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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2003 Week 4 Hansard (2 April) . . Page.. 1296 ..

MR PRATT (continuing):

engaging of high school groups by that organisation, usually young adults, university students, deliberately going out and targeting high school children to politicise their involvement in this war. I think that it is just a great shame, because our kids still need to be in a position where they can think and learn at that age. In their school years they need to be able to learn about and understand all the elements of what the hell is going on and they need to do that in a controlled and calm environment, but this sort of thing does not help.

I would therefore call upon the department of education, our teachers and our youth community leaders to protect our youth from extremists and hard-core political elements. I call upon teachers to take the time to educate our secondary school youth about the war in a calm and peaceful environment. For that matter, go that extra step further and talk about the war against terror.

Our youth who wish to protest against the war are entitled to do that. I would call upon our teachers to promote peaceful, dignified protest which is respectful of our community. I would also call upon our teachers to put their personal views to one side and ensure that in educating our youth about this war they introduce all sides of the debate.

Mr Speaker, going on to a less controversial element of this subject, but one which is extremely important and has its own risks as well, I am concerned about students at risk and would hope to see our education department make a resolution during Youth Week to better serve the needs of our youth at risk. It must be recognised by the community as a whole-it simply does not fall only on the shoulders of the department; it is something that we as a community must join with the department and our schools in recognising-that not all of our children are suited to go or really want or desire to go to university. We need to make sure that we engage with our youth who are of that mind.

VET programs of the certificate 1/2 variety in high schools as well as in colleges are, I believe, very useful for identifying and engaging with a lot of our children at risk. That is something which is not given enough focus and I think that we as a community should certainly call upon our departments to focus more on that area.

I would like to see greater effort made by the department of education to establish support units to assist challenged schools and challenged teachers to engage positively with children at risk. If we can take care of that issue, we will make our schools calmer, more proactive teaching environments and take care of those children who feel, for whatever reason, that they have not been engaged, particularly those children who come from broken homes and are really at risk.

Allied with that is the issue of drugs, of course. Drugs clearly are a major scourge with that group of children who are at risk and who come from broken families. Clearly, we need to press on with engaging better with those children at risk-there is a lot of debate on that in this place and we must keep that debate going-and more robustly assist our children in that category to disengage from drugs.

Mr Speaker, tonight I celebrate with my 18-year-old son, who has just stepped out into the world, having just finished high school. He proudly told me last night, as he struggles with his first job and learns to balance his meagre budget to find the right digs to live in, that he is having a lovely and challenging time. I was really proud to hear that he

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