Calista Primary School wanted to know about why the House of Representatives has these green seats. It's a colour we adopted and adapted from the British House of Commons, and we altered it to reflect our native eucalypts. They asked, 'Why originally the green?' It was a good question. I turned to the House of Commons' information, which tells us—and in doing this I'm delivering my homework to the students at Calista Primary School—that green is not a showy colour like the red that is in the other place:

Red demands to be noticed, whilst green is camouflage, restful, harmonious, self-effacing, a chaste colour of modesty and humility lacking the spiritual and royal associations of blue.

That is my homework delivered, and thank you for giving me that homework.

At Golden Bay Primary School I was asked if the parliament was really boring, which led to an interesting discussion about important debates such as marriage equality and how interesting and humbling it is for me and others in this place to be involved in such moments of national importance. At Hillman Primary School, we spoke about career motivations and what one needs to study to become a politician. I know all of the kids will be getting into that soon.

I also want to make a special thank you to the students of Comet Bay Primary School, who I have visited at their assemblies and hosted around the electorate. Comet Bay is in the south of my electorate. The wonderful kids have put together these really lovely cards, thanking me, thanking the people who work for me and thanking all of other representatives for our service. I really want to thank these children for their thanks, for their commitment to their own community and for putting in the effort to acknowledge what representatives in the local council, in the local state government and also in the federal parliament do for them and their communities. I really thank Comet Bay Primary School and all the other primary schools in my electorate. You are a wonderful group of students.