23 Aug 2023
Throughout the year I have been involved in the Y NSW Youth Parliament 2023, a program that provides high school-age students with the opportunity to engage with civic leadership, policy development, and democratic parliamentary debate. The program functions as a mock parliament, and fosters collaboration between students across NSW in the creation and amendment of bills to debate in the NSW Legislative Assembly.
At the beginning of the year, I was selected from a wide range of applicants in NSW to represent my State Electorate of Miranda in the Youth Parliament, and as a member of the Education Committee. We began with a “training camp” in April, where I met with Youth MP’s from across the State, and attended workshops to develop my policy writing and development skills. During this time, I also ran for the positions of NSW Youth Premier and Youth Governor, which is certainly a fun thing to be able to claim!
The committees then started developing individual bills, which reflected the needs of young people across the state. Our Education Committee was particularly interested in levelling the playing field within the education system post COVID-19, centralising administrative platforms within the department, providing greater technological access support for students, creating fairer outcomes for teachers, and overall, aimed to represent the needs of a range of different students in a modern education environment. During this camp, I was elected as the Shadow Minister for Education, and tasked with leading the refuting team within the committee, who had the responsibility of amending the bill’s clauses to improve the bills outcomes overall. From then on, I was attending regular meetings after school coordinating my refuting team, filing through Department of Education policy and education legislation, and creating a plan of attack for our sitting week.
During the last school holidays, right before the HSC trials, I attended a 7 day residential camp, where the program moved into the NSW Legislative Assembly, and we began to actually debate our bills in real parliamentary procedure during our sitting week. The week was filled with 12 parliamentary debates which covered issues from the right to protest, a just transition to renewable energy, to cybersecurity, and of course, my committee's “Modern Education Bill”! We had the privilege to have our debates chaired by many important people in the NSW Government, such as Rose Jackson, the Minister for Youth and Mental Health (among many other portfolios), and Sarah Mitchell, the Shadow Minister for Education, who chaired the Education debate. I was also able to meet the NSW Governor, and the Japanese Ambassador to Australia.
I'm sure most of you know that I am incredibly passionate about politics, especially education policy, so it was a major achievement for my team and I to pass our Modern Education Bill with amendments after a hard-fought debate in Parliament House.
I am so incredibly honoured to have been able to be a part of this program, representing my electorate and our school, and highly encourage all other students who are interested in leadership, advocacy, or politics to get involved.
Click here to see Amadene in action and here for the full gallery of photos