Ms BURKE (7:30 PM) —It gives me great pleasure tonight to rise and speak about the recent School Leaders Forum that I conducted in my electorate. I had before me some exceptionally enthusiastic, highly intelligent and very articulate grade 5 and 6 students. I invited school leaders from all the primary schools in my electorate. There were students from Holy Family Primary School, Mount Waverley North Primary School, Mount Waverley Primary School, Essex Heights Primary School, Syndal South Primary School, Sussex Heights Primary School, Glendal Primary School, St Peter's Primary School, Clayton North Primary School, Roberts McCubbin Primary School, Box Hill North Primary School, Our Lady of Perpetual Succour, St Clare's Primary School, Kerrimuir Primary School, Mont Albert Primary School, St Scholastica's Primary School, Wesley College and St Leonard's.

Amongst that array of schoolchildren were some very courageous and outspoken individuals and some fantastic future leaders. Actually, there were some excellent leaders for today. We started the forum by discussing fears about progressing from primary school to secondary school. I was heartened to find out that most of the children were not worried about that transition. Some of them were a bit concerned about having heavier bags and more books and travelling a long way and trying to make new friends, but most of them were adjusted to it. Many of them were going to go to schools where they would not know another student.

We then progressed to other issues. I asked all of them what sort of outside school activities they were doing. One of the things that astounded me was that these children spend so much time on extra-curricular activities. Their parents must spend their entire lives ferrying them around. These children were involved in an inordinate array of activities, such as football, netball, tennis, basketball, soccer, cricket and swimming, as well as ballet, gymnastics, guitar, choir, dancing, drama, piano, violin, speech and accelerated maths, to name just a few. One child was heavily involved in golf. I was very impressed.

Then I asked them about their activities on the computer. Their answers distressed me quite a lot because they all admitted to spending excessive amounts of time on the computer. A lot of them said that they are using it as a research tool, as a means of finding information, but a lot of them said that they are spending their lives sending messages to each other over the computer. I said, `Who are you talking to?' They said, `All our friends at school.' I said, `It is highly entertaining, but you have spent all day talking to them.' They go home at night and they sit on the computer and talk to each other about the things that they do not talk to each other about during the day. It was fascinating to see the amount of usage of, and the literacy of these children on, the computer. We are going into a new age when we have children who are so adept at computer usage.

I am always stunned when I conduct these forums—and I conduct them each year—at the in-depth knowledge and concern that children between the ages of 10 and 12 have. They discussed their concerns about terrorism and its impact on them. One child had concerns about the UN, which I found fascinating. He talked about how the UN was not functioning well. Then there was a great discussion about how the UN was working appropriately.

They had great concerns about the environment. There were great concerns about global warming and climate change. They were all happy to talk about the fantastic initiatives their various schools were involved in. One school has installed water tanks. Another school has just put in a frog pond to attract indigenous frogs back to the area. Others had various projects to do with recycling. One child whose school is a polling booth on election day said that we should ban political parties handing out how to vote cards because it is a complete waste of time, energy and paper, and it is having an impact on our environment. They were all fully aware that the impact on the environment today was going to affect their future. This was fascinating. They were very involved in these discussions.

They also talked about things closer to home, such as bullying. It upset me and their teachers greatly that most of these children had had some experience of bullying. They understood the causes—that people with low self-esteem, people who were trying to big-note themselves, were the ones who were trying to bully and intimidate.

They also discussed their TV watching patterns. It says a lot for what people want to watch, because most of the programs they were watching were Australian. Australian Idol was a pretty big hit and so was The Block. I wanted to know why primary school children were watching programs about renovations. One endearing child told me it was so that, when he grew up, he could make lots of money renovating run-down houses. I thought that was pretty inventive. I think it speaks well for our future that we have children out there who are so willing to engage and so willing to articulate. There is a great future ahead of us. (Time expired)