Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Clearly, the member for Herbert has not read the report Closing the gap, because targets 2, 3 and 4 are all about education from early childhood onwards. I would suggest that the member for Herbert get a copy of the report and actually read it before he tries to lecture this parliament on his views.

The report Closing the gap, which was tabled in the House by the Prime Minister, outlines the path to change. It demonstrates the challenge of producing accurate data to track our progress in closing the gap and thereby reaching our targets. Progress is slow but it also demonstrates that, whilst that is the case and progress may not be as fast as some expectations, there is action in communities right across Australia—action by governments, action by Indigenous communities and action by the wider Australian community.

The government set six targets in 2008. It is important to continue to look at these targets. We must not, for a moment, let them out of our sight if they are to remain realistic targets. The government’s first target is to halve the mortality rate of Indigenous children under five years of age by 2018. In 2008 the gap in child mortality between Indigenous children and non-Indigenous children meant that 205 out of 100,000 Indigenous children died before the age of five, compared to 100 non-Indigenous children—a difference of more than 100. Indigenous children are twice as likely as non-Indigenous children to die before the age of five. This simply is not good enough. It is a shameful statistic. For all parents it is shocking and confronting. While the 2009 data to measure progress against this target is not yet available, other data sources can provide some measure of change. We know the gap in infant mortality rates in New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory has been on the decline over the past decade. This decline has been particularly evident over recent years and now stands at 5.3 per cent. We must continue to act to see this decline accelerated and our target reached by 2018.

Towards that goal, the government has already rolled out 40 new services for mothers and babies. Under the $90.3 million Mothers and Babies Services program, a total of 11,000 mothers and babies will be supported over five years with services including improved antenatal and postnatal care, advice on nutrition and health checks. Earlier this month the Prime Minister announced that nine new services will be funded, including in the Northern Territory, South Australia, Western Australia and Queensland. In addition to these services, the Australia government is supporting pregnant women to improve their own health through establishing five new sites under the $37.4 million Australian Nurse-Family Partnership Program. We have provided a total of 390 ear, nose and throat specialist services and a total of 1,990 dental services to 1,429 children who live in the Northern Territory Emergency Response communities in the six months from July to December last year alone. And the Red Cross is working with Outback Stores to bring more fresh fruit to Indigenous kids in the Territory through breakfast clubs in 33 communities and 13 homeland centres.

Our second target is to provide access to early childhood education for all four-year-olds in remote Indigenous communities within five years. We know that getting the best start in life begins early. Early childhood education is essential to getting the right start in learning and preparing for school, but the best available data shows only around 60 per cent of Indigenous children are enrolled in an early childhood education program in the year before school compared to around 70 per cent of all children. The good news is the trend is in the right direction. More Indigenous children are being enrolled and we are seeing the fastest preschool enrolment growth in remote communities, increasing by 31 per cent between 2005 and 2008.

We are expanding early learning opportunities for Indigenous children through the establishment of 36 children and family centres, bringing together important services including child care, early learning, and parent and family support programs. Twenty-one of these 36 centres will be located in regional and remote areas, including at Kununurra in Western Australia, Mornington Island in Queensland and Walgett in New South Wales. Another will be located in Yuendumu in the Northern Territory, where the Yuendumu Early Childhood Centre is already held up as a model of successful early childhood education. Every day between 40 and 60 children along with their parents and extended family go along to the centre to paint, read books, ride bikes and play. The children have breakfast and lunch there, the community nurse visits, and they go on excursions to the pool and the bush. The 14 local Aboriginal childcare workers who look after them say the children are happy and healthy.

With more children benefiting from early childhood education, the flow-on effect will help us meet our third and fourth targets: to halve the gap in literacy and numeracy achievement between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students within a decade, and to halve the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in rates of year 12 attainment or equivalent attainment by 2020. These two targets are critical to closing the gap because it is education above all that will improve the life chances and unlock the potential of Indigenous Australians. The evidence is unambiguous. Finishing year 12 transforms students’ future opportunities. It builds pathways to more secure, better paid and more fulfilling jobs. The learning basics, literacy and numeracy, are fundamental to all Australian children. And they are critical to healthier, happier and longer lives. The evidence shows the gap in meeting literacy and numeracy standards between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students is large. These gaps are evident from as early as year 3, with the largest gap in 2008 being 29.4 per cent for year-5 reading. Literacy and numeracy scores vary across grades. In 2009 there was an improvement in the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students reading for years 3, 5 and 7. For year 9 students, the gap increased.

The government is taking action to expand opportunities for Indigenous children at school. Around 78,000 Indigenous students, almost half of all Indigenous primary and secondary school students, will benefit from the government’s $1.5 billion investment in 1,500 low socioeconomic schools, as well as substantial investments in literacy and numeracy. And we are seeing great results from the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program of Dr Chris Sarra, whose ‘clear expectations, high expectations’ philosophy for educating Indigenous children is delivering remarkable results among the 44 schools signed up to this program.

The government provided Stronger Smarter Learning Communities in September 2009 to support an initial 12 hub schools in New South Wales, Queensland and Western Australia. We expect this to grow to 60 hub schools over the next four years supporting between 180 and 240 affiliated schools. One school that has already signed up is the East Kalgoorlie Primary School in Western Australia. Faced with what she described as significant challenges, Principal Donna Bridge used her experience of the Stronger Smarter Leadership Program to enlist the support of parents and the community to bring about change. Five years later, attitudes have changed, school attendance is up and there have been significant improvements in literacy and numeracy. In Cape York in Far North Queensland, school attendance is also up, driven by the Cape York welfare reforms created by the Indigenous leader Noel Pearson and supported by the Commonwealth and state governments. Under the reforms, welfare payments are linked to parents taking responsibility to care for their kids and make sure they go to school.

In 2006 only 47.4 per cent of Indigenous 20- to 24-year-olds had obtained a year 12 or equivalent qualification, almost half as many as non-Indigenous young people. Indigenous school retention rates from the start of high school to year 12 have risen from 30.7 per cent in 1995 to 46.5 per cent in 2008, a 6.4 percentage point increase. With a concerted government effort and the contribution of organisations like the Clontarf Foundation, we are working to close the gap. Clontarf based sports academies are tackling poor attendance and outcomes among Indigenous students through sport and recreation with some great results, including school attendance rates of more than 80 per cent and improved academic performance. By the end of February, 2,300 students in 36 schools across three states will be signed up. Clontarf is one of the academies funded through the Australian government’s Sporting Chance Program to support Indigenous students in engagement with their school. Overall the program has achieved an average attendance rate of 79 per cent, six percentage points above the average rate of all Indigenous students in schools. Earlier this month the Prime Minister announced that this year an additional 17 school academies will commence across Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Victoria. This will support about a thousand students and bring the total number of students in the program to some 10,000. Ten of these new academies will be for girls. As well, the Clontarf Foundation will operate seven new football academies in the Northern Territory and in Victoria.

Our fifth target is to halve within a decade the gap in employment outcomes between Indigenous and other Australians. With regard to this goal, there is a positive trend. Between 2002 and 2008 the Indigenous employment rate rose from 48 per cent to 53.8 per cent. This is still well below the non-Indigenous employment rate, so that in 2008 the most recent available data indicates there was a 21 percentage point gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous employment. Over the past year the government has replaced Community Development Employment Project jobs with more than 1,500 jobs delivering government services to Indigenous communities. These for the first time are now sustainable jobs; they are proper jobs. The best way to accelerate growth in Indigenous employment is to give people the skills to get and keep a job. Seven schools in the 29 remote communities targeted under the National Partnership on Remote Service Delivery already have trades training centres under our $2.5 billion national investment in trade training to give school students early opportunities to develop skills for a profession in the trades and to help them complete year 12 or an equivalent qualification. I was proud to announce trade training centres in my electorate of Dobell, where we have a much higher percentage of Indigenous students than most other areas and where such training centres will be of the utmost benefit to young people to gain the skills they need to find jobs and to keep those jobs.

But it is not only the trade training centres where we are endeavouring to close the gap. In communities like Hermannsburg, dedicated teachers have lifted school attendance rates to 90 per cent in the junior school. To be successful these young people need to be actively engaged beyond the primary school years. The government is now acting to improve access to first-rate education facilities for students in schools where there are remote Indigenous communities. Intensive support and assistance will also be given to schools from the 29 remote service delivery priority locations that have not already had funding from the trades training centres program. Schools in remote communities with large Indigenous student populations will also be provided with extra flexibility to deliver training targeted at the needs and education levels on these communities, including prevocational and certificate I and II qualifications.

We are also working with the private sector to create business employment opportunities. The government is also investing $3 million to support the new Australian Indigenous Minority Supplier Council, which helps certified Indigenous businesses to win contracts in the private and government sectors. After only five months the council has signed up 31 major corporations as backers. Already it has helped secure $3.3 million worth of contracts for 15 Indigenous businesses. These efforts are in addition to the work of the Australian Employment Covenant, through which some 16,000 Indigenous jobs have been committed over the coming years from Australian businesses.

All these efforts culminate in our sixth and final target, to close the life expectancy gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians within a generation. We know that with the very latest figures available the life expectancy gap is 11.7 years for men and 9.7 years for women. An Indigenous male born today is likely to die at just 67 years of age, and an Indigenous female at 73 years. This is less than the 17-year gap that we thought existed a year ago.

This is good news, but it is a result of having more reliable data rather than any real improvement on the ground. In the past we have not had reliable information on Indigenous life expectancy, so we have not reliably known the size of the gap between the Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. There is evidence to suggest that some progress may have been made, but the progress is clearly too slow. Closing the life expectancy gap is a cumulative target relying on our success in meeting each of the other targets for achievement. Obviously the health of Indigenous people is a major factor. Tobacco, obesity and physical inactivity are leading risk factors accounting for around 45 per cent of the total health gap. Since 2007-08, Indigenous specific health spending has increased by 57 per cent. This includes nearly $1.6 billion over four years to fight the treatable chronic diseases that account for two-thirds of premature Indigenous deaths, and it includes $14.5 million for an Indigenous Tobacco Control Initiative, a package of 20 innovative antismoking projects in urban, regional and remote Indigenous communities.

There has been much said about the legacy of decades of government failure still endured by Indigenous Australians. That is why it is all the more critical that we are vigilant about what is working and what is not. When evidence emerged of unacceptable delays in our major Indigenous housing program in the Northern Territory last year, the government took unprecedented action to get the program back on track. That action has delivered results. This is a timely report to remind us of the work that we need to do and the task that is ahead in terms of closing the gap. By working together in a non-partisan way, by making sure that both the government and the opposition work together on this project, we can truly close the gap, and that is something that all of us here in this parliament should aspire to.

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