Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Heritage, the Arts and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008. The government will bring forward through this bill the funding and recruitment of 50 of their promised 200 extra teachers to staff schools in the Northern Territory emergency response communities. Elementary education—in particular, in literacy, numeracy, English language and computer skills—is a critical requirement for any individual wanting to fully participate in Australian society and in our economy. For generations now many Indigenous Australians have not had that elementary education. Compared to other Australians, Indigenous Australians have too often had lower school attendance and retention rates, and poorer quality education when they do go. Few Indigenous students have been able to access higher education and training compared to non-Indigenous Australians.

It is estimated that as many as 7½ thousand Indigenous school aged children in the Northern Territory do not go to school or preschool. But, ironically, in most communities the teachers, classrooms, chairs and desks would not be there to accommodate the children if they showed up tomorrow and started to attend regularly. Obviously this is not acceptable, and the Northern Territory government must do better.

Obviously any increase in teacher numbers to work in Indigenous communities is welcomed by the opposition. When in government, we did a great deal to improve Indigenous education, access and support, and we saw some improvements in outcomes. But we did not expect that the staffing problems in the emergency response communities would be solved with just 200 extra teachers over the next four years.

A recent Australian Education Union report called Education is the key: an education future for Indigenous communities in the Northern Territory estimated that with full attendance in schools, which was of course the aim of the intervention measures introduced by the John Howard government, the following additional staff would be required: 1,360 teachers, at a cost of $204 million per annum; 300 assistant teachers; 85 teacher assistants for preschool programs; 100 home liaison officers; and 100 Aboriginal and Islander education workers. The total operational cost for this additional staffing was estimated to be some $264 million per annum.

The opposition is concerned that what is proposed in this initiative is only a drop in the ocean and does not take into consideration the additional resources for the incentives that will need to be offered to attract and retain qualified staff in the next four years. Even more significantly, this bill does not recognise the importance of building the Indigenous communities’ own professionally qualified teaching and related school workforce. The John Howard government saw this as a priority and designed and resourced programs to ensure more Indigenous teachers could step into the classroom and not only offer excellent professional service but also act as role models for up-and-coming future teachers amongst their young Indigenous pupils.

As I have said, we applaud the new government for joining us in acknowledging the importance of, and indeed the very urgent need for, improving educational opportunities and standards for Indigenous children in the Northern Territory—indeed, throughout Australia. But, as I say, we question both the adequacy of their response at this stage and their piecemeal approach. As the nation knows, the John Howard government responded to the shocking conditions affecting the lives of Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory by declaring and resourcing the emergency response. A key element of this response was our determination to ensure the Northern Territory began to meet its responsibilities in providing adequate school infrastructure and teaching staff to accommodate all children of school age in these prescribed communities.

But we were also particularly concerned that members of the regional Indigenous communities had the opportunity to train and become qualified professional teachers, or assistant teachers or school student mentors, themselves. We wanted to end the long-established practice whereby the Northern Territory government was staffing—or, rather, understaffing—their schools on the cheap, exploiting the work of teachers aides, for example, who were not paid or supported as a part of the Northern Territory’s normal teaching or school support service. Instead, these Indigenous teachers aides were only paid a CDEP allowance, sometimes with a top-up, even when the individuals had been continuously working in the schools for years.

As part of the emergency response, we asked the Northern Territory government to transfer these teachers aides—and they were mostly Indigenous women—onto real salaries with genuine professional development opportunities and career paths. We gave the Northern Territory government some $30 million to help meet half the cost of transitioning these workers to real jobs and real salaries. I would like to know what has happened to these funds and this initiative under the new Labor government. This was an excellent initiative. I want to know: is it continuing—given that Minister Macklin has apparently changed her mind about the need to replace CDEP, the Indigenous work for the dole scheme, which sadly saw so many Indigenous Australians on sit-down money, with no prospect of a job, no training and no sense of purpose for the future? We aimed to replace CDEP with real job opportunities, real training, career prospects and, in particular, we targeted teachers aides in schools in the Northern Territory and saw that they needed special recognition. I note that the member for Lingiari is now sitting across the table from me, and he in particular would understand the very real needs of these Indigenous teachers aides who were exploited year after year while they were simply paid a CDEP allowance. I ask him to make sure that the Northern Territory government is doing what it promised the John Howard government under the emergency response.

We also had a number of other incentives in place to encourage and support the training of Indigenous teachers throughout Australia. These programs included the National Indigenous Cadetship Project, which assisted Indigenous people to complete a degree to become qualified teachers. There was also the Indigenous Fellowship program, which provided financial and study support to assist Indigenous DEET employees to complete teaching degrees. And there was the Indigenous scholarship program which offered similar support for Indigenous teachers.

I hope these programs have not also been slashed by the razor gang, like so many programs aimed at rural and regional communities throughout Australia. I refer, of course, to things like apprenticeships in agriculture and horticulture, and the living away from home allowances, the cutting of which will disadvantage not only non-Indigenous rural and regional Australians but also, and particularly, those in Indigenous communities, who have great career prospects in the local pastoral industries and who need living away from home allowances because of the remoteness of many of their homes from training institutions. This government has slashed the funding for those programs, and I think it is sheer hypocrisy then to talk about any real concern for Indigenous Australians when such cuts have been made.

Our emergency response recognised the need for a comprehensive approach to the problems associated with school non-attendance and poor outcomes for Indigenous children. This included health checks for all children, to detect and treat, amongst other things, any hearing or sight problems which were holding back those young students. And we recognised that many Indigenous students, or those not attending school at all, were going hungry. So an important part of our comprehensive approach was the funding of the provision of hearty school breakfasts and lunches, to be prepared and supervised by community women, who were also being trained in nutrition and safe food handling. I would like to know what has happened to those programs. We have not heard much about them in the 90-odd days since Labor became the government.

So we in the opposition applaud the government’s recognition of this critical issue of ensuring that our young Indigenous Australians living in the Northern Territory emergency response communities have a better chance of a decent education. We ask, however, that the minister study all the elements of our response, including: the need for literacy and English language training for parents, and the need for them to become competent with computer use; the provision of adequate meals to students; followed-up health checks; decent accommodation for all teaching staff; and adequate classrooms. Most importantly, we ask that this government explore, and make sure we have, the creation of real opportunities for people in the Indigenous communities to become the qualified staff, as well as the support staff, in these and other schools in the future.

Finally, I strongly urge the Minister for Education and Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations to hold the Northern Territory government to account, and to monitor and measure their spending and their performance as they are given federal funds to do the job—a job that they have had responsibility for for a very long time and a job they should have been doing much better. Aboriginal Australians in the Northern Territory have always deserved a better chance in life, and I am pleased that this government is recognising our emergency response initiatives. But I ask them to adopt a comprehensive approach and to look a little harder at how limiting this bill appears to be.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Murray for her contribution and for her patience earlier. I have pleasure in calling on the Minister for Defence Science and Personnel.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I congratulate you, Deputy Speaker Sidebottom. I have not had a mate from the Apple Isle sitting up in that seat before. Well done!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you.

Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008, which amends the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 by appropriating $7.162 million of additional funding over the 2008 school year for the recruitment of 50 additional teachers as part of the Rudd Labor government’s commitment to provide $56.8 million of funding over the next four years for an additional 200 teachers in the Northern Territory. As the Minister for Education said in her second reading speech, there are an estimated 10,000 school aged children in communities affected by the Northern Territory emergency response. Of these, best estimates are that only some 8,000 are enrolled at school, leaving up to 2,000 school aged children not enrolled at all. A further 2½ thousand enrolled students do not attend school for sufficient time to benefit from their educational experience. That is 4½ thousand students in total.

It may come as a surprise to the opposition, but, if they care to check Hansard, they will see that I have been talking about this issue for some years and saying that there are thousands of young Territorians who have no access to any educational opportunities to speak of. I estimated that there were around 5,000 of them over the age of 13 who had no access to any educational opportunity, including vocational education, nor any opportunity for literacy development at even the most basic level. I am pleased with this announcement, but I am not sure that their understanding of the problem is as good as it should be. I fear that, when we do more work, we will uncover the grim reality that a lot more will need to be done.

Others have spoken about the urgency and need to set practical targets to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Nowhere is this more the case than in the Northern Territory. Last week, we had what I think was the most moving experience of my almost 20 years in and out of this place, and that was the apology to the stolen generations. The day before that, we had the welcome to country. These are truly historic opportunities that this parliament has grasped. I was pleased to see the bipartisan support which was given to the apology. We now need a true sense of bipartisanship about addressing all of the issues that confront Indigenous Australians. Again I ask those who might not otherwise have heard what I have said over previous years to examine the record and see how often I have raised the issue of poverty for Indigenous Australians in the Northern Territory. I say that as someone who has lived in the Northern Territory for over 30 years, who has lived and worked out of a small Indigenous community, who has worked as a teacher in the Northern Territory, who has worked for an Aboriginal organisation and who is well-known around the Territory and understands it. The appalling statistics that we all know about are a sad indication and an indictment of the parlous performance of previous governments—Labor and coalition—over the last generation in addressing Indigenous disadvantage.

The member for Bonner is sitting in this place. Her sister is well known to me. In fact, I taught with her sister in Darwin almost 30 years ago. Her sister and her husband now work in the Aboriginal community of Ramingining in the north-east of Arnhem Land. They will be able to tell my colleague about the nature of events that have occurred in and around these communities and the need for investment to address disadvantage. Blame is not the way to deal with these issues; we have to deal in partnership with people and understand that treating people as objects will not get us the result we are after. The people who we are concerned about must be part of the solution; they must be partners in developing and agreeing upon the solution. We will not get improvements unless there is ownership at a local level. This goes for education as it goes for housing, health or any of the other indices that are used to portray the parlous state of Indigenous welfare and poverty in remote parts of Australia.

Frankly, that approach is important wherever people might be, whether they live in the bush at Ramingining or in Melbourne, Sydney or anywhere else in Australia—even in your own electorate, Mr Deputy Speaker. Things will not work unless there is ownership. We have to appreciate, as I have said on many occasions, that the notion that a one-size-fits-all approach will actually accomplish an outcome across the breadth of this nation is a folly. We need to be working with people at the local level. We need to understand that. Even a place like the Northern Territory has a great deal of diversity within it, and understanding that diversity is as important as making the money available.

It is about not only understanding the diversity but also understanding that, when we are talking about diversity in this context, we are talking about cultural difference. It is about understanding that, in the context of these communities in the Northern Territory, we are talking about people who by and large—and I said this with the greatest of respect to those who have had educational opportunities in the past—will have left school by the time they are in grade 8. By and large, they will have English as a second, third or even fourth language. English is not their first language and nor is it a priority for many; they converse with one another in their own languages. When we want to provide people with new educational opportunities, we have to appreciate cultural difference. We have to understand how to cross that cultural divide. We have to understand the cultural priorities that people might have. We have to understand the difficulties that come with teaching people concepts of which they have no knowledge or experience.

Just because we have a national curriculum, for example, that says we must have certain outcomes by year 3, year 5 or year 10, does not mean it is easy to achieve—in fact, in these communities it is very difficult. We have to appreciate in the first instance that what we are talking about is communities that are at the least bilingual and in most cases multilingual. The transfer of knowledge, giving people the capacity to understand what we are in fact wanting to do, is sometimes quite difficult. It is easy for us to stand here in this place and make pronouncements about what we want to achieve, but unless we go down and talk to those communities at the local level and understand their priorities, and understand the conditions in which they live, they will not get a positive outcome. That is a message that I think many governments have failed to appreciate.

But in this particular instance what we are talking about is the funding of 200 new teachers. As I said to my friend the member for Bonner, I worked as a school teacher in the Northern Territory for some years. I was involved in the Northern Territory Teachers Federation for some years. Indeed, I was fortunate enough to be engaged by the Australian National University to work with a great Australian, Herbert Cole ‘Nugget’ Coombs, to do an analysis of the impact of government programs on traditional Aboriginal socialisation in the Northern Territory and in Central Australia in the late 1970s and early 1980s. So I have had a real opportunity to acquire some knowledge and get some depth of understanding of what might be required.

As I said earlier, schooling for the vast majority of Aboriginal people in the Northern Territory is a bilingual or multilingual environment. Literacy learning and formal schooling in many remote communities often, sadly, has a short history. In some cases this current generation may be only the first to have any experience of schooling. That sounds far-fetched but unfortunately it is true. So seeking parity, as I have explained, with mainstream English language national literacy and numeracy benchmarking is a real challenge. And the people who are going to confront that challenge are these 200 teachers and all the other teachers involved in providing educational services in these schools. It is a challenge. They will see that the environment in which they work will in most cases be extremely difficult. It will be unknown to many of them and they will be challenged by it. They will be charged with developing techniques for generating greater community participation and engagement in an affirmation of, an ownership of, the value of education. In these environments they will be trying to increase parental engagement and involvement with the school system and the education of children, because, as we know, Mr Deputy Speaker, the role of parents is vital—not only parents but, in the context of Indigenous communities, certainly in the Northern Territory, extended families, kin relations.

Everyone must accept the importance of this focus that we are placing upon these communities. But it goes hand in glove with other developments and investments that need to be made, because you will not get a successful educational outcome, regardless of how good, committed and professional the teaching staff might be—or even how committed the parents might be—if when the children go home they have 25 or 26 other people living in the same house. It is a critical issue. We need to engage and understand that, while we say we want an educational outcome, we have to go back and look at the other elements. We have to understand not only the need for the provision of the educational service itself—the provision of the classrooms, the provision of the housing—but also the connection between health, housing, education and indeed life. Unless we see those connections, and match those connections, and deal with those connections in an appropriate way, then as surely as I am standing here we will not get a successful outcome.

The really challenging part for many of the teachers who will go into these communities, and something that is unbelievably terrific in many respects, and really a great honour and a great privilege, is the opportunity to live amongst and with Aboriginal people and try to understand their language, storytelling and cultural programs—their world, their view of the world. It is difficult. But it is something that needs to be done. And as difficult as it might be for these teachers, whether they live in the Northern Territory, or indeed in the electorate of the member for Kalgoorlie, who is in the chamber, it is a great privilege. Invariably they will be taken into a community and they will be amongst people who are generous, who are abiding, who are caring and who by and large, despite all the bad press, are well motivated towards their families and particularly their children. They will appreciate that, in many of the places they will locate in, they will not have the rewards that exist in places like Canberra, Sydney or Melbourne, or indeed Orange, Bathurst, Townsville—or any other major urban centre or even small town across Australia. They will be without the amenities that we see, if we live in this town for example, as just a fact of life. They might, if they are lucky, have access to ABC Radio. They might have access to a couple of television stations. They surely as not will not have access to a newspaper. They will often find it difficult to get internet connections. This of course goes to broader issues of government policy. They might find that the local police station is 100 kilometres or even more away. Unfortunately, as the intervention in the Northern Territory has highlighted, and as I know my friend from Kalgoorlie will confirm, they will find that in some places there is violence, there is alcohol abuse—and these sorts of things have to be dealt with.

When we think about these sorts of things, it is very easy for us to sit here and say we are going to provide the resources to put in place 200 more teachers. But the reality is very different. Unfortunately there are too few of us who have any really decent understanding or knowledge of the conditions and environments within which we are going to put these people and ask them to work. I think the events of last week have exposed us to the possibility that now we have a process which hopefully will lead both sides of this parliament, each of us individually and indeed collectively, to getting a greater and deeper appreciation and understanding of the issues involved so that we do not run off and make glib political statements or try and score political points off one another, because that will not produce the outcome that we are after. What we need to do is work in concert with one another.

For anyone who lives in a remote community, there will also be the bureaucratic challenges. We know—for those who are isolated and who live away from the centre—that decisions are made in Darwin or indeed in Canberra without any decent and proper understanding of what might be happening on the ground at the time. History is replete with examples of well-intentioned policies that had no applicability on the ground. We need to inform the centre from outside. When we are talking about policy development or policy implementation we go back to what I said at the outset and learn what is happening locally, understand the issues at a local level and be flexible about the application and development of policy.

There is a difficult challenge for these teachers, whether they are in the Northern Territory or in remote communities in South Australia, Queensland or Western Australia. I note the previous speaker talked about Indigenous staff. One of the ways in which we can get a better understanding of how to work with these communities is, of course, to engage locally and try and support the development of teachers at a local level. Engage people in those communities so they can acquire those skills, be remunerated properly and provide the assistance that we know they can provide within the classroom context. As well as providing for these Indigenous education workers, we must ensure that the additional teachers that we are referring to have the support to teach English oracy to the increased numbers of children who have languages other than English, and who are second- and third- and fourth-language speakers, and to help teachers cope with the high proportion of students in these communities with special needs such as hearing problems and behavioural issues.

We have to see this, as I said earlier, as a part of the whole problem and not just segmented. We need to combine all the elements of it if we are to get a balanced outcome. Importantly, also, the recruitment of these 200 teachers is a relevant issue. Whilst I have great admiration of first-year-out teachers, they do not have the experience that is required in many of these communities. We need to provide the capacity and the resources for a balanced recruitment of mature teachers who can be expected to set stronger classroom management rules and styles and mentor less experienced ones. I have great pleasure in endorsing this legislation. There is great merit in us providing these 200 additional teachers for schools in the Northern Territory, but I fear it is just the start.

Barry Haase (Kalgoorlie, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Roads and Transport) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I realise that time is extremely limited. I rise to support the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2008 Measures No. 1) Bill 2008. But, in supporting the bill, I wish to make a number of comments in relation to the motivation behind this initiative. Of course, it is a glorious initiative that we are all interested in and concerned with—that is, the improvement of the educational outcomes for populations of Indigenous communities. We need to close the gap that exists today between the educational standards of Indigenous children when they leave school, often at too early an age, and mainstream achievements in education. We value education as a part of our culture. The problem that exists and the justification for this particular initiative is that there is a huge gap. We justify our interest on the basis of value for education. But what I cannot say is that this value for education is shared across all sectors of the community.

So long as the education of Indigenous people is not appreciated by Indigenous parents, that gap will continue to exist. So we need, in the long term, to address this discrepancy. We need to engender in Aboriginal parents in remote communities a value of education and the outcomes that can be achieved with that education. Too often, parents in remote communities today do not value education because they see no worth for it. They see that it is a diversion for their children whilst they are within the community. They do not see children leaving education institutions and gaining jobs. They see them in the main today going onto CDEP. They do not value CDEP either because it is simply a substitute for other forms of welfare. There is no motivation for these children to go and get a job because there is very little experience of persons with employment within the communities. Too many times I go to remote communities, ask children that are doing secondary courses what they aspire to do with their lives and they tell me they are going to be just like dad and get on the CDEP.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 2 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 97. The debate may be resumed at a later hour. The member for Kalgoorlie will have leave to continue speaking when the debate is resumed.