Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Roads and Transport) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise to speak this evening on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2010 for the main purpose of supporting, and bringing to the House’s attention, the tireless efforts of the Clontarf Football Academy, its programs and some of the magnificent outcomes that it achieves. As we have heard, this bill is procedural in nature, bipartisan and to include the additional $10.93 million allocated to the Sporting Chance Program in the 2009-10 budget. The Sporting Chance Program is an initiative of the previous coalition government that was originally announced in the 2006-07 budget. This program is one of the few initiatives actually achieving its desired outcomes of engaging both Indigenous boys and girls in school through involvement with sport. The principle is very simple. Through sport we encourage young children to stay at or to go back to school, in turn improving their employment prospects for the future and their all-round wellbeing for having done so. We have seen the value in using incentives to keep kids in schools, using sporting activities and high-profile sporting identities as a vehicle to increase the level of engagement of Indigenous students to improve their educational outcomes. Unlike the Labor government’s inaction on its closing the gap strategy, the Sporting Chance Program delivers real results and I am pleased to say it is one of the few programs that have continued relatively untouched.

In last night’s big taxing, big spending budget, the money allocated to the Sporting Chance Program through to 2012 was confirmed. In addition to the $22 million committed to the program in December 2008, the Prime Minister’s additional commitment of $10 million to Clontarf directly over four years, to expand the football academy, is the money we here are speaking about transferring today, which has essentially already been expended by Clontarf and they need more. At this stage I say that I was very grateful for the kind words spoken by the member for Brand, Gary Gray, in relation to my association with the Clontarf Football Academy and this program generally. I say, on behalf of the member for Brand, that he also needs to be recognised as a new champion in this government, given his tireless work for and on behalf of this program, of the Aboriginal football program at Clontarf. Obviously, we in opposition do not have the same ability to necessarily get the message through to the government of the day. The member for Brand has taken that up and, as a champion of this program in Western Australia, he has seen that those involved have had access to the highest levels of government, which include the Prime Minister. I know that we are not meant to hold up things in the House, but as this is about the Prime Minister, Madam Deputy Speaker Burke, I am sure you will not mind! What I am holding up is about the Prime Minister attending Clontarf in Perth last year, announcing the $10 million program over the four-year period, which was very much welcomed. That had a lot to do with the member for Brand making sure, as I suspect, that every member of the cabinet up to the level of Prime Minister appreciated what was going on at Clontarf. That was well done. It is good to see we are all working to the same ends.

In the short period of time that I have left I will talk about Clontarf, but hopefully I will continue on this at a later date. As I said, the Clontarf Football Academy uses sport as a means of ensuring young Indigenous boys get an education. When it was first rolled out, people said, ‘But why is it only for boys? How come there’s not much for girls in this program?’ Gerard Neesham’s view of that, and it might sound a bit unusual to some, is that where the boys are the girls will be. That is true of this program. They provide the sporting program for the boys to play football, because that is the great hook to get them to school, and we know how good Indigenous boys in this country are at Australian Rules football. It seems to come to them so easily. Sorry, Madam Deputy Speaker.

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