Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This year, 2012, is the National Year of Reading, and I have been given the honour of being appointed one of 24 national reading ambassadors. There are also a number of state and territory ones. We work with our patron, William McInnes, the well-known author and actor. It was certainly a surprise to be made a reading ambassador, and I never believed I could be in such august company. My fellow ambassadors are mainly writers or actors or very experienced in artistic communications, particularly for children, and have far more to contribute to reading than me.

I believe my role is to let the parliament, the country and my state know why this year has been set up and how we should be raising the awareness of all Australians to understand the benefits of reading and to hopefully develop a love of stories and to enjoy the act of reading. Did anyone in this House—there are not many of you here—know that 46 per cent of Australians cannot read newspapers, follow a recipe, make sense of timetables or understand the instructions on a medicine bottle? Nearly half our population cannot read with any fluency. It is a shameful and worrying statistic.

The Australian Bureau of Statistics Adult Literacy and Life Skills Survey 2006 found that approximately seven million, or 46 per cent, of Australians aged 15 to 74 years had scores at level 1 or 2 on the prose scale. Prose literacy is defined as the ability to understand and use information from various kinds of narrative texts, including texts from newspapers, magazines and brochures. The four main domains tested were: prose, document, numeracy and problem solving. A fifth domain, health literacy, was also tested. Scores were grouped into five skill levels—only four levels were defined for the problem-solving scale—with level 1 being the lowest measured level of literacy.

So Australia really needs to do more to ensure our population is more than just literate. As a fifth-generation Tasmanian, my education was distinctly lacking in incentives to be literate. I can understand why we have this dreadful figure of 46 per cent of Australians not being functionally literate. Certainly my folks did not read much, and not to their children, and their parents did not read at all. So reading was not a natural pastime in the 1960s and the 1970s, and I notice that there are still members of my family now who do not read very much at all. We did not have the need to on the farm. We did not have BAS, emails or much in the way of reading material. A newspaper or a farming magazine was the most likely thing to be looked at, and the radio provided the other stimulus during my childhood.

My stimulus to learn to read was that I needed to do more reading and writing in my employment to represent other people. It is much more difficult to learn as an adult than as a child and it did take me a long time. It is very hard to do many things if you cannot read. Having learnt to read and write, I have since devoted considerable effort to the adult literacy program and I now know the value of reading to both adults and children. Every day I read a lot, either through my work with the House, as an MP, or as a pleasant pastime. It was as president of the adult literacy program and the adult literacy council that I sat and passed the HSC English exam. Now, I am the House of Representatives representative on the board of the National Library, as well as joint chair of the Joint Committee of the Parliamentary Library. I am very proud to have both those roles.

Libraries are a key information source. I have used public libraries all my life. They empower people and they help our democracy. Libraries and their services give me great joy. I was sad to note that they have renamed our libraries in Tasmania the 'LINC', which to me is misleading—firstly because it is spelt wrong and, secondly, it does not imply reading or the recreational joy of the book. It seems very impersonal and more to do with communications jingle lingo.

So I am going to work hard this year to try to encourage more children to get into books and to understand libraries. They are one of the most important parts of our education system. Losing oneself in a story is a marvellous way of coping with times in your life: while you are waiting at the doctors surgery, to board a plane—like many MPs—to travel, waiting in a queue, just waiting to fall asleep or sitting on a rainy day in your favourite chair.

This government has recognised the need to improve reading standards across the education spectrum. The Gillard government is committed to improving the educational outcome of all schools and school students, and it is providing funding for three Smarter Schools National Partnerships. There will be $540 million over four years for the Smarter Schools National Partnership for Literacy and Numeracy to support the infrastructure and practices that will deliver sustainable improvement in literacy and numeracy, including $350 million for rewarding improved performance. There will be $1.5 billion over seven years for the Smarter Schools National Partnership for Low Socio-economic Status School Communities to support a range of reforms that address educational disadvantage associated with so-called low socioeconomic status in school communities. And there will be $550 million for the Smarter Schools National Partnership for Improving Teacher Quality scheme and wide reforms to attract, train, place, develop and re-train quality teachers and school leaders. A quarter of all Australian schools—2,564—have been targeted for support through the low socioeconomic status school communities national partnership and the literacy and numeracy national partnership program. Approximately 793,000 students—that is, 23 per cent of all students—attend these schools. Thirty-two schools in my electorate of Lyons are benefiting from these partnerships.

With this motion I am asking people, both young and old, to share their particular joy in reading with their communities. Families can start by reading to their kids and their grandkids. If you are an adult, start to learn. You may want to start with the outboard motor manual or with the sewing machine manual—whatever is the link or the hook that is needed to get people ready. We all need to have pathways for people to get on board.

The beginning at school is so important. TAFE has always played a great role for people who go to training with low reading and writing skills, and they have been able to address their needs at this level. Adult literacy is also something that needs more attention now; it is always being forgotten in the education debates. Members may wish to use their newsletters—and I hope that members do take that opportunity—to promote their local libraries and publicise local events for the Year of Reading in their own electorates. I hope they organise some events for schools and go into some of the retirement villages to some of our oldies and offer to read in those nursing homes, or go to the schools and offer to read. Encourage reading whenever you can in your communities. As I said, all the newsletters that go out from MPs should promote the Year of Reading this year and opportunities for people to get involved in their libraries if they have not been. I am sure every member would like the opportunity to stand in front of a library and get photographed, so there is an opportunity for their newsletters and a great opportunity to promote the Year of Reading.

This is something beyond politics, and I think we should all support this motion. I hope that everybody will enjoy some reading today, and I certainly thank everybody who will speak on this motion and who will give it support. I hope that we keep adult literacy in the front of our minds as we go into education debates in the future. (Time expired)

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