Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

I also rise today to support the motion by the member for Lyons and the words all of the other speakers who have spoken to this motion. On the first issue, I would like to particularly acknowledge the member for Lyons and his stance, his work and his great advocacy in this area. It is a bipartisan area. It really deserves support from both sides of the chamber. The National Year of Reading is a very significant and a very important initiative because it provides an avenue in which awareness can be raised about the terribly low rates of literacy in Australia. It is absolutely staggering when you look at the fact that 46 per cent of Australians do not have functional literacy. That means that every day there are thousands of Australians who cannot read a newspaper, who cannot read a medicine bottle, who cannot follow a recipe and who cannot make sense of a timetable.

I had my own experiences with literacy in the workplace a couple of years ago when, as I was preparing for our very busy Christmas Day in our seafood retail outlet, I had written down the instructions for how the day would go, because it was a 4 am start and it was one of the busiest days of the year. I gave the instructions to one of the fellows that was working for us in the kitchen, and I remember going into the kitchen two hours later and he was still trying to make sense of the instructions for Christmas Day and reading through each line meticulously. It absolutely staggered me. It will always remain with me: the image of this gentleman reading a page, and it was taking him two hours to read it and make sense of it. So from the workplace we have enormous challenges. There are many people in the workplace who do not have literacy. I have many companies come to me and say that they are having to send their employees to literacy classes. So it is an important year that we must acknowledge.

The National Year of Reading is an absolutely fantastic initiative. The goals that have been set out to improve literacy for all Australians are to understand the benefit of reading as a life skill; to promote the reading culture in every home; and to establish an aspirational goal for families of parents and caregivers sharing books with their children every single day. It is not an easy thing to do, with all of the technology that is out there. Once we would come home and we would read a book. I used to relish reading books in my family home. Now people go on PlayStations, they watch TV, they play computer games. I see my 23-year-old constantly on a computer monitor.

But Pulitzer Prize nominee Nicholas Carr, in his book The Shallows:What the Internet is Doing to Our Brains, makes a very interesting comparison between internet usage and reading books, on cognitive learning particularly. He says:

Once I was a scuba diver in a sea of words. Now I zip along the surface like a guy on a Jet Ski.

Isn't that a terrific way of describing the wonderful richness of words and how this new technology has taken over our thought processes—that strange staccato quality where we jump from one topic to another in a haphazard order? Kids are learning to do that and not learning the very basics of literacy. While the internet is a wonderful tool, we really need to have a balance, to ensure that literacy skills are not limited by technological platforms.

It is so fantastic to see the member for Lyons promoting this. He has certainly had his challenges. I want to acknowledge his absolute inspiration to us all. In learning to read and write as an adult and as a member of parliament, he is a true ambassador for all of those people out there struggling with this very important issue.

The National Year of Reading is a really great program, and I want to commend the government on its initiative. It will bring a reading culture into every home. A few years back I was at a national literacy day at one of the local schools. I asked one of the group that I was with how many of them had a book in their home, had seen a book in their home. Most of the group had never seen a book in their home, had never been read to from a book. But they did point out to me that their parents read biker magazines, boating magazines and car magazines. But we should not presume that there is a culture of reading. It is clearly important for our children to grow up to be able to read and write. They need to do that while they are actually in the classroom, but we need to start literacy at a very early level. So I absolutely commend what the government is doing here.

In the brief time I have left, I just want to commend the Adult Migrant English Language program. We must also help our new immigrants. (Time expired)

Sitting suspended from 13 : 29 to 16 : 00

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