Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This pandemic has taught us many, many things. Perhaps one of the most important lessons it's taught us is who the essential workers are, the people in our society who keep us going and allow us to do all the things that make this country so wonderful. The essential workers have of course been our healthcare workers—our doctors, nurses, cleaners and all of the people in our healthcare services, who have done a brilliant job. They have also been our mental health workers—people who have answered the phone and been there to support people through really difficult times. They have been the cleaners who have every day turned up for work, making sure things are sanitised in our schools, offices and streets. They are among all of the people who have stepped up. Our supermarket and retail workers have done an outstanding job, a stoic job. Through some of the most difficult days of this pandemic, when tensions and panic swept across the country, it was our supermarket workers who kept turning up to make sure there was enough food and there were enough supplies for Australians to survive on.

But today I want to acknowledge another group of people who throughout this pandemic have done something truly extraordinary, and that group is our teachers. Our teachers in this country were thrown the most difficult curve ball of all for any educator—that is, their students were taken from in front of them and put behind a screen. I spent a bit of time throughout university working in a classroom as a teacher's aide, and one of the first things I learnt was that with 21 students in the classroom there are 21 different lessons going on. Great teachers run 21 different lessons to cater for each individual student, as did the teacher I worked with and as have many of the teachers locally. So today I want to acknowledge them. I want to say thank you for all their efforts. Many of them have had to stay up extremely late on many nights planning different lessons to engage with students and parents. I also want to thank our school leaders, who have supported their teachers and other staff throughout really difficult times.

We're seeing, even today, that this is going to be a bumpy ride, with schools still closing down with cases of coronavirus and still being presented with challenges they're going to have to confront throughout this pandemic. Teachers are rightly nervous, and we need to make sure that we stand by them and thank them for their efforts and support them in their extremely important work.

I've been dropping in to the schools in my electorate to touch base with principals, just at the front gate, and with teachers, just to drop off a small thankyou, and I want also to pay tribute to Peter Martin, the former principal of Port Melbourne Primary, who served our local community for many, many years.

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Hear, hear!

Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member for Bruce enthusiastically interjects, he was a fantastic principal, as are all of the principals and all of the teachers. We say: thank you very much for your efforts, and thank you on behalf of our students.