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

The parliamentary secretary is well aware that there are those who request help to improve literacy and numeracy skills and there are many people who have difficulty in completing forms or interpreting written instructions, people who frequently miss meetings or get their times wrong. They do not respond to letters on time requesting their attendance at meetings. Those people need help, they do not need breaching of their benefits. I often point this out as I fight battles on behalf of people. There are those who may not seek help easily and are reluctant to seek help. I know about 46 per cent of Australians cannot read newspapers, follow a recipe, make sense of timetables or understand instructions on a medicine bottle. Nearly half of our population cannot read with any fluency. It is a shameful and very worrying statistic.

This has great significance for what my colleague was saying recently and what the parliamentary secretary just said in relation to the skill base and the need to improve people's education. TAFE has always played that incredibly important role in improving and helping people get their trade certificates through TAFE. I would like to ask about the rollout of the Language, Literacy and Numeracy Program and how it is going. How many years is that for? The Workplace English Language and Literacy, the WELL program, is targeting existing workers and how we can assist workers who are presently on the job improve to get advancement in their employment or to improve their skill base to go forward.

See this speech in context