Steve Martin (Tasmania, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Thank you. One hundred thousand coats in 20 years is an extremely huge target and a very proud moment for these young people, especially receiving that from the leader of the country. Over the last 20 years, they've collected a coat from every Prime Minister, starting with Prime Minister John Howard. This investment by these young people shows that they are caring and that they know. The learnings that they got from that has enabled them to move into life and into the workforce to earn money and contribute to our community. They've been able to build a better life for themselves and for others. The contribution that they've made is not only through their volunteer work but also through their working life and productivity. They earn money so that they can put it into superannuation themselves.

It's funny: as we go along, we talk about putting money into superannuation and we talk about the government assisting people. The Labor Party, when they were in government not so long ago, had the opportunity to assist young people in their working life to be able to earn money and invest in superannuation, but, instead, there was a knee-jerk reaction to an issue and they said, 'We're going to build new school halls. We're going to invest in that. Instead of investing in young people themselves, we're going to build unneeded and unwanted school halls,' and they did. They built them and they weren't up to specifications. They built them and they weren't able to be used multipurposely. It was a poor investment. That's what's happening at the moment: we're wasting a lot of money through knee-jerk reactions. We're wasting a lot of money— (Time expired)