Warradale Primary School Students

Tuesday 3 June 2025

S.E. ANDREWS (Gibson) (15:47): I would like to take this opportunity to congratulate the year 5 and 6 students at Warradale Primary School who came on a parliament tour with me just last week. It is always fabulous to show students the people's house and give them an opportunity to have some insight into parliamentary procedure and what it is we do in here and what makes up the building.

Always a great opportunity for students is to participate in a parliamentary debate and they took that on, they read out their scripts and they got dressed up and took on the roles with gusto. Then the Speaker asked if anyone else would like to speak and Benji stood up and he spoke off the cuff, completely unprepared, but gave his contribution to the debate. Other students saw this happen and so another one stood up, and the students supported them, and then another one wanted to speak.

I have honestly never seen a student debate run so long with everyone wanting to have their voice heard and I really congratulate them. It takes courage to speak out, it takes critical thinking to engage in a debate, and that is exactly what these students did. We missed out on some of the tour that was planned after that because I did not want to hold back any student from having their opportunity to speak up in their Parliament House.