Dai Le (Fowler, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been an exciting few weeks of celebrating youth achievements across my electorate of Fowler. Firstly, I want to personally congratulate Skylar Yip, a year 4 student from Sacred Heart Catholic Primary School at Cabramatta for being chosen as a finalist for the Dymocks Beyond Words writing competition. More than 3,800 students across Australia submitted their stories to the book company, and only 100 were shortlisted. Her story, 'The Mythical Tree', explores the journey of a magical tree that is cut down by humans to be turned into a book. However, the magic of the tree gets transferred into the book and people start mysteriously disappearing as more and more trees grow out of thin air. I hope that Skylar's story will be published by Dymocks so that you can get hold of it and find out the ending. I welcomed Skylar and her family, along with the Sacred Heart principal, Mr Parawa, and her teachers, Mrs Phillips and Ms Haddad, to a morning tea at my office to celebrate her success. I'm truly inspired by the amazing feats of young people in my community and what they can achieve.

Speaking of which, I had the pleasure of hosting the inaugural Fowler Youth Advisory Committee, which brought together a group of young people from across the cities of Liverpool and Fairfield to hear about the challenges they think our young people from south-western Sydney are facing. They identified issues such as the cost-of-living crisis, financial literacy, mental health, employment and housing as some of the more immediate concerns held by them, their peers and their families. These young people come from different backgrounds and all walks of life, each bringing a unique perspective to the table. After all, diversity in the representation of views and perspectives is critical to the success of any leadership team. It was an amazing conversation, and I thank them for giving me their valuable time and great insights. Not only will they advise me on certain issues that I can advocate for in parliament but they will also design a project aimed to further engage with other youth in the community. The FYAC will meet four times a year, and I can't wait to see what they will come up with for our next meeting. Thank you to the attendees: Melody Yalda, Stephanie Kina, Robin Broff, Mario Compart, Barseen Oshana, Kyouko Nagatsuka, Nikki Chan, Annabel Tran, Kimberley Pham, Taylor Green, Bhumi Kambale, David Ly, Alicia Pan, Leoni Le, Alessia Poles, Athena Nguyen, Angela Chau and Jenny Farhan. My hope it is that the committee grows and helps develop Fowler's next generation of future leaders. In turn, this will inspire more young people to make a positive impact on their communities and their respective professions, whether in politics, media, STEM, health or whatever their chosen passion might be.

I also want to thank Cabramatta High School for presenting a beautiful Peace Day. I was honoured to share the stage with the 2023 Sydney Peace Prize recipient, Nazanin Boniadi, a renowned actress and an advocate for women's rights, someone who has tirelessly championed for peace in her homeland of Iran. The celebration couldn't come at a more important time to remind us of the importance peace plays in the community of Fowler.

This week I was honoured to host a roundtable with the National Electrical and Communications Association to tackle the issue of unfair contract terms. The use of unfair contract terms is placing unnecessary pressure on an industry that is already facing unprecedented challenges, including escalating labour costs, skills shortages, supply chain issues and rising material costs. The construction industry makes up 22 per cent of the Fowler electorate's business economy, with 96 per cent of these business organisations operating as either a sole trader or small business with fewer than five employees. While these SMEs and independent contractors do about 90 per cent of the work across the construction sector as a whole, many of them feel that they don't have enough of a voice to stand up against bigger companies whom they rely on for work. It is crucial to ensure that the favourable and fair terms granted to head contractors also trickle down to subcontractors. After all, the last thing we should be doing is burning the workforce which is propping up a huge chunk of the construction industry during a jobs and skills shortage. One of the recommendations to come out of the forum include redrawing government's procurement processes to ensure that principal contractors must not remove or include clauses that negatively impact their subcontractors. I hope that the government's National Construction Industry Forum prioritises this in its agenda and that the government immediately tackles this issue.