Healthy and productive families and communities
A holistic coordinated vision for Australian families which supports communities across a lifetime and reforms and recharges our health services.
Kylea has committed to working towards:
- Priority funding of quality public education and increased support for post-high school education, training, and research.
- A coordinated response to identify and address underlying systemic issues driving unprecedented mental health distress.
- An immediate ‘Interim Review’ of our experiences during COVID-19 to enable better planning and greater preparedness; including the release of final recommendations on the Medicare Item number review.
- Revitalising and increasing our health and aged care workforce.
- Establishing a National Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, and the roll-out of an appropriately resourced National Preventive Health Strategy.
So far, North Sydney has achieved:
- Progress around reforming marketing of harmful products including gambling, junk food, alcohol, and nicotine/vaping.
- Launch of the the Parliamentary Friends of Youth Mental Health to deliver real change for young people living with mental health challenges.
- Advocacy for Early Education & Childcare Centres and workers in relation to visas and pay gaps
- Advocacy for better recognition of failures in the working environment for nurses
- Input into a revitalised National Strategy for the Care and Support Economy.
- Advocacy for a fairer national student loan scheme.
- Assistance with over $330,000 in new grants to local community projects, including schools infrastructure upgrades, domestic violence and mental health services, religious organisations, grassroots sports clubs, men’s sheds, scouts, community gardens and more.
- The North Sydney Youth Summit which involves two delegates from each high school across the electorate and meets regularly to ensure young Australians have a voice in how they are represented in Canberra.
- The North Sydney Community Housing Forum which, based on the principles of Deliberative Democracy, brought together a randomly selected, representative group of 30 North Sydney residents to workshop solutions to the housing and rental crisis.
Next steps:
- Continue to advocate for initiatives to specifically address intergenerational inequity.
LATEST NEWS AND EVENTS
Liberal MP Paul Fletcher sees red over teals, but look deeper and there's more at play
ABC News, 4 December 2024
The May 2022 rise of community independent parliamentarians is "a straightforward [story] of constituency neglect, which almost always drives the emergence of fringe or third-party groupings in this country", Annabel Crabb writes in ABC News.
Independent raises alarm on social media ban
ABC Radio National, 29 November 2024
Despite growing ranks opposing the bill, a ban on social media for under 16s passed the Senate late on the final sitting day of the year. In a radio interview about the ban, Kylea warns that the Bill "doesn't do what it says on the tin".
Australia Has Barred Everyone Under 16 From Social Media. Will It Work?
New York Times, 29 November 2024
The New York Times covers Australia's new social media law, noting that how the restriction will be enforced online remains an open question. Kylea has said that law would stop short of holding social media companies accountable for the safety of the product they are providing. “They are not fixing the potholes; they are just telling our kids there won’t be any cars,” she is quoted as saying.
Raise Our Voice competition
House of Representatives, 28 November 2024
Joint media conference on Build to Rent legislation
Media conference, 27 November 2024
Housing Minister Clare O'Neil has acknowledged the work of Kylea and others on the crossbench in working towards ways to address Australia's housing crisis. Kylea has described the Build to Rent legislation, which was developed and passed with the support of a broad coalition of parliamentarians, industry groups and social services organisations, as "a milestone in moving ourselves forward as a nation ... This is the best of public policy development: when we lean in together to overcome our differences, to ultimately put the solution at the front of what we're trying to achieve for Australians."
North Sydney Olympic Pool
House of Representatives, 27 November 2024