Angus Taylor (Hume, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Cities and Digital Transformation) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the various members for their questions. We are narrowing them down, which is a good thing. The number of questions does suggest to me that there must be some political statements in what is being said rather than a focus on the issues. But there are some very important issues in the questions that have been raised. Let me touch for a moment on the education question, the Indigenous Advancement Strategy question and the suicide prevention and health questions, which are all tied up in a series of questions asked by those opposite. All of these are extremely important.

I have a couple of comments to start with on the education side. We all know, as the member said, that

education is a passport to a better future. There is no better way of putting it. Of course we know, and I have seen personally, the extraordinary power of education for those who are disadvantaged in some form or another and the passport that it provides those people for a better life. We know the Remote School Attendance Strategy was introduced against a backdrop of declining attendance over many years. In the budget we have reaffirmed the government's commitment to better education outcomes for Indigenous Australians. It really does start with this question of attendance; that is absolutely central to our thinking about improvements in education. Since 2014, when the Minister for Indigenous Affairs introduced this measure initially, the government has invested $127 million to support the community-based Remote School Attendance Strategy through to 31 December 2018. That attendance strategy employs more than 450 local Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people to support the families and work with schools to lift attendance rates in 77 schools across 74 remote communities. I really commend this program, its objectives, and the results we are seeing, to this chamber. I think it is absolutely central to closing the gap and achieving the sorts of outcomes we all want to see in our Indigenous communities.

Let me make a couple of points about the Indigenous Advancement Strategy. The member for Griffith has made an assertion about this strategy which is absolutely incorrect. It is not correct to say that there has been a $535 million cut to the Indigenous affairs program, which is how you—

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