Education

I believe education is the cornerstone to developing and equipping young Australians for the future and is vital to our country's continued prosperity and advancement.

All Queenslanders should have access to high quality education from pre-prep to Year 12 and beyond. As part of this education, we should include teaching children values, Australian history and culture, and about their physical, social and emotional development. For teenagers, we should also teach about how to build strong relationships that promote marriage and family life, and have financial literacy programs (classes).

It is vitally important for parents to have the right to choose which school their child attends. It was sad to see the closure of two smaller schools within the Ipswich area over the last couple of years. Parents have a significant decision to make when choosing a school for their child, and they should have that right.

I also support additional TAFE resources to assist those who wish to further their education and careers, without going to university. We are blessed with multiple campuses within the city of Ipswich and I would look forward to working with them to expand their programmes if I were elected.

How-to-Vote Cards

A lot of people have commented or hate the fact that they have to "run the gauntlet" when voting (trying to avoid people handing out How-to-Vote (HTV) cards).

When I have volunteered to hand out HTV cards, I have seen people do many different things to try and avoid "the gauntlet", including one man climbing over a fence to get in and out of the school where he was voting.

On the other side of the coin, many volunteers spend a lot of their time organizing and manning all the polling booths and trying to obey the numerous laws around it (Ie. How close you can be to the front gate).

I would like to remove the "the gauntlet" and the laws surrounding the HTV cards from Australian politics, and have one of the following:

• When the electoral worker gives you your ballot paper, they also give you all the HTV cards available to them from each of the candidates.
• When the electoral worker gives you your ballot paper, you may take one of each candidates HTV card available to you, on display at their table.
• Have no HTV cards, but instead have one corflute sign from each candidate displayed near the polling booths.

This will allow the public to have a more enjoyable time while voting, save the volunteers a lot of time and level the playing fields for all the candidates.