Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Women's Issues) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Canning for his question. I know that, as a former teacher, he would be interested in the Australian government’s push to restore Australian history to its rightful place in our schools.

I am pleased to report to the House that on 17 August a history summit was held here in Parliament House. Twenty-three leading historians, educators and commentators looked at issues such as what Australian history is being taught in Australian schools, how it is being taught, what could or should be taught and why. I am aware of Associate Professor Tony Taylor’s critique, and a very fine summary of the Australian history summit it was. At the end of the day, we had a unanimous communique from the participants, who recommended to the Australian government that Australian history be a discrete, stand-alone subject, be compulsory for years 9 and 10 and be planned and taught sequentially through primary and secondary school. They also recommended that we work with state and territory governments to produce a model curriculum for Australian history. I have now established a working party to focus on the establishment of a model curriculum.

I was asked about alternative views. Fortunately, because of the pressure of the overwhelming public support for the federal government’s push to have Australian history restored to a discrete place in our school curriculum, a number of state governments have buckled and come on board and are now supporting the Australian government’s push for Australian history to be a stand-alone subject. As for other views, I was rather surprised to read that the West Australian Labor education minister has decided that you do not need to learn history, that all you have to do is google it. The headline in the West Australian of 22 August read ‘Don’t learn it, just Google it: Ravlich’. The article said:

Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich says it is not important for students to know key historical dates, saying they can find the information using the internet search engine Google.

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Questioned about a straw poll by The West Australian which revealed a lack of knowledge of key events in Australian history, she said: “You can ask many students a range of questions about the internal workings of a computer and chances are they wouldn’t know anything about that.”

I have no idea what she was talking about, but it seems that the Leader of the Opposition did. The next day, the Leader of the Opposition supported this position. The headline in the West Australian read ‘Google OK, says history fan Beazley’. The article reported:

Kim Beazley has backed State Education Minister Ljiljanna Ravlich’s claim that students do not need to learn significant historical dates because they can find them on the internet using Google, saying yesterday that “she was on to something”.

Mr Beazley said that he loved Ms Ravlich’s “Generation-X” comments, in which she also likened a lack of knowledge about Australian history to not knowing the internal workings of a computer.

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