Kat THEOPHANOUS (Northcote) (20:38): Wominjeka. It means ‘welcome’ in Wurundjeri language, the language of the Wurundjeri Woi-wurrung people, custodians of the lands encompassing the Northcote electorate, and when you walk up Hutton Street on your way to Thornbury Primary School, ‘Wominjeka’ is written in giant letters on the fence of the school, artfully and lovingly created by the school community, who have tied small pieces of fabric through the gaps in the fence to create the word along Hutton Street. If you walk into this school, you will hear the word ‘wominjeka’, a warm and welcoming greeting offered across every classroom and at every assembly. At Thornbury Primary students learn Woi-wurrung language with pride. They practise greetings, farewells and introductions. They identify local plants and animal names. They name the seasons and the landmarks and family members, and they develop a deep understanding and respect for First Nations history and culture. It is a beautiful thing to witness our youngest Victorians practising Woi-wurrung in their local public school, and this deep learning and recognition of Aboriginal histories and cultures and contributions is happening right across my community in the inner north.
At early learning centres and at public and private schools – primary and secondary – it is a feature of our community that First Nations recognition has been embedded in a very tangible way across curriculums, and that is no accident. With our deep connections to Aboriginal rights movements in the inner north, we are proud to have led the way with this, so it gives me immense heart to see this element of the bill and know that in Victoria, the state of treaty, we will be strengthening Aboriginal recognition and self-determination within the education system in a more formalised way. It is a stark contrast to the Liberal Party, who to their shame have said that they will dissolve the historic Victorian treaty in their first 100 days if they ever are re-elected. As the Deputy Premier rightfully noted, First Nations people were the first students and the first teachers on this land, and we have so much to learn from them yet. I am glad that when my daughters come home from school they have that learning included in their curriculum.
I want to turn to the element of the bill about restricting student use of personal electronic devices at all schools, because this is something that I think as a parent I am not alone in feeling quite viscerally. I am a mum to a seven-year-old and an eight-year-old, and they are in grades 2 and 3. I can confess that, despite our best efforts – mine and my husband’s – keeping them off the screens is a daily challenge. It is really hard. We see the impact it has on their behaviour. We see how it fragments their thinking and dilutes their concentration, and we see them act out in ways that do not seem normal, do not seem like their usual character. We kind of mourn the days of the 1990s that we grew up in, when having fun as a kid was not playing some mindless game app on a screen with ads every 30 seconds, but it was taking our bikes out along the Darebin Creek in Alphington or trapping lizards in the backyard. I know that is a bit nostalgic. I am a 90s kid. I am allowed to be nostalgic, and maybe it is that time of the night that we are getting like that.
The evidence is clear, though. Screens really do impact a lot of things. They impact relationship building. They contribute to loneliness and to mental health issues. They disrupt concentration and brain development. They lead to behavioural issues. I see this even with the limits that we place on our kids’ screen time. So knowing that as a Labor government we are now legislating to expand that ban to restrict devices in all Victorian schools, I cannot support this enough, to be honest – mobile phones, wearable devices, audio devices like EarPods. I know that many schools already do this, but having it prescribed across all schools is that extra step that schools and educators and families have been calling for. Removing those distractions, letting kids engage in their learning alongside that federal ban on social media is progressive Labor policy at its best.
The bill also strengthens teacher registration frameworks administered by the Victorian Institute of Teaching. That is all about increasing the efficiency of the institute’s processes and making that back-end system work better for everyone.
I also, though, want to speak about our proud Education State and all that we have built here in Victoria under a long-term Labor government, a government that has spent the time and done the work and made the investment to deliver some of the best education outcomes that our state has seen. That includes Victorian students having the best NAPLAN results in the country, better than any other time on record. It includes our historic investment in our nation-leading disability inclusion program, and this is something that I speak to schools a lot about. My husband is an education support worker, and I know the effort that goes on in classrooms to give kids that best start, to give kids that may be struggling or that have neurodiversity the additional support and the care and the empathy and the time and the patience that they deserve to get ahead and to reach their potential. Phonics has been embedded – that evidence-based teaching style – and I had the pleasure of being at Wales Street Primary School recently with the Deputy Premier and Minister for Education. We went into a grade 3 class and the kids showed us their phonics lesson, and it was just incredible to see them mouthing the sounds, understanding and being so engaged in that lesson. It was incredible to see.
It is hard to count it at this point, but I think we have made over $140 million of investment into our local schools and kinders in Northcote over the last eight years. It represents the biggest transformation of our local school network that we have seen in decades. The impact that that has for families, for kids and for the next generation of young people in our community is phenomenal, and it would not happen under any other government but a Labor government. That is new gyms, it is new classrooms, it is opportunities, it is hope, it is our Labor government investing in education, and I commend this bill to the house.
