Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Reconciliation and the Arts) Share this | Hansard source

I follow on from the member for Greenway and also from my colleagues the member for Banks and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition to again highlight and make reference to the fact that nothing is more important for young Aboriginal kids, young Indigenous students, than completing their education and making the passage from pre-school, primary school and high school and hopefully into a trade or into tertiary studies.

Amongst other trends in Indigenous education that bear down on policymakers, some of which have been identified by those who have spoken in this debate on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006, I note that despite a period where we have seen significant increases in the numbers of students who graduate from high school and go on to some form of tertiary study, and despite the fact that tertiary studies themselves are of critical and vital importance to people and enable them to be effectively and thoroughly skilled to go into the workforce where job requirements are often increasingly specialised, Indigenous higher education is suffering considerably and the numbers of students who are able to get into Indigenous higher education has in some instances declined. This is a matter of great concern for us on this side of the House.

I speak on this legislation as someone who has a number of Indigenous communities in their electorate. In the electorate of Kingsford Smith, there is a significant population of Indigenous people. Some of them have grown up in the area and some have moved into the area. It is no exaggeration for me to say that one of the most pressing issues in the electorate is getting Aboriginal kids into the schooling system so that they can prosper and succeed.

The point needs to be made, as we consider some of the problems in this debate on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006, which have been identified by the member for Jagajaga in her second reading amendment, that a school which has a large proportion of Indigenous students tends not to operate like a school which does not. By that I mean a school with an Indigenous population is often the lightening rod for the disadvantage that their communities suffer. The pressures on the students in the school are often of a greater order than they are for children in schools where there are not many Indigenous students. More often than not, the kids are coming from backgrounds which have experienced some form of trauma—sometimes dislocation in their family and sometimes they are from backgrounds where education, regrettably, has not been strongly emphasised. There is absolutely no doubt that, on the whole, Indigenous parents want their kids to have a good education. They recognise from their own lack of education how important it is that their kids be educated, that from education comes employment, from employment comes economic sufficiency and from economic sufficiency comes good health. I think everybody in the House agrees that this productive virtue of education is one of the most important and critical issues that we face in redressing Indigenous disadvantage generally.

I do not fully share the Prime Minister’s view that the road to rekindling the hopes of the 1967 referendum lie through education. I spoke about this in another forum today. Important as education is, there are other important measures and issues that pertain to the prospects of Indigenous people being able to live full lives, to not suffer the levels of measurable disadvantage in health and education et cetera and to have a true, just and lasting commitment to reconciliation is part of that.

Labor support the bill, but we have moved a second reading amendment. We note that the bill provides an extra $43.6 million over 2006-08 for Indigenous education and training. We have raised concerns by way of the amendment and in debate in the House that the funding criteria and the program administration issues that have arisen during the consideration of the bill have not been adequately addressed. We note, for instance, that there is an underspend of $126 million on the Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives Program. I can well understand that there are some good reasons for that. When you look at the difficulties that we face in driving policy through bureaucracies both out of this place and out of state governments, you see that underspends or funding lags are often a function and a feature of that process. However, I do not think the parliament should contemplate that an underspend in an area as critical as this should be at all acceptable.

In addition, Labor is very concerned that more red tape will be attached to the provisions in this bill and that, as a consequence, we will see a decline in the involvement of Indigenous communities—in particular, families in the Parent School Partnership Initiative. It is absolutely critical for the success of any amount of money or for any programs that are introduced into Indigenous education that participation by Indigenous parents is fully encouraged. If you do not have that, then it will be extremely difficult for programs to have enduring and long-term success.

I refer at this point to one of the aspects of intervention in early childhood education, which this bill addresses. There is absolutely no doubt that the earlier intervention is made the more likely are the chances of successfully assisting that child in getting into the education stream so that they can enjoy the education process, not fall behind, graduate and become a member of the workforce. The earlier the intervention, the earlier the involvement, the earlier support and resources are made available to them the better.

It is extremely important, particularly under this bill, that we do not have a situation where the money is being spent after the problems have been identified and the problems cannot be rectified in time. That is absolutely critical. Labor have raised a number of issues in relation to the bill. In particular we note that this assistance here restores some support that was previously made available under the Aboriginal Tutorial Assistance Scheme, which provided tuition at all levels in an effort to achieve educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians equal to that of non-Indigenous, and we note that the funding guidelines of the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme, ITAS, actually restrict access for students in urban centres. As somebody from an urban electorate, I have to say that that must be one of the deficiencies of the legislation.

The guidelines for the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme state that funding will be based on an assessment of students’ needs and availability of funding, and that students in remote locations will be given priority. I think that is understandable, given some of the statistics that we have in terms of absenteeism and failure of students to complete primary school and high school education, particularly in the Northern Territory. But, notwithstanding that, the Indigenous community is a diverse one, and there are large numbers of Indigenous kids who are going through their education system in cities and towns. They face a range of problems, sometimes not on the scale or magnitude that perhaps some kids in some parts of rural Australia face but they are nevertheless real. Labor believe that funding should be available to all students who need assistance, not just to those who live in remote locations.

I note that general recurrent grants for tutorial assistance from the government are paid on a per student basis, but we believe that the same criteria should apply to the most disadvantaged students in the nation. Because the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme continues to be linked to year 3 literacy and numeracy test results—so consequently you cannot take any action until year 4—this means that you are not capturing students at an earlier age. It really is a deficiency that has been identified in the amendments because it means that it will be a little late to pick up the sorts of problems that kids are having with literacy and numeracy at that year 4 stage. There is overwhelming evidence from educational research of the importance of the early intervention that I have referred to. With only 20 per cent of Indigenous kids in remote areas achieving national reading benchmarks in year 3, we strongly believe that delivering assistance to this cohort before they reach this failure point is critical.

Additionally, I want to point out the concerns that have been raised about the parent-school partnership program and the additional levels of bureaucracy that attach to this program—the amount of paperwork, form-filling and so on that attaches to it. This is always a problem in Indigenous education. The provision of materials and the requirements to fit into guidelines and frameworks that in some cases are imposed bureaucratically are always difficult issues, particularly for parents coming into the school environment. While there have been improvements to the application process—and Labor acknowledge those improvements—we still note that schools are complaining that the funding arrangements require the schools themselves to undertake a considerable amount of work to access most modest amounts of funding, and quite often they are not successful.

Mr Deputy Speaker Causley, I am sure you would agree that any measures which are aimed at targeting Indigenous assistance should not be of such a complex order that they actually have the opposite effect and make it more difficult and more burdensome, particularly for teachers who have pretty strong demands on them as well. I note too that schools complain they are spending more time in submission writing and paperwork than they are in designing the best educational programs for their students. Welcome to the world of funding, regrettably. Nevertheless, this is something which should be noted by the government because it really is an issue of some importance, not only on the matters that relate to this bill but more generally in education.

Many critics cite education as the key to improving the gap between life expectancy rates. In fact, a principal of a remote Indigenous school was quoted as saying that, in relation to Indigenous students, those who leave school early die early. That is the stark reality of failing to make sure that Indigenous kids have an adequate and comprehensive education. There is no doubt that there are positive examples and some inspiration that we can draw on in this respect. Dr Chris Sarra is a good case in point. He was given the job of turning around Cherbourg State School, which had tremendous issues of truancy and staff who did not share his views. He wanted to turn around literacy levels, and he set about delivering on the Cherbourg motto ‘Strong and Smart’.

I have heard Dr Sarra speak on a number of occasions. I think he is a very impressive Indigenous educator. He remarked that the first thing and the most necessary thing to do was to challenge the community mindset that being Aboriginal destines a child to failure. We need to be able to say, and we need to provide teachers with the confidence to say, that education is absolutely critical for Indigenous children and that if they come into the education system they will not automatically, as a matter of course, fail. In fact, in his first year as principal, the number of unexplained absences dropped by 94 per cent. By 2004 more than eight in 10 students were in the average band in the state. One of the major reasons for Dr Sarra’s success at Cherbourg was that he instilled in students a sense of pride in being Indigenous, in being Aboriginal, and he gave them a belief that they could be successful. My experience is that this is absolutely critical.

When you have contributions such as that which we have seen by a former Labor member of this House, Gary Johns, writing for the Menzies Research Centre a report on Aboriginal education in remote schools and an assertion that we should not preserve Indigenous culture in our schools, then you realise that there is some thinking that is way out of whack. I was surprised, frankly, that the new education minister saw fit to launch that particular research, which was very quickly howled down by those who have firsthand experience of what is needed in education and in making sure that Indigenous kids are able to progress well in their education lives.

In my electorate of Kingsford Smith, we have an Indigenous community program called HIPPY. It is the Home Interaction Program for Parents and Youngsters. Again, it is based on the principle of early intervention. It is based on the principle of teaching parents to familiarise Indigenous kids with what going to school is about and how to organise their pens and paper—providing them, if you like, with a bit of cultural referencing before they come into the school system so that they have confidence when they come into the school system. From that position of confidence, they are able to go forward and participate and complete their studies.

I do acknowledge that the Minister for Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs, Minister Brough, has provided some level of support for HIPPY. It is actually a nationwide program. It feeds very much into the bill that we are considering this evening because it talks about how important it is for there to be good relationships between families and the schooling system, where people go into the schooling system with confidence and a feeling that they are welcomed, where kids believe that not only is learning important for them but it can actually be fun, and where kids are targeted at an early age so that they get into the educational frame of mind and begin the task—which for them can sometimes be a pretty difficult and onerous task—of completing their education.

The education statistics in our country for Indigenous people are very poor. It is critical that the amended Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act that we are considering is a piece of legislation without default, without deficiency—that it does the job that it is intended to do and that it provides the benefit and the assistance that is needed both for kids in that early period and for the year 9 kids who will also benefit under this program. I know that all members present recognise how critical education will be for Indigenous kids, who are facing a long and tough struggle in some instances but whose future very much depends on them receiving education which is comprehensive.

We have brought an amendment to the House. It is a constructive amendment. We do hope that the government will take some heed and some notice of it, because there is no question that the decisions that we make today will affect the prospects for kids in the future. (Time expired)

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