Tuesday, 20 June 2023

 Jacinta ERMACORA (Western Victoria) (13:46): I recently had the pleasure of visiting one of our outstanding government schools in the south-west, Brauer College, where I met with student leaders. Spending time with an emerging new generation of leaders was informative and made me feel heartened about the future. I was fascinated and found it commendable that school leaders now hold their own specialist portfolios and students are able to access school leaders according to their needs.

The Brauer leaders I met included school captain Molly Carey; Lilian Smith, who is the student wellbeing captain; Isabella Condon, social justice captain; Mia King, environment captain; Teah Couch, sports activities captain; and Charlee Sutcliffe, who is the art and culture captain. Rain Lai, the other school captain, and Riley Byrne and Sienna Gladstone were apologies. It was great to take a walk with them and check out the newly refurbished running track at Brauerander Park and to ask them about their future plans. I have to admit I am pretty pleased to see that nine out of those student leaders were young women. I chose pyjama day to visit, which was a lot of fun and certainly changed the atmosphere, and I was very pleased to see the leaders were in uniform to meet with me.