Politicians face grilling on US election, greyhound racing ban from Year 5 and 6 students in Sydney

Federal MP Anthony Albanese and Parliamentary Speaker Tony Smith face tough questioning from students.

At a time of heightened political debate in Australia and overseas, both sides of politics have taken some difficult questions from Year 5 and 6 students on a range of global and local issues that matter to them.

Grayndler federal Labor MP Anthony Albanese and Liberal speaker Tony Smith paid a visit to Birchgrove Primary School, in Sydney's inner-west, on pyjama day.

They were questioned on issues affecting all Australians — young and old.

Here are some of them:

Thea Gallen

Thea Gallen got some global responses to his very big question.

What do you think is the most important issue in today's society?

Anthony Albanese: I think long term, climate change is something that we really need to tackle. What we do today will impact you more than us, and will impact your kids even more, so that I think is a big global challenge. But also I think, the economy, giving people jobs and giving people a fair share of the wealth that's created in a society as well.

Tony Smith: I think globalisation.

You're growing up with technology that wasn't dreamed of when we were at primary school. When we were at primary school, there were no mobile phones, no internet, and it's changed. Economically, the world's changed a lot too. There's great advantages in that and there's also challenges in that.

Lilian Stock

Tony Smith spoke about the differences between the electoral system of Australia and that of the US.

What do you think about the US presidential election?

Tony Smith: Each country decides its electoral destiny.

We copied a lot from the United Kingdom, but we copied some from the United States. We have a House of Representatives and a Senate like the United States do, but because we're a young democracy, we're able to advance things faster than the older democracies.

In the 1920s we introduced compulsory voting. They don't have that in the United States and they don't have that in most other democracies. What you get from that is, a very high participation. We fashioned our democracy to be very accountable.

Ashleigh James

Mr Albanese was tested about why his NSW counterparts opposed the greyhound ban.

I was wondering why the Labor Party opposed the greyhound racing ban?

Anthony Albanese: This is a New South Wales issue. I think some people in the Labor Party were concerned with the issue of banning anything. Telling a group of people without notice to stop what you're doing. They were earning a living from it. I think that the concern was with the process. I'm a big supporter of animal welfare. All animals deserve to be treated with respect and we need to outlaw any cruelty at all, but I think the big concern was the idea of banning things.

Will Chahoud

Will wanted to gauge the reaction parliamentarians had to the result of Brexit.

I was wondering what your opinion was on Brexit?

Anthony Albanese: I think in general we need to be more connected to the world, not less. If I had a vote, I would've voted against Brexit. I'm a bit concerned about the rise of nationalism. I think it can be quite dangerous. Your future is with the world being more connected, not less. It's very easy to run an argument against connections, economic connections, migration. We've got some people I think who are frustrated by their lot in life. It's easy to say, 'that's because of those people over there'.