Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Families and Community Services) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That all words after “That” be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:“whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House commits to the following goals:

(1)

to eliminate the 17 year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation, so that every Indigenous child has the same educational and life opportunities as any other child;

(2)

to at least halve the difference in the rate of Indigenous students at years 3, 5 and 7 who fail to meet reading, writing and numeracy benchmarks within ten years;

(3)

to at least halve the mortality rate of Indigenous children aged under five within a decade; and

(4)

to a long-term, bipartisan national commitment to work with Indigenous Australians towards achieving these goals, and overcome generational disadvantage”.

On the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, the Leader of the Opposition announced that Labor would commit to concrete goals and targets to eliminate the 17-year gap in life expectancy between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation; to at least halve the rate of Indigenous infant mortality within a decade; to at least halve the mortality rate of Indigenous children aged under five within a decade; and to at least halve the difference in the rate of Indigenous students at years 3, 5 and 7 who fail to meet reading, writing and numeracy benchmarks within a decade. How positive it would be if the Prime Minister joined with Labor in a bipartisan commitment to overcome Indigenous disadvantage within a generation, because a generation is longer than the political lives of most of us in this chamber.

We want every Indigenous child born today to have the same opportunities as other Australian children. We will not close the gap on life expectancy unless we start with the children who are being born today. Goals and targets are not merely words that we throw around. As the Chief Executive Officer of the ANZ Bank, John McFarlane, said recently in relation to reconciliation:

The setting of targets is the only way to achieve results. It is important to measure where you are and where you want to be, otherwise nobody would be accountable.

That is why we have set these targets.

I was recently on Groote Eylandt, right up in the north of Australia, with the member for Lingiari, who is here today in the chamber. It is a community of Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. The people of Groote have really begun to turn their lives around. Only a few years ago it was a community racked with alcohol abuse and terrible violence. Today they recognise that they have to take responsibility to turn around their circumstances. Not only are they working through some exciting economic and employment opportunities with GEMCO, which runs the manganese mine, but also the land council is building a multimillion dollar resort to encourage the tourism industry on the island.

One of the things that struck me about this community was their focus on education. When we met with the general manager of GEMCO, he said to me, ‘It’s all about education, education, education.’ The community recognises that much needs to be done to improve literacy and numeracy at the local schools. The land council is also putting some of its money into sending more and more young people off to good quality boarding schools in Cairns, Townsville, Brisbane, Perth and Darwin. Before a child is sent away to school, the parents or the elders visit the school and discuss with the school how they are going to support their young people.

The people of Groote are making a real effort to make sure that their children remain connected to their community and to the culture that they are growing up in. They recognise that the quality of education matters, and they are coming up with ways to make sure that their children are not estranged from their traditions as they receive an improved education. Sending children away to school is a very difficult choice for any parent in a remote or regional community. The fears of parents and communities about losing their children to the big world are often founded in reality. In most cases, however, the value of education in providing children with choices does tend to triumph.

Another community we visited recently in the Northern Territory had built a homelands school to cater for children both in that community and in surrounding communities. You could see that the school had come about because of the anguish of parents who had already lost children to the bigger towns—to loitering, bad behaviour, alcohol and poor education outcomes. The children of this school do not speak English as their first language. Nevertheless, the school has a good attendance record and some of the young people have continued into their senior years of schooling. However, all of these schools need additional resources to make sure that the education levels of the children who are attending improve.

Across Indigenous education we have a long way to go to close the gap in literacy, numeracy and retention to year 12. The proportion of young Indigenous people living in remote areas who reach year 12 is approximately half that of their metropolitan peers, and only one in 10 actually completes year 12. The initiatives outlined in the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007, which we are debating today, will help. The government estimates that up to 1,610 students could benefit from additional funding for the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program and the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program. The increase in the number of scholarships offered under the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program and the places available under the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program will allow more young Indigenous people to access quality education and training. I would like to have seen additional funding for mentoring and support to go with these initiatives and programs because we need to prepare young people who are proposing to leave their communities for adjusting to life in a boarding school. These are important parts of the policy to see that the children who do leave their communities succeed.

In Cape York and the Torres Strait, the Queensland government is introducing transition support officers to prepare students for the move, support them as they travel to and from communities, support them at boarding school and provide mentoring and pastoral care throughout. Over the next four years, they expect to assist around 700 students from Cape York and the Torres Strait to travel to attend secondary school. Practical initiatives developed with local communities always have a greater chance of success.

There is so much more to do, in particular in the early years. Labor is committed to closing the 17-year gap in life expectancy, starting with Indigenous children born today. Just this weekend we announced that we will commit an additional $260 million as a start to meet this goal. This will include additional contributions from the states and territories. We want to make sure that there is comprehensive coverage of child and maternal health, parent support, early development, preschool and intensive literacy and numeracy programs for Indigenous children. As a result of Labor’s initiative, Indigenous women and their babies will have access to proper antenatal care, including a visit to a midwife or doctor, an ultrasound and a general health check; practical advice on parenting, breastfeeding and nutrition for their babies; home visit services—we want to extend that to children up to the age of eight and our plan is to do this with the states and territories—and parenting and early development services.

Early education is central to our policy. The Productivity Commission estimates that around half of all Indigenous children do not have access to preschool—that is around 4,500 children every year. It is now recognised almost everywhere in the world how important it is to invest in early childhood education. Certainly all parents know this. The Nobel Prize winning economist James Heckman has shown that the return on human capital is very high in the early years of life and diminishes rapidly thereafter. Leading developmental researcher Jack Shonkoff argues that ‘all children are born wired for feelings and ready to learn’ and that it is from birth to age five that ‘children rapidly develop foundational capabilities on which subsequent development builds’. Intensive programs in disadvantaged communities in the United States, such as the Perry Preschool Project, have shown that early intervention can produce large social and economic benefits for individual children and for their communities. When children start school, they must be ready, willing and able to learn so that they can succeed in life.

Labor has committed to a $450 million a year plan to ensure that every Australian four-year-old, including all of our Indigenous four-year-olds, has the right to 15 hours per week of early childhood education, for at least 40 weeks of the year, delivered by a properly qualified teacher. Most Indigenous children start behind the eight ball when they get to school. It is particularly shocking that they slip further behind while they are at school. According to the National Report on Schooling in Australia 2005, the number of Indigenous children who meet the reading benchmarks falls from 78 per cent in year 3 to 63.8 per cent in year 7; and the number of Indigenous children who meet the numeracy benchmarks falls from 80.4 per cent in year 3 to 48.8 per cent in year 7. Indigenous children are falling further and further behind the longer they stay at school. There is also evidence to suggest that the problem has been getting worse over the last few years. In 2005, fewer Indigenous children in years 5 and 7 are meeting basic literacy and numeracy benchmarks, compared to year 5 and year 7 children in 2002. It is almost a truism these days to talk about the importance of literacy and numeracy. Dr Ken Rowe, Research Director of the Australian Council for Educational Research, highlights that:

Literacy competence is foundational, not only for school-based learning, but also for children’s behavioural and psychosocial wellbeing, further education and training, occupational success, as well as for productive and fulfilling participation in social and economic activity.

Labor has committed to a target of halving the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students’ performance in reading, writing and numeracy achievement within a decade. We have recognised that every individual Indigenous child must have help and attention suited to their developmental needs. We have announced that we would roll out the Australian Early Development Index nationally, at a cost of $16.9 million over four years—a rigorous checklist across five developmental areas to determine a child’s needs when they start school.

We will fund the development of a specific AEDI for Indigenous children to take into account the differing cultural and language features of the early childhood rearing environments of Indigenous families. After this, Labor will make sure that every Indigenous child has an individual learning plan to be updated twice a year for every year of schooling up to year 10. These plans will be based on the individual child’s needs as determined by the teacher’s professional judgements, on the results of assessments, including national literacy and numeracy testing in years 3, 5, 7 and 9, and through the new initiatives which we have announced, such as the Australian Early Development Index.

The plans should identify the individual strengths and weaknesses of every child and set out what areas the student and the teacher will target for improvement across the basics of reading, writing and numeracy. We will spend $34½ million over four years providing professional development support to teachers to enable them to complete these learning plans. Through their child’s teachers, parents will be able to access these plans so that they too can be part of their children’s learning improvements. Once children’s learning needs have been identified, funding and intervention programs can be targeted and implemented more precisely.

The Queensland government are implementing individual learning plans and intensive support programs in Cape York and the Torres Strait. They are focusing on heavy mentoring and community involvement. Parents are involved in developing the individual learning plans and coming together to discuss various challenges on a regular basis. With respect and commitment on both sides, I am sure that they will succeed in giving children the opportunities that they have not had before. There are already many remedial and support programs in literacy and numeracy available at the state and federal level, but their coverage is by no means comprehensive. Labor will provide $21.9 million over four years to expand intensive literacy and numeracy programs in our schools where Indigenous children are concentrated. Intensive literacy programs, such as Accelerated Literacy, Making Up Lost Time In Literacy and the Yachad Accelerated Learning Project, provide a heavily-structured approach to teaching literacy. Labor wants to see these very successful programs expanded.

It is remarkable that there is no equivalent major program in numeracy for struggling children. As part of our commitment, Labor will develop a new intensive numeracy program and implement it at a pilot stage to start with. Labor has announced a comprehensive package of initiatives—child and maternal health, parenting advice and support, early development for children, preschool programs, literacy and numeracy in the early years—to make sure that every Indigenous child being born today has the same chance to grow up healthy, happy and well-educated, just as we expect for all other Australian children.

Indigenous and non-Indigenous people know that we must do everything we can to make sure that Indigenous students stay at school and complete their schooling, as we hope for other Australian children. Year 12 completion is very low for Indigenous students. The first major drop in enrolments happens between years 9 and 10, from around 9,000 students to 8,000 students. Next, between years 10 and 11, enrolments drop further, down to around 5,800 students. Finally, between years 11 and 12 the figure gets down to around 3,700 students. So it is critical that we have intervention strategies directed at students in years 9  through to 12 to keep them engaged, interested and learning. That is one of the reasons why the Leader of the Opposition announced in his budget reply earlier this month a 10-year, $2½ billion trades training centres in schools plan—an initiative which will see new trades centres built in Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools. This major initiative will benefit tens of thousands of Indigenous students enrolled in years 9 to 12 each year. The trades training centres in schools plan is the key plank in Labor’s determination to lift year 12 retention rates from 75 per cent to 85 per cent by 2015 and to 90 per cent by 2020. In that time frame we have also committed to closing the retention gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students.

It is, of course, very difficult to see the purpose of education, to turn up to school, if you do not have any idea of the opportunities that education can open up. If we can engage Indigenous students in their learning, we will succeed in getting more of them to come to school and stay at school. But young people also need to see the adults around them working, to see that, with an education, wider economic opportunities open up.

I previously mentioned the work that GEMCO are doing on Groote Eylandt to improve their relationship with neighbouring Aboriginal communities. Just yesterday here in Canberra we had the minerals industry demonstrating their commitment to Indigenous employment. Argyle Diamonds in the Kimberley in Western Australia are deeply engaged with local Indigenous communities, both in providing employment and also, very importantly, making sure that literacy and numeracy are improved both while children are still at school and once people are employed in the mine. Both the Indigenous communities and the company recognise the importance of investment in education so that Indigenous people can take up the jobs at the mine. Children, young people and adults are all involved in improving their skills. I pay considerable regard to the significant number of mining companies which are now providing not just employment but literacy and numeracy support for very little children as well as young people at school.

Just to reiterate the success that Argyle have shown, 25 per cent of their employment is now taken up by Indigenous people, and they are heading towards a target of 40 per cent Indigenous employment at that mine by 2010. We have also seen leadership provided by the ANZ Bank, which have previously set out their goals for Indigenous employment in their reconciliation action plan announced earlier this year. ANZ have worked with Reconciliation Australia to set clear targets for increasing Indigenous employment, including recruiting three per cent of rural and regional staff from Indigenous communities and recruiting 300 Indigenous trainees by 2009.

There are many other companies that are working with Reconciliation Australia to set out their detailed plans and goals to make sure that we turn around the terrible level of Indigenous unemployment in this country. I strongly support the work that both Reconciliation Australia and these companies are doing to address this very important goal in Australia.

In our view, it is only through reciprocal partnership and respect that we will achieve the goal of overcoming Indigenous disadvantage, closing the gap in life expectancy averages, closing the literacy and numeracy gaps and closing the retention to year 12 gaps.

I support the bill that is before us. I call on the government to recognise the goals and targets that Labor has set and to join with us in making a bipartisan commitment to meet these goals. It will take time, and together we can make a huge difference to the lives of the Indigenous children who are being born today.

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