Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to say that the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 before the parliament seems like a good idea because it is a good idea that has been discussed in this parliament before. For that reason, I am not opposing the bill. I am querying, though, the bona fides of the government in bringing this bill to the parliament. It does represent a leopard changing its spots and I think the Australian public have a right to be, at best, curious but, at worst, deeply suspicious about this legislation. This initiative—if I can call it an initiative—seems to have had many announcements but not a whole lot of action or focus on implementation of the ideas it seeks to embrace, so I just wonder whether it is more of the politics of the stunt and the set piece event rather than the policies of sound government. It is very much in the government’s court to prove that it is fair dinkum about this and to back up the legislation that we are debating today with a concrete plan of action and some bona fides on the measures that it plans to put in place and to provide some justification to this parliament and to the Australian public about why this enormous change of heart when measures of this kind have been stridently opposed by the Australian Labor Party time and time again.

That is the context in which I make my remarks. The bill itself aims to introduce conditions on the receipt of income support payments whereby parents are obliged to ensure their children of compulsory school age are enrolled in school and that those parents are taking responsible action to ensure regular school attendance. The bill provides the mechanism to suspend or cancel welfare payments of parents who are considered negligent in this role, and previous speakers have discussed some of the practical implementation issues of how those judgements will be made, who in fact will make those judgements and, when a conclusion has been arrived at that someone has been negligent in this role, what happens when they take adequate steps to no longer be negligent in those responsibilities. I certainly recognise an added burden that will be placed on school councils, on parents and particularly on principals that might find themselves involved in this regime that seems to be very broadly outlined with a crayon in this legislation.

The Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 goes further than a bill that was introduced and passed by the parliament in the term of the Howard government. The previous government’s legislation permitted welfare payments to be quarantined in the event of bad behaviour by welfare recipients, such as not sending their kids to school or so neglecting their children that they were brought to the attention of the child protection authority.

It is not easy to determine how many children of compulsory school age are not actually attending school. Some place a conservative estimate at around 20,000 Australian children of compulsory school age who are not enrolled to attend school, but the data that is available—collected and published in New South Wales and Victoria—is that, on any given day, 10 per cent of the student population may not be there. If those figures are accurate and give a reasonable picture of the overall situation, we could be looking at 200,000 school age children not attending school on any one day. This is a staggering figure and it does not really capture the issue of irregular attendance—that is a more complex thing to draw out—but, in referring to those statistics collected and published by New South Wales and Victoria, it does raise the point that other speakers have raised: isn’t this what state governments are supposed to be doing? Aren’t enforcing truancy laws and the responsibility of jurisdictions to see that children of compulsory school age are attending school things that the states and territories do? Most people would nod their head and say: ‘Yes, it is,’ yet from what you hear in many of the contributions in this place, particularly from the government members advocating this measure, you would not think there was such a thing as a state and territory government or that there are responsibilities that those jurisdictions are charged with discharging.

This is an interesting context: what are the responsibilities on those state and territory jurisdictions to carry out their roles and responsibilities? If the Rudd government were consistent—heaven forbid—would you see a reduction in payments to the states and territories if they do not carry out their roles? That would be analogous to what is being done here in relation to parents, but of course you do not hear that, because that is not what this bill is about. This is not about ensuring that those with responsibilities carry out their role; this is about something else. You have heard people talk about the need for the Rudd government to look like it is serious about these things. We have the announcement but not the action plan, not the implementation agenda and not the evaluation framework to see whether this is actually working or not.

We look at some of the work that has been done in this area. In his paper to the Learning Choice Expo, Graeme Withers, a senior research fellow at the Australian Council for Education Research, suggested that there are many key reasons for unauthorised nonattendance at school, and these reasons ring true with, I think, the experience of anyone who has had an involvement with school age children. Issues include family relationships; family values and the emphasis placed on school attendance and the value of education as a platform for future opportunities; ethnic values; excessive home responsibilities; peer pressure amongst friends and, dare I say, amongst enemies where children are frightened or bullied into seeing nonattendance at school as an option in dealing with challenges that they are facing in the school environment itself; strong attachment to friends or siblings that might have lost their way; poor reading skills and therefore an inability to engage in the curriculum and to benefit from the learning that is available; anxiety about course deadlines—a no-show because there is work due; fear of bullying, which I have touched on; maybe dislike of particular lessons or units that they are studying or even of some of the teachers; and maybe a feeling of being disengaged because of perceived irrelevance of the curriculum.

I am quite familiar with that challenge, having been a former secondary school council president. Our mission was to offer an engaging learning environment for our secondary school age kids in the school community for which I was responsible for a period of time. We would offer a rich range of course opportunities that the young people would see as valuable, as engaging, as worth while and as connected to future opportunities, and we would make that effort to piece that story together—that participation and commitment to education at secondary school meant a whole lot of opportunities in future life. We made that our goal and saw very encouraging improvements in attendance and also in passion and enthusiasm. Engaging learning is an enabler that says to people, ‘I want to get involved; I can see the benefits of applying myself.’ We also recognised that we needed to tell that story to the parents, where households might not have had a parent who finished even their secondary education and the young person might have been getting a message that the value of their education was not as highly prized as we thought it should be. That was part of our work.

Withers believed there was no such thing as the typical early school leaver or truant and that there were a whole range of reasons for that kind of behaviour. States have always had that responsibility for school attendance, with legislative requirements in place that school-age children must be enrolled in and attend school. That should be implemented and governed by state governments. Where is the collaboration that is needed to make this work? Where is the effort that was made by the Howard government in putting together a collaborative and cooperative approach to tackling truancy, notwithstanding the at times less than full commitment and assistance of state and territory governments, mainly of the Labor persuasion? The policies and programs that need to be talked about to support this crayon drawing of a headline of a piece of legislation are what is going on in those schools and what is happening with school-age people during working hours.

It is interesting that we are focusing on those receiving welfare payments. My experience is that some of those families whose primary source of income is welfare payments are the most committed, the most available and the most engaged in the school community. They are the parents involved in looking after the canteen and helping with reading recovery programs. They are always there and can be relied upon for a school excursion or a sports day. Because this measure targets those on income support, the inference is—and I imagine that this is the government’s argument—that there is somehow a correlation between households relying on income support and school nonattendance. I do not think that is convincing. I do not think it reflects reality, and it certainly overlooks some of the experience that I have been exposed to in an outer metropolitan community where parents may have considerably long commutes to work—the latchkey kid phenomenon—and might not actually know about the school attendance of their children. That puts a different light on things and leads you to ask: what else is going on to address this range of problems—none of which are common or consistent and for none of which a single reason can be pointed to—that Graeme Withers talked about? Where are those broad initiatives to make sure school is engaging and that support is there for young people to attend? Where is the counselling and mediation, if that is required? Where is there some recognition of a need for exemptions around distance eduction and other options?

So this is an interesting bill. I suppose it is a headline bill because that seems to be what it aims to achieve—getting headlines. Why else would you announce it three times? You would get on with it, you would put together a comprehensive package and you would talk about what you are doing to implement and support the idea behind it. The idea is not one that this parliament is unfamiliar with. The coalition’s truancy initiatives, borne out of the July 2006 COAG agenda, agreed that jurisdictions would work together to address school attendance in Indigenous communities.

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