Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Primarily, I want to focus on the portion of this bill, the Social Services and Other Legislation Amendment Bill 2013, that will continue the work of the Cape York welfare reform, which has been a spectacular success. I would like to get on the record a few things about that. I will raise one other issue, the decision to freeze the cap on the childcare rebate. That decision is incredibly regressive and highlights the absurdity of going with a super-deluxe paid parental leave scheme that will advantage the very wealthiest women in this community while at the same time effectively, in real money terms, cutting the childcare rebate. It is child care far more than paid parental leave that is the thing we need to improve to enable women to re-establish themselves in the workforce. It is absolutely absurd that we are establishing a Rolls-Royce paid parental leave scheme while at the same time effectively cutting the childcare rebate for families right across Australia.

I will talk primarily about the Cape York welfare trial and the proposal, which we support, in this bill to continue that. The trial has been very much the work of Noel Pearson. The welfare trial, which commenced in 2008, has established some major achievements in those communities. A report into its effectiveness, which came out earlier this year, compared student attendance in those communities and tracked it against comparable Indigenous communities. It became quite clear that there was a very significant increase in attendance in schools across the Cape York Peninsula that could not be explained by anything other than the reforms that had taken place there. Very interestingly, there was also a significant drop in the amount of violence and assaults over the period of the trial, particularly at Aurukun. Two-thirds of the respondents felt that this reform had been very positive for the community; 52 per cent of respondents felt that people were trying to be better parents; 24 per cent felt that more people were trying to give up grog, smoking and gambling; and 33 per cent said they felt that there was less fighting between families.

I acknowledge the work of the member for Jagajaga in her role as minister for Indigenous affairs and the support that she gave to Noel Pearson to make these programs possible. They have been a great success. It is important that, when we see all of the developments that will come up over the next couple of years, we do not forget that it was Labor that was prepared to work with those communities and put that welfare reform in place. We are pleased that it is being extended, but I would like the credit to go where credit is due.

I can see that there has been major achievement in the educational development of children in Cape York schools. Again, this arises out of the vision of Noel Pearson and his team and their determination to trial a range of different pedagogical techniques to find one that really delivered for their kids. They came across explicit instruction and then moved into a more fully developed direct instruction model. That has turned around the academic performance of those kids. Many, many more children in those schools are now meeting the minimum benchmark. What is really pleasing to see is the number of kids who are moving well beyond those minimum benchmarks and performing at the higher level on NAPLAN.

I want this to be understood: this was an initiative. When one talks to Noel Pearson about this initiative, he talks about the support that he got from the member for Jagajaga, because there was resistance in the Queensland bureaucracy for them to go in and take over the management of the schools and put this new pedagogical practice in place. The then Indigenous affairs minister, Minister Macklin, was 100 per cent behind Noel Pearson and went into bat with the Queensland government to have control and responsibility for those three schools ceded to the Cape York group. Their performance has been nothing short of stellar. They went in there in a holistic way. They built the parents' confidence and engagement, they built the attendances at the school, and then they came in with an instructional method that ensured that these kids were able to learn to read and write. Success breeds success. When these kids started achieving, when they started being able to perform at school, that encouraged them to stay on. This, in turn, improved attendances. It is a virtuous circle.

There are people, including the Minister for Education, who are really trying to rewrite this whole movement towards explicit instruction as some sort of left-right debate. I want to make it very clear that this is not part of a left-right debate. Indeed, it has been the Labor government that has supported the communities that have wanted to go down this path and provided them with the wherewithal to provide that instruction and achieve those excellent results. So I hope that we do see explicit instruction moving beyond Cape York. It is in around six or so schools in Western Australia. A lot more interest in it is being gained. But, please, let us not trivialise this issue by making it some sort of ideological left-right debate. It cannot be that.

I am very pleased that the funding for that welfare reform which underpinned a whole raft of changes on Cape York is being continued. Again, I recognise the work of the member for Jagajaga in really being the force in government behind the support for that community.

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