Stephen Smith (Perth, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I support the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007 and support the second reading amendment moved by my colleague the member for Jagajaga in the following terms:

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 to:

(1)

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)

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)

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

(4)

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

The bill amends the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 by appropriating additional funding of $26.1 million over the 2007 and 2008 calendar years for Indigenous students in the school, vocational education and training and higher education sectors. This funding will be used for the expansion of the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program, the expansion of the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program, the provision of infrastructure funding for boarding school facilities and, where government and non-government education providers agree, the conversion of Community Development Employment Project—CDEP—places into ongoing jobs in the education sector.

The proportion of young Indigenous people living in remote areas who reach year 12 is half that of their metropolitan peers. Only one in 10 actually completes year 12. Approximately one in four 15- to 19-year-old young Indigenous people lives in a remote area. The expansion of the two programs, the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program and the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program, is expected to impact on over 1,500 Indigenous students. The Indigenous Youth Mobility Program will be expanded by around 860 places over the next four years, 2007-08 to 2010-11. In the 2008 calendar year, $2.6 million will be used to increase the number of places available in that year.

The Indigenous Youth Mobility Program currently provides assistance to around 600 young Indigenous people from remote areas with access to a broad range of training and employment opportunities on offer in major regional centres in Cairns, Townsville, Toowoomba, Newcastle, Dubbo, Canberra, Shepparton, Adelaide, Perth and Darwin. The program’s focus is on accredited training options, including Australian Apprenticeships across a range of occupations and post-school work, and study opportunities in nursing, teaching, accountancy and business management.

The bill also provides for an increase in the number of scholarships available through the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program. The Indigenous Youth Leadership Program currently provides 200 secondary school and 50 university scholarships for young Indigenous Australians. The budget increases these by a further 750 over four years, from 2007-08 to 2010-11. This will bring the total number of scholarships to 1,000. Four million dollars will be used to increase the number of scholarships available in the 2007 and 2008 calendar years.

The increased funding for these two programs will provide support for Indigenous young people to relocate from remote and regional areas to access education, training and employment opportunities not otherwise available to them. Funding of $14.1 million over two years will also be made available under the bill to provide infrastructure funding to existing boarding schools catering for Indigenous students. In addition, funding of $5.3 million will be made available, where government and non-government education providers agree, to convert CDEP program places into ongoing jobs in the education sector, such as teacher assistants and training assistants. This is expected to impact on approximately 200 Indigenous people. The CDEP provides activities for unemployed Indigenous people that meet community needs and give them a stepping stone to employment outside of the CDEP program itself.

Labor support these initiatives. We believe these measures will go some way to lifting the educational attainment levels of Indigenous Australians, in turn lifting the employment rate of Indigenous Australia. But these measures are only a modest, part-recognition of our national responsibility to Indigenous Australia. At all levels, we see Indigenous Australians falling behind the rest of our nation’s educational attainment levels. According to the Higher education report 2005 produced by the Department of Education, Science and Training, the number of Indigenous higher education students at Australian higher education providers decreased by 5.9 per cent in 2005, from 8,895 students in 2004 to 8,370 in 2005. In particular, Indigenous commencements in nursing, initial teacher training and medical practitioner courses also declined. Total commencements in these and related courses declined overall in 2005 by eight per cent. In its Higher education report 2005, the department said:

Continuing declines in Indigenous involvement in higher education will perpetuate disadvantages experienced by Indigenous Australians and hinder their full participation in Australia’s economic and social development.

While the situation in higher education is parlous, it is worse in those areas many Australians today take for granted. Simply put, too many Indigenous children continue to fail to read, write or count at a basic level. Indigenous children fall further and further behind the longer they stay at school. Fewer Indigenous students meet year 5 and year 7 benchmarks for literacy and numeracy than Indigenous children in year 3. According to the National report on schooling in Australia 2005, the proportion 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 proportion of Indigenous children who meet the numeracy benchmarks falls from 80 per cent in year 3 to 48 per cent in year 7. In 2005, fewer Indigenous children in years 5 and 7 met basic literacy and numeracy benchmarks compared to years 5 and 7 children in 2002. Compare this to year 7 non-Indigenous students, 90 per cent of whom meet the reading benchmarks and 73 per cent of whom meet the numeracy benchmarks—nearly twice the rate of their Indigenous counterparts.

Poor educational attainment levels impact directly on employment prospects and on health and wellbeing generally. Poor education levels mean that it remains a tragic fact that, today, Indigenous Australians are the single most disadvantaged group in our nation. This applies across the full range of social and economic indicators. Indigenous Australia is confronted by greater inequality than just about any other single sector in our nation. The impact this has on social and economic behaviour should be unsurprising.

Tellingly, Indigenous unemployment levels are many times higher than the national record lows. In the Elizabeth area of North Adelaide, Indigenous unemployment is as high as 34 per cent. In Macquarie Fields in Sydney, it is 30 per cent for Indigenous residents. In Brisbane, Inala recorded an Indigenous unemployment rate of 35 per cent. In my own state of Western Australia, now subject to historic record low unemployment, Indigenous unemployment is over 15 per cent. In regional and rural Australia, the level of unemployment varies.

Given the proximity of many Indigenous communities to the booming minerals and petroleum resources industries that are helping to sustain our now 16th year of continuous economic growth, we should recognise the good work that has been done to date by that sector in improving the job prospects of Indigenous Australians. The release yesterday of the Centre for Social Responsibility in Mining’s report into Indigenous employment in the minerals industry highlighted the steps taken to date in this area. The report has been supported by Rio Tinto, BHP Billiton, Newmont, Zinifex, Roche Mining and Ngarda Civil and Mining. It highlights the benefits for our society, our nation and the industry of taking a long-term view to providing employment opportunities for Indigenous Australians and working with local communities to address the root causes of Indigenous socioeconomic problems—the key issues of education, health and poverty. Like so many other reports, it also stated that much more still needs to be done, concluding that:

Unless the critical issues of education and health are addressed, Indigenous people, especially those living in remote and rural areas are likely to remain a marginal and largely unskilled labour force.

This just draws attention to the fact that as a nation we need to do much more to educate and train Indigenous people and get them work and job ready. More must be done to create jobs and economic development opportunities for Indigenous people. This is the most obvious and the most graphic indicator of neglect and disadvantage.

In an economy experiencing near record low unemployment of 4.4 per cent, Indigenous Australia has been left out in the economic cold. In 2005, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner Tom Calma said:

... what data exists suggests that we have seen only slow improvements in some areas ... and no progress on others over the past decade. The gains have been hard-fought. But they are too few. And the gains made are generally not of the same magnitude of the gains experienced by the non-Indigenous population, with the result that they have had a minimal impact on reducing the inequality gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples and other Australians.

Reinforcing this is the fact that, going into the second decade of the 21st century, Australia today has a 17-year life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The life expectancy at birth for Indigenous men is 60 years, while for Australian males it is close to 80 years. For Indigenous women, life expectancy at birth is 65 years, while for Australian females it is 82 years. Compare this to the life expectancy gap between indigenous and non-indigenous people in comparable countries: in the United States and Canada it is approximately seven years and in New Zealand it is 7½ years. In Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, approximately 70 per cent of Indigenous Australians who died between 2000 and 2004 were under the age of 65. This compares to 21 per cent for the non-Indigenous population in those states. Tragically, current rates of Indigenous life expectancy are comparable to the life expectancy for all Australians born in the 1920s.

The demographic characteristics of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander population demonstrate that the only way to address the life expectancy of Indigenous Australians is to begin with young Indigenous Australians. Indeed, the Indigenous Australian population is proportionately younger compared with non-Indigenous Australia. The percentage of Indigenous Australians under the age of 10 is more than double that of the general Australian population.

Labor recognises the fundamental importance of investing during a child’s early years. This applies to both Indigenous and non-Indigenous young Australians. The international evidence shows that the best investment a government can make is in the early years of a child’s development, whether in health, family and community support or education. Through providing greater and better access to education during a child’s early development, we can provide the very best start in life. This does not diminish the importance of providing continuous educational and learning opportunities throughout life. Indeed, lifelong learning has many benefits, and this bill goes some way to acknowledging that, but it falls very far short of where we need to be. We must recognise that more must be done to lift the educational standards of all people, and in particular Indigenous Australians.

In many respects, in relation to Indigenous Australians this means that we have to go back to basics, particularly when it comes to literacy and numeracy. We have to assess the things that we as the Commonwealth have done in the past and where we are at today. When we do that, what do we see? We see that the education outcomes for Indigenous Australians, like the health outcomes for Indigenous Australians, are going downhill.

There are some things on the ground that we know work in practice. These include accelerated learning for literacy and numeracy, getting early intervention and providing early childhood literacy and numeracy activities. But to ensure they are effective we need a long-term, bipartisan approach. It is in this context that the Leader of the Opposition spoke only a few days ago, on the 40th anniversary of the 1967 referendum, of the need to set new, national, bipartisan goals to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australia—goals that are achievable, measurable and that fulfil the spirit of the referendum.

Labor is committed to the following bipartisan goals, as the second reading amendment reflects: 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 among babies 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 10 years.

Labor is committed to meeting these goals and, along with a range of health and family initiatives, education is a key plank in achieving this. Under Labor all Indigenous four-year-olds will be eligible to receive 15 hours of government funded early learning programs per week for a minimum of 40 weeks a year. Labor will provide nearly $17 million over four years to support the rollout of the Australian Early Development Index in every Australian primary school. This will be adapted to establish a culturally appropriate and nationally consistent means of addressing key aspects of Indigenous children’s early development which are central to their readiness for learning at school.

Labor will ensure that every Indigenous child has an individual learning plan based on each child’s needs. Labor will ensure that every Indigenous student has an individual learning plan, which will 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, the results of assessments—including national literacy and numeracy testing in years 3, 5, 7 and 9—and through new initiatives such as the Australian Early Development Index, to which I have just referred.

The plans will identify the individual strengths and weaknesses of every child and set out the areas the student and the teacher will target for improvement across the basics of reading, writing and numeracy. Labor will spend $34.5 million over four years to provide 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 they can be part of their children’s learning improvements. Once children’s learning needs have been identified, clear and precise intervention programs can be better implemented. Data available through teacher assessments will be pooled along with other student achievements and demographic data already available, and an independent analysis will be commissioned annually in collaboration with the states and territories to provide governments with the best quality foundation for policy decisions and resource allocations.

Labor will expand intensive literacy programs and develop a new intensive numeracy program to assist underachieving students to catch up to the rest of their class. Literacy and numeracy are the building blocks upon which every individual builds his or her participation in society and capacity to work and lead a healthy and active life. The underperformance of Indigenous students against the national reading, writing and numeracy benchmarks must be substantially improved. Labor wants to halve the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students’ performance in reading, writing and numeracy achievement within a decade.

Labor will provide $21.9 million over four years to expand intensive literacy and numeracy programs in our schools. 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 within a nationally consistent framework that assists underachieving students to catch up to the average level of the rest of their class. These programs use a range of learning methods, including phonics and decoding in combination with whole-of-language and textual understanding. What is important is that each student’s level is identified and all relevant methods are used. It is critical that students who are falling behind be given extra help to help them catch up.

As part of this commitment, a new intensive numeracy program will be developed and implemented. The educational gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students is widest in numeracy—up to 33 percentage points in year 7—yet there are regrettably few structured programs in this area. Intensive literacy and numeracy programs will focus on these foundational literacy skills which are essential to success in school. These skills will be part of the English component of the national curriculum and will underpin effective participation in all learning areas.

I was interested in question time that, in response to a dorothy dix question, the minister for education sought to criticise those programs that Labor announced over the weekend by saying that they were based on a document agreed by the Ministerial Council on Education, Employment, Training and Youth Affairs in 2005, that MCEETYA had adopted similar or like-minded proposals in 2006 and how shocking and terrible it was that Labor had made express detailed, funded, costed election commitments in this area. I could not quite understand the point the minister was making. The minister was herself on the ministerial council in 2006. She signed up for these proposals, which she says Labor based its commitments on, but which part is she actually criticising? What did she agree to in 2005-06 that she is not agreeing to now, or is there a more central point? I think the central point is this: the minister signed up in 2006 to these proposals that she outlined at question time but has done nothing about them. Not one Commonwealth appropriation to effect these measures do we find in the budget. That is the reason for the minister’s dorothy dixer in question time today.

Labor supports measures to lift educational retention rates and provide assistance to those most in need to help themselves. Labor strongly believes that more can and must be done. It is insufficient to look at only one aspect of Indigenous Australia when what we need is an overall perspective—a perspective that acknowledges that, after years of neglect, Indigenous Australia has a manifold series of issues that require a comprehensive approach; a perspective that acknowledges that education is crucial and that this begins with a child’s early years to help build the foundation stones for a successful life; and a perspective that acknowledges that health is crucial and that more must be done to bridge the gap at every level between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. On that basis, I commend the bill and the amendment to the House.

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