It’s the day after the Great Squiz Kids Canberra Take-Over … and before I collapse from total exhaustion, I wanted to tap out this newsletter to let you know how the day unfurled.

Hopefully, many of you know that we spent the month of March asking our audience of primary school-aged kids: “If you were Prime Minister for a day, what one thing would you do to make the country a better place?”

It’s part of our commitment to civics engagement - getting kids to imagine themselves one day running the country. 

Responses were slow to come in at first, and I started off the month thinking we might get a hundred-or-so video entries. So imagine my delight when the trickle turned to a tidal wave and the Squiz Kids in-box was flooded with almost 500 entries from kids all over Australia.

Almost 500 kids - from the bush to the city, from Geraldton to Hobart, Townsville to Albany - sent in their ideas on how to make the country a better place. 

We were overwhelmed.

The winner - as chosen by a crack team of judges - won for themselves a trip to Canberra to spend the day at Parliament House. 

Take a bow Jett Jarvis, 12, from Dalveen in Queensland.

He travelled with his mum to Canberra yesterday to be ‘PM For A Day’ .. touring Parliament House, being celebrated at a special morning tea in the Speakers’ Courtyard, visiting Question Time - and even getting to meet the actual PM himself.

Having started his day doing a live cross into ABC’s News Breakfast from the national broadcaster’s Parliament House studios, Jett and his enormous cowboy hat became something of a celebrity around the halls of Parliament for the remainder of the day. 

After a morning tea in the Speakers’ Courtyard, and a meeting with the PM (where he got to sit in the big chair), Jett was a special guest at Question Time - where the Prime Minister himself told assembled MPs what an impressive kid Jett was, and what excellent work Squiz Kids was doing getting Aussie kids interested in Australia’s system of government. 

Blushes

To which I say: it really is our very pleasure. And that’s because our mission at Squiz Kids is three-fold:

1.        Provide a kid-friendly source of daily news – aka the Squiz Kids daily news podcast, which I like to call a daily dose of sugar-coated broccoli;

2.        Spearhead the media literacy of Aussie kids – teaching them to think critically about the flood of information they’re exposed to each day online. And through our Newshounds program, we’re taking leaps and bounds in the achievement of that goal given that since we launched it two years ago, over 5,000 Aussie primary school teachers have signed up to do Newshounds with their students; and

3.        Improve civics engagement among Aussie kids. And this is a goal that we believe is intertwined with number two – media literacy. Why? Because it’s our firm belief that to safeguard Australia’s democracy, the next generation need to grow up learning about our system of government. Because for all the complaints you hear about it, our democracy is pretty amazing and we can’t afford to take it for granted.

It’s an ambition we have in common with the House Speaker, the Hon. Milton Dick MP – whose passion for civics education is unrivalled in Federal Parliament.

It’s an ambition we also share with the Governor General, Her Excellency the Honourable Sam Mostyn AC – whose steadfast support of Newshounds, Squiz Kids and the ‘PM For A Day’ competition has been so important to us – and is enormously appreciated.

And it’s an ambition that’s been supported for years by the Google News Initiative, and more recently by the excellent folk at McKinnon – who have generously thrown their support behind Squiz Kids and our democracy-buttressing efforts. 

When my excellent Squiz Kids team, Christie and Emma, told me there were almost 500 entries waiting in my in-box - I felt a sense of dread at the prospect of having to watch them all.

But over an entire weekend in March, I watched every single one of those videos. And it was a truly uplifting experience. So many clever ideas, so many passionate kids. The future, my friends, is most assuredly in excellent hands. 

And if you want to listen to the chat that Jett had with the PM - click here to listen on Apple or here to listen on Spotify.

You can watch Jett’s meeting with the PM on Instagram: