Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to speak on the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 because, while I will vote for it, I do not think it is going to be effective and achieve the outcomes desired from it. I want the parliament and the people of Australia to know what my concerns are in relation to this particular piece of legislation.

There is no doubt that everybody wants to see kids go to school, and do so regularly, and have a good education, because that is what will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. There is also no doubt that there is a fair bit of truancy out there and that in certain communities kids do not go to school regularly. It is happening more and more in mainstream communities. In my electorate is Palm Island, which I think, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, you have been to. It is a beautiful island with an Indigenous community, but both the government school and the Catholic school have difficulty in getting many of their students to attend school regularly. It is such a shame, and Indigenous leaders recognise this. Certainly, Reverend Shane Blackman at Shalom Christian College on the mainland in my electorate is ferocious in telling parents, ‘You must get your kids to go to school because it is how Indigenous Australia is going to get ahead.’

There is no doubt that Indigenous Australians are just as capable as any other Australians of achieving. We have proved this at James Cook University in my electorate in Townsville, where each year we enrol Indigenous students in the medical school program; those students graduate as doctors. But, across the economy, you will find Indigenous people who are doing just as well as any other Australians.

So I come back to Palm Island. I come back to the need to get the students to attend school. It is just such a shame that, for whatever reason, students will just decide, ‘Well, we won’t go to school today; we’ll just go horse riding.’ In other communities you find that there are cultural reasons why young men decide not to continue at school, because once they reach manhood in Indigenous culture it is considered kind of beneath their dignity to go to school. That attitude has to change.

The bill before the parliament today basically says there will be penalties for children on welfare payments who do not go to school. My concern is how you actually, in practice, make this work. The bill requires schools to report nonattendance to Centrelink. Centrelink then looks at that and says, ‘Well, we’ll dock welfare payments.’ But do we really think that schools have the time to report students who do not attend to Centrelink? Do we really think that is going to happen? You know how school officers are so busy trying to keep up with the administration that is needed in a school of this modern era. Do we really think that schools will say, ‘Well, okay, we’ll take on this extra load’? The answer is no. The problem for the Commonwealth is that schools are under state jurisdiction and we cannot order a public school to report to Centrelink. Indeed, some states have said, ‘We can’t report anyway, because it is a privacy issue.’ That is particularly so with Tasmania.

So the legislation is doomed to failure, but the philosophy is right—and that is why I will support it. But it is a shame that legislation goes through the parliament that in practice will not work. Nobody will be reported to Centrelink. There is a bit of cynicism here, I guess, where the government takes the credit for doing something that everybody wants to see happen but in fact the wool is being pulled over their eyes because it is not going to happen. I find that very unfortunate indeed.

We have to get kids to school. The Liberal Party for its part believes in mutual obligation. It believes that, if government support is provided to Australians, there should be an obligation to return something in response to that support. We think that it is reasonable to request that children attend school, but this is not going to happen. I think we all struggle to find ways that enable us to get our students to stay at school, that we can convince the mums and dads that they have to get their kids to attend and that we can convince the students that it is in the interests of their future lives to attend school. I will conclude there by indicating my support for the bill and my disappointment that this bill is not in fact going to do what the people of Australia expect it to do.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I enter into the body of my speech on the second reading of the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008, I will correct for the benefit of the member for Herbert some of the information that he has provided. Having worked in schools for a long time, 11 years as a teacher and five years as a union organiser, in both state and private schools, I am very well aware that attendance records at schools, the rolls, are actually public documents. Anyone who has organised a school reunion would know that. They are public documents that must be kept as a record, as can be seen in the Queensland archives—you can go and track down the attendance record of anyone who has received public money. It is already a process that is in train in terms of people recording the attendance of students at school, as it rightly should be. It would only be a small task for a school officer—and I have a lot more faith in the school officers and the education sector than the member for Herbert—to pass that information on administratively to Centrelink. It would be a click of a mouse, because the data is recorded every day anyway.

I think this initiative, the legislation before the House, is a great piece of legislation because it will go some way to achieving that great Labor goal that the member for Herbert did touch on—that all children have the right to high-quality education. It is a basic tenet of the Labor Party that we support good education. Every parent, every community and every MP in the House, I am sure, would support the proposition that every student has the right to a high-quality education. That is especially so for the Rudd government. Our Prime Minister has had success in life because he was given an opportunity through education. For so many of the people on this side of the House that has been the case. Bright minds—I am not talking about myself—have been given an opportunity to do well.

Parents, teachers and school communities all play a crucial role in providing a good-quality education, but ultimately it is the role of governments to raise the standard, increase investment, guard against inequality, boost attendance and ensure that all children can achieve to their full potential. That is why the government that I serve is so serious about delivering an education revolution to this country. The Rudd government’s education revolution includes a half-billion-dollar investment in early childhood pre-literacy and pre-numeracy, halving HECS for those studying maths and science at university and then halving HECS again if they choose to pursue a career teaching or working in maths and science. These are great initiatives that will produce real results—real, life-changing decisions—for people who are out there considering an education career.

The Rudd government is committed to a new national curriculum in the core subjects of maths, science, English and history. Many Australians do not see the state borders anymore. They move regularly following work, following sunshine and following lots of things, so it makes sense now, in 2008, to have a national curriculum rather than the old horse-and-buggy approach of the states looking after it. We are also committed to a new national action plan on literacy and numeracy and a $2.4 billion education tax refund, which will help out so many parents and, more importantly, sends the key message that education is to be valued.

We are also committed to a $1.2 billion digital education revolution to give every student in years 9 to 12 access to a computer. I have seen this in my electorate, where I was able to proudly hand over the certificate to the principal of one of my non-government schools and where they were able to put more computers into the school. Ironically, in the only school in my electorate that received computer funding in the first round, the principal was a paid-up member of the Liberal Party. That is just the irony of it, I suppose, but it goes to show that the Rudd government is, without fear or favour, committed to ensuring that every student in years 9 to 12 has access to a computer.

We are also investing $30 million to boost education for remote Indigenous children, including a trial linking family and welfare payments to school attendance. This is the plan the Australian people voted for. If we are to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children, school attendance rates in remote Indigenous communities must be improved. I come from a country town in Queensland with a significant Indigenous population. I know too well the difference between wandering away from school and staying at school and going on with a career. Too many of my friends dropped out early. This policy would have changed lives. Perhaps it would even have saved lives.

There are about 2,000 Indigenous children of compulsory school age in the Northern Territory who are not enrolled in school—2,000 people. That is the size of the town I grew up in. That is 2,000 people, 2,000 lives and 2,000 opportunities wasted. That means that one in five Aboriginal children in remote communities in the Northern Territory is not even enrolled in school. A further 2½ thousand are not attending regularly, and about 8,000 Indigenous children attend school only 60 per cent of the time on average. Without continuity, obviously the chances of getting a high-school certificate or a tertiary qualification are very, very limited. If we truly believe that all children have a right to a quality education, then a child growing up in the remote community of Katherine should have the same chance to get an education as a child in Brisbane. That is why I am proud to speak in support of the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (School-ing Requirements) Bill 2008.

Children not enrolled in and regularly attending school miss out on an education and are severely disadvantaged later in life when it comes to seeking employment and gaining financial independence. This bill introduces greater support for parents to help ensure that their children are enrolled and, more importantly, that they are regularly attending school. It also introduces conditions, tied to school attendance, on income support payments. These measures will be trialled in six Northern Territory communities, one site in Western Australia and another metropolitan site to be determined.

Parents who fail to enrol their children or take reasonable measures to get their children to go to school may have their income support payments suspended until their children are enrolled or they begin attending school. Parents will be required to provide Centrelink with information about their child’s school enrolment. Parents who fail to do so without a reasonable excuse—and that is most important—may have their income support payments suspended until they enrol their child. Centrelink will also work with those parents to help them meet this requirement.

This bill also authorises schools to report poor attendance to Centrelink. Once again, Centrelink will then work with the parents to help them improve their child’s school attendance. Education authorities, local schools and Centrelink will work together with parents to improve school attendance. They will work together to improve their children’s lives.

A decision to temporarily withhold a parent’s income support will be a last resort—only a last resort. The first thought that came to my mind was: when would the trigger event happen? It is reassuring to know that it will be the last resort, where it can be shown the parent has failed, despite help from the school and Centrelink, to exercise parental responsibility and regularly get their child along to school. Full back pay will be provided when parents have met their responsibilities within a 13-week period or longer. Basically, they have a quarter of the year, 13 weeks—a season, I suppose—to get it right. Much has been said about the measures in this bill which give Centrelink authority to suspend welfare payments, but this bill is not about punishing disadvantaged families. It is not an attack on the poor and the vulnerable. Instead, it is about putting in place a system to support parents and help them give their kids the education they deserve.

If I could just touch on my own experience, I came from a family with 10 children. My mother was not receiving Centrelink payments so there was no lever for the government to pull in terms of school attendance. My mother was a single mum and she worked as a registered nurse at the hospital. When she left in the morning, it was up to us to get ourselves to school, basically. There were six of us at high school and primary school at the one time. I know that one of my brothers—who I will not name—had a shocking attendance record; it was absolutely shocking. Unfortunately, we do not have a social lever to pull to get someone like my brother off to school, so this will only affect those people who are receiving Centrelink payments. Hopefully, there will be other mechanisms in place to try and ensure that people not receiving Centrelink payments do send all their children to school. I stress again that income support payments will be cancelled only in the most extreme cases, where parents refuse to cooperate with the school and Centrelink.

I am hopeful that the trial areas will experience a surge in school enrolments and attendance as a result of this bill before the House. This in turn will dramatically boost the lifelong potential of many children in these trial communities, because there is so much evidence indicating that more education means more chance of having a job that pays more and that is not part-time, casual or based on seasonal factors. I am also pleased that an evaluation process will be undertaken and that the results of this trial will be monitored before the program is expanded to other areas.

This approach, of linking welfare payments to social outcomes, is a proven and effective way to change community behaviours. And, as I said, when community behaviours are changed, lives are changed. A good comparison would be to look at immunisation. Obviously, immunisation is actually about life and death, not just the sort of job you might have, so one would think that even a parent with the poorest parenting skills would still take their child off to be immunised. But, since the childcare benefit and the immunisation payment were linked to children completing a vaccination program, we have seen immunisation rates rise from around 50 per cent in the 1990s to more than 90 per cent today—and that is with something as important as a life or death thing like vaccination. Obviously, immunisation funds are not inconsequential but they are not that significant. But, by making that simple connection and simply tweaking, we were able to change the vaccination rates very significantly. Obviously, money talks.

The legislation before the House supports a program that is not being done in isolation. Instead, it is part of a range of Rudd government measures to improve education and health outcomes for Indigenous children. We have already committed 200 extra teachers for the Northern Territory. These additional teachers will help meet the increased enrolments that this bill will deliver. As a former teacher, I am especially proud of this commitment. It is a real calling to be a teacher. Not many people are in it to retire rich! Teachers’ wages are adequate; they obviously could be much more. But it is good to see the cultural shift that is occurring under the Rudd government through this education revolution.

Unfortunately, I am a little bit confused about the opposition’s position on this bill. We heard from the member for Herbert. As he said, he doubts the efficacy of the legislation but was able to support it. If we go back a bit further, in 2006, the then Treasurer, the member for Higgins, announced a similar plan, and he told Tony Jones on Lateline:

… new proposals to make welfare conditional on school attendance … is a real breakthrough.

Of course, despite announcing this plan, the coalition never actually introduced it. So now, in 2008, the opposition leader, Dr Brendan Nelson, described the plan as:

… some sort of media-driven stunt.

I stress to the House that this is not a stunt. This is legislation that will change lives. And, going on my experience in a country town with a very significant Indigenous population, it will also save lives.

Unfortunately, the opposition Indigenous affairs spokesman refused to support the plan. Old habits die hard for the member for Warringah who, on Radio National last week, blamed the states for not enforcing current truancy laws. I have not caught up with the member for Warringah, but he informed the House that he had spent a few weeks in the bush in a remote Indigenous community. I wonder what the parents of the Indigenous children not attending school told him. I wonder if their plea was the same as that of every parent—that they want their children to have a chance in life. Unfortunately, that blame game that we hear referred to still exists on the other side of the House. But, thankfully, one of the people who we often hear from in question time, the member for Canning, was much more open in his support of the plan before the House. What did he say? He said:

This is taxpayers’ money … and we want it to be used properly for the benefit of children.

I should point out that, I think, the member for Canning was a teacher, so he does understand the importance of education and he is obviously, on occasion, able to leave the politics out.

There is no confusion on this side of the House about the merits of this bill. The bill before the House balances appropriate support with financial incentives to encourage parents in the trial areas to get their kids enrolled and along to school. Labor understands how important this is. As I said, the Prime Minister, who was given a chance in life through education, values it, as does the Deputy Prime Minister, and as do so many other people on this side of the House who got here through education.

The Labor Party is committed to building a nation. That has been our history. We have made visionary programs and we have made visionary decisions that have been the bedrock for much of the nation. Unfortunately, those opposite, the Liberals, are happy merely to bill the nation that Labor built. I commend the bill to the House.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In making his comments, the member for Moreton said that there was some doubt amongst Liberals about their support for the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008. It is my clear understanding that we not only support the legislation; we support its principle. But, on the other hand, had the member for Moreton read the explanatory memorandum, as I have, and had he searched for evidence that there is some obligation on the state entities, private entities or religious entities running schools to make the reports to Centrelink, which are fundamental to the issuance of notices on parents, he would have found that it is not there. I am not sure if constitutionally it could be there. All I can find in the explanatory memorandum is the following:

... a person responsible for the operation of the school gives the Secretary—

that is, Centrelink—

written notice that the child is failing to comply with the school attendance requirements to the satisfaction of the person responsible for the operation of the school and the person is failing to take reasonable steps to ensure that the child attends school to the responsible person’s satisfaction.

That is all very easy for some hardworking single mother to understand, I am sure. It goes on in that regard. But it is voluntary.

Let me draw the member for Moreton’s attention to the beginnings of this idea. Privately, without any legislative backing, without anything, a school principal in either Halls Creek or Fitzroy Crossing in the northern area of my state, in the electorate of Kalgoorlie, did a deal with the local Centrelink bloke that if the kids were not coming to school Centrelink would take some action. It worked, virtually overnight. Large numbers of kids who were not there before started attending school. The figures, in fact, were a matter of public record. But what was the result of that? There was a hell of a fuss from the state Labor education minister about the fact that this rotten principal had actually acted to get kids to school—to the extent, as I recollect, that the principal eventually resigned his position as a teacher. He is no longer available to teach kids, and he was one who had obviously volunteered to go into that area. That is what happened.

This is what we get and why we are cynical. We accepted that, when we were the Liberal government, state Labor governments were not going to do anything to help Aboriginals for which we might get the credit. That is how stupid the political system is. But the reality is that the Liberal government, in proposing to implement these arrangements, got no cooperation from the state governments at all. The member for Moreton mentions the blame game. Let me tell him that his Prime Minister has been absolutely successful in playing the blame game. He no longer blames the states and they no longer blame him. The sorts of wars that used to exist between Labor premiers and the Liberal government—and, I might add, in the days of past premiers in WA such as Sir Charles Court, between Liberal state governments and Liberal federal governments—have ceased to exist. But in the cancellation of those wars, the community no longer has any idea what you are up to.

I would have thought that this legislation would have had substance, that there would be something in it. I have read the second reading speech. I think there could have been some obligation for the minister to make a statement to this House, under the discipline of not misleading it, about the fact that the arrangements were already in place with COAG and that he had written commitments from state education ministers that they would conform with the requirements of this legislation. That would have given meaning to an otherwise excellent measure.

But the reality is that, wherever we turn, and particularly in education, it is all about ‘gonna’. The Deputy Prime Minister is up every day measuring her success, her excellence, by expenditure. She has spent the money or she has transferred it somewhere—and, I understand, primarily to state government agencies. She ought to read Paul Keating’s comments on that after we introduced the GST and made it a grant for unspecified use. He told us we were stupid. There are many examples of similar quotes about the fact that we are sending so many millions to state education agencies and expecting that the money will actually materialise at a school.

The member for Moreton talked about a school having some association with the Liberal Party and getting some computers. A lot of schools in my electorate got their computers before the election because the Howard government introduced the Investing in Our Schools Program, or IOSP, as we got to know it. That gave every school in Australia—the smallest numbering 10 pupils in some cases in my electorate—the opportunity to spend, with appropriate approval, $150,000 on upgrading the infrastructure or the equipment of their school. To my recollection, a lot purchased computers. They used the money for that purpose. It is magnificent to go into some of those schools.

I might add a comment about one school for disadvantaged kids—and I mean disadvantaged kids, one of whom had practically no motor skills. If you really want to get a lump in your throat, go and see those kids actually using a computer when they can virtually not move any part of their body. There are computers they can use, and they get the benefit. Those computers came out of IOSP, not from the claims of the Deputy Prime Minister. From what she said yesterday, one would think that there are kids today using sophisticated tools and equipment in schools because she has allocated the money. I am happy to go with her—as I said at the doorstop this morning—to some of those schools when the computers are actually in operation. I would like to run the book on that.

This is the same thing. The government would have credibility for a great initiative if they demonstrated to us that they had any arrangements in place to require that person, as the explanatory memorandum says, to send those notices whenever truancy came to their notice. Of course, it would not be a bad idea if other methods were used in terms of knowing where these people are. Yes, privacy is a right, but not when you are denying your kids an education or a future. That is an outrage, and there can be no privacy associated with that failing.

It is a fact of life that 50 per cent of the cost of running every government school in Australia is funded from the budget of this parliament. That is constantly overlooked. We have these silly campaigns by the school teachers union identifying specific grants. I hope one day the revenge that is taken upon them in that regard is that this parliament shifts to parental vouchers, where there can be no question mark whatsoever. We have all this fooling with numbers, where one takes the specific grants but ignores, for instance, the GST revenue that flows to a state government. They run those silly specific grant comparisons when no GST revenue goes to non-government schools.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For the member for Moreton’s information, because he might not understand: 100 per cent of GST revenue is distributed to state governments. We went to the Australian people with the fact that if they re-elected us we would introduce this tax—and it cost us a lot of seats. For years thereafter, the opposition said that they were going to have a rollback. They opposed it even after it was established and in existence. Our leader, John Howard, said, ‘You the people of Australia have to absorb this tax for the purpose of ensuring state governments can look after their schools, their hospitals and their law and order responsibilities.’ They got the money but they do not have any truancy officers. And here we are in the federal parliament legislating to get stuck into individuals for the purpose of replacing the inadequacy and, in fact, the obstructionism of state education agencies to this point in time.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That’s incorrect.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I remind the member for Moreton that it was a state minister that persecuted a school teacher who first did this, to the point where he resigned on mental anguish grounds—the man was so heartbroken.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Are you sure about that?

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will stand corrected if the member for Moreton wants to go and research those circumstances, but in my recollection—and my memory is pretty good on these things—I read in the media that the fellow eventually resigned. There is absolutely no doubt that he was personally attacked by, I think, Michelle Roberts, the then minister—but I will stand corrected on that. But I advise anyone in this House to be very careful about denying my memory without having the written documents.

What I am saying is that this is a good scheme but we have doubts about why it is introduced at a time when GDP growth is falling to 0.3 per cent et cetera, et cetera, and there is nothing in the legislation that tells us how it is going to work. I well remember the minister responsible for Aboriginal affairs speaking in this place in opposition, and even on the assumption of government, to cast grave doubt over the concept of hypothecating people’s Centrelink payments for food for their children. When eventually convinced—I think as much by public opinion as anything else—she decided to do something about it, and what have we got? We have got a trial. I think there are three localities—in Western Australia and possibly Australia—where we are trialling the patently obvious.

But let me tell the member for Moreton one place where there is not a trial. It is a town called Narrogin, which for most of my career I represented. At the moment that town and district is in the electorate of Pearce. I received a frantic call from the district superintendent—a policeman whom I admire greatly—telling me that there is a family of seven in the area and they have one of those kids in court, as they are obliged to do, for his umpteenth break and enter. And what was his purpose? To get food and somewhere to sleep. He is one of seven children. The welfare payment to his parents exceeds $700 a week, and on a visit to the house it was found to be devoid of food. There are seven kids—and an eighth is on the way—and there was no food in the house and they receive $700 a week.

I wrote to the minister about that situation and said, ‘For goodness sake; I have the pleadings of a district superintendent to extend your scheme. He does not want to be grabbing this kid and dragging him into court; it is heartbreaking. The kid is a trained home invader—out of hunger.’ But I got the usual form letter from the minister. I did five years as a minister and I read every letter someone else wrote for me—a standing joke in the department was, ‘Never send him fewer than 50 letters at a time or he will change the lot of them’—and the first reference I ever made was to the content of the letter we received. Ministers here might tell the member for Moreton that I put my constituents first—and I do. I have been enraged in the past to see people stand up on these opposition benches and use the hardship of an individual to attack the government. As their representative, I will plead with a Labor minister for help, as I think ministers would know—without any pack drill, media releases et cetera.

There is an agricultural school run by the Catholic church in the northern sectors of my electorate. It has been there for 100 years and it takes, amongst others, a heap of Aboriginal kids who come down from as far away as Broome. The Catholic agencies want to close it—partly, I think, because they are not getting enough revenue out of the farm anymore because there has been a drought. That will be changed a lot this year, I am pleased to say. I rang the office and asked if I could speak to the minister and give a heads-up in the hope that she, bringing credit to the government, would make some announcement because some financial help was needed.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was the federal minister.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes. I even got a call asking for my phone details. I thought, ‘That’s good of her, she’s going to ring.’ I did not go to the media, as others did in due course, but what did I get? No call. That is silly. The first issue there was to say: ‘You’d better have a look at this. It needs some special assistance. It’s got history, it’s got heritage and it does a good job. I think its financial difficulties are more to do with a couple of failed crops than the fact that only 100 or so kids turn up there.’

You can have all the legislation in the world, you can have all the talk at that desk about the money you are going to allocate, but if it does not turn up in results it is a tragedy, particularly when it comes to giving basic education to all children. I do not think Literacy and Numeracy Week is an occasion to blackguard someone over here. I am pretty good at that—I do not mind—but I do not think you need that as an excuse. Julia Gillard thinks she is Mick Young. I was here when Mick Young was here. Mick Young was genuinely funny. I have walked up and down this side of the place pleading with my own side not to laugh. They were being caused to laugh at one of us. She is not of that status. She should stick to going around seeing that the state governments are not ripping her money off under IOSP.

What happened? We dictated that it was the school principal and the school P&C—or whatever it might be called—who made the decisions. But the minute they went anywhere near repairs to the building or anything the Department of Housing and Works in Perth said, ‘We have to be involved.’ What did the school do? It had to go through the department for all the work involved. They have their chosen contractors. One job went from $2½ thousand to $7½ thousand when the local contractor could not do the work. They escalated the values and then took 17½ per cent for their help. Nobody who went down the road of having to use their services—and there were some options to get out of it—got $150,000. The best they could get was $150,000 less 17 per cent, which is about $120,000.

Why would a state government do that when this parliament decided—I am sure it had the support of the opposition at the time—to send them money? It all comes down to this same arrangement. The first and required step—call it the blame game, if you like—is for state education agencies to employ sufficient truancy inspectors for the purpose, but that then should be in agreement with Centrelink to use the effective proposed reduction in Centrelink payments. At the same time, and even more importantly, it is not a bad idea to see that some of those Centrelink payments are paid so a kid gets breakfast before they go to school and that the reason for their truancy is not that they are running around trying to steal food. These are the fundamental issues and this is where this legislation fails. It gives no guarantee that it will be implemented. That is the position. (Time expired)

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

I support, as do my coalition colleagues, any actions which are just, practical and effectively result in achieving greater school attendance for all Australian children throughout the country. What we are concerned about with this Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 is that the Rudd Labor government has a very poor record of following through good intentions with adequate resources and proper process. We tend to get the grand statement and the photo opportunity, but there is nothing beyond and nothing that will really make a difference. Often the cynicism that those who are to receive the service feel when expectations are built and then dashed leaves them even worse off than before.

Let me give the House a few examples—none of them is nearly as important as education for children. Fuelwatch was supposed to bring down the price of fuel. Petrol is one of the very serious inputs to business but is also necessary for community members to go about their daily family life. Fuelwatch was going to make a difference, we were told. It was going to bring down petrol prices. In fact, what we got was a website. The Fuelwatch process is a nonsense and has the opposite effect of dampening competition in selling fuel across the country.

Then we had the business of ‘grocery watch’, or GROCERYchoice as Labor initially called it. It is another serious issue. The cost of living for households has gone up so much since this government was elected that families want relief. There are already families in my electorate on food parcels due to the drought. Even with salaries, the cost of fresh and manufactured food has gone through the roof. People expected something to happen when this government said, ‘We will bring down grocery prices.’ What did we get? We got ‘grocery watch’, another website that is so stupid, so flawed, that it has become the target of every comedian in the country. It was so badly designed it could never bring down grocery prices, and it cost taxpayers $13 million.

As I said at the beginning, the sound education of our children is of critical importance. No nation can expect to have a just and civil society with social inclusion, full employment or even decent workforce participation rates if children do not go to school and stay as long as it takes to have a sound, basic education that will maximise their opportunities in life. But we cannot expect to deal with non school attendance with a single instrument. We know that school attendance is very much a part of the states’ work, and there are a lot of complexities around who keeps data—especially at the secondary level—about school attendance, in particular when a child is already over the legal age of compulsory education in a state. I want to applaud this government for at least—like the coalition—articulating the problem, but I am extremely concerned that, as I have mentioned already, this will be a one-day wonder with success measured in newspaper column centimetres for the day and maybe a few bits of TV. The Australian community deserves to have much more and much better. All Australians deserve more, but particularly our minority groups—like our Indigenous Australians and also our recently arrived refugees—and our country communities. They are suffering extremes of depopulation and internal migration, not only because of drought and climate change but also because of poor government policy—for example, taking their water and leaving them without the means of production.

Members will note that I am not calling these students who do not attend school ‘truants’. That term implies that students knowingly and wilfully choose not to be enrolled or not to go to school, preferring to spend their day in the sun. That seems to be the implication when you talk about these children as truants. It is estimated that up to 20,000 children of school age are not enrolled in schools and, of course, many, many more are not going to school. Why aren’t children being enrolled in school? We have to ask that question in order to understand what to do about it. The intention of this legislation is that parents will be made to enrol their children by understanding that, if they do not, they will have their income support payments cut off for a period of up to 13 weeks or perhaps permanently. This implies that there are parents—either two parents or even one parent in control of the child. The legislation says that if a child is not attending school then the parents will have up to 13 weeks—over three months—to have that child back in school and then their payments will be re-established. If they cannot pull that off, their payments will be permanently withdrawn.

I have to say that I am concerned that we do not know enough about why children are not enrolled in school, but we can speculate. That speculation, backed by some good research and communication with the states, should have better informed this policy. Is a child not enrolled because the parent does not speak English? Because they have recently arrived in this country? Because they are not literate? Perhaps the parent never went to school. Perhaps the child does not even have a birth certificate. Perhaps the child was not born in the hospital system. Perhaps there is not a school at the outstation or near where a child lives, so the parent did not understand the expectation—even though a school was not available. And this is the situation in a lot of Northern Australia. Even though there is not a school, that child should be enrolled somehow or have their income support withdrawn.

If a child is refusing to attend or does not attend school, is it because they are too hungry? Is it because they are embarrassed about the fact that they do not have a uniform, or that they have not been able to wash? Perhaps they have a chronic undiagnosed illness or disease. Perhaps their hearing is so poor that they cannot hear and so they fail in school. Or perhaps their eyesight is damaged or too poor and it has not been diagnosed or treated. Or perhaps they were born with foetal alcohol syndrome that has not been diagnosed and the child cannot cope at school. Perhaps they have been bullied, or perhaps, the night before, they watched their parent become a victim of domestic violence—or perhaps they have been a victim of violence themselves. Sadly, we know only too well the extent to which that happens in our most dysfunctional and impoverished Indigenous communities in the emergency response area. Perhaps the child does not have a parent nearby. Perhaps the grandmother is raising the child and she has too many to feed and keep safe to ensure that the children of school age not only go to school but stay there all day. Perhaps the child has not had a bed to lie down in and they do not have decent housing. As I have said, they may be so hungry that their object is to get some food, not to go into school and stay there all day.

Perhaps a child has no-one in their family who is employed—nor has there been anyone employed for generations. So when someone says, ‘If you don’t go to school you won’t get a job,’ that is not a meaningful statement for them. If they have no understanding, knowledge of or expectation that they will be employed in this country, the lure of staying at school to get a qualification and a job is not in their family’s life experience and it makes no sense to them.

These are just some of the reasons why we have school attendance problems and issues. These issues, it would seem to me, require a much more comprehensive state-Commonwealth partnership. This policy highlights the total failure of child protection systems in the states and territories. Every now and then the media reports some horrific story of a child reported to DoCS, for example, who has not been removed from a desperately dangerous situation and the child dies. We know that, sadly, there is abuse in families. We know that a lot of children are not safe. Often a symptom of failure of protection is that a child does not go to school. Perhaps the child is shifted around too often by a parent trying to get out of a very violent situation and it is impossible for that child to go to school. I want to read from today’s Australian a report which highlights this problem. I quote:

In its submission to the federal Government’s intervention review team, chaired by indigenous leader Peter Yu, the Secretariat of National Aboriginal and Islander Child Care, said the Territory’s child-protection system remained seriously flawed with “a chronic lack of capacity” to deal with the issue.

Failure to go to school is often an indication of a child protection need. The chairwoman of the SNAICC, Muriel Bamblett:

... yesterday told The Australian she believed there was a culture within under-resourced child care agencies in the Territory that “if a child is living on the land, they won't go in and remove that child”.

She is referring to a situation where a child’s safety is not being given absolute priority consideration.

In its submission, SNAICC, which represents Aboriginal child care agencies nationwide, said there had been no significant increase in notifications of abuse or removal of children despite an extensive focus on child abuse and neglect over the past year.

“This is cause for grave concern and suggests that systems firstly for ensuring children’s wellbeing and secondly for protecting them from harm are still seriously flawed and lacking capacity across the Northern Territory,” the agency says.

Child protection is very important work and this report stresses that the very first areas to experience the full brunt of this legislation, six of the eight sites, are going to be in the emergency response area—in the Northern Territory, where there is a total failure of the Northern Territory government to do the right thing, to resource better and to have better systems of child protection. So by itself, just going in there and having the schools report that children A, B and C have not gone to school again, and taking the parents’ welfare, does nothing to address the complex and longstanding problems of these children needing protection—and children who need protection often do not have good school attendance or may not even be enrolled in school.

I am concerned that this legislation is just another bit of window-dressing which does not go to the heart of or deal with the complex set of problems. It does not demonstrate that the states or territories are going to do anything different other than provide data from the school principal which says, ‘Yes, we had 13 not at school again today.’ A lot more work, a lot more understanding and a lot more community and parental support—or grandparental support—has to go into ensuring that all of our children reach their full potential, all of our children are safe and all of our children live a life of choice and deep meaning in our country. That cannot happen with a strategy which simply says: ‘Your child was not at school. Parent, get your act together. Why wasn’t your child at school? You don’t know? We will give you three months to get your child back in school.’ That strategy is just not good enough.

The Northern Territory is going to be the location for six of the initial sites where the so-called truancy will be dealt with. There are eight sites in all. One is possibly going to be in Cannington in Western Australia, and we do not know the site of the final trial. In the Northern Territory in particular, the coalition understood only too well the interconnectedness within the cycle of poverty, despair, and dysfunction that affected the lives of children and adults in remote communities. We understood that unemployment was at the core of the sense of alienation and boredom which can lead to pornography, drug and alcohol abuse and finally the terrible child abuse that was reported so profoundly and distressingly in the Little children are sacred report. We looked at what has caused that chronic unemployment over generations, when there is employment—in fact, jobs going begging—in the Northern Territory. Of course we immediately focused upon CDEP, the Community Development Employment Program. What we found was that the Northern Territory government had been cost shifting the payment of teachers’ assistants in schools for years by simply reimbursing these women—it was and remains mostly women—through CDEP, rather than having them employed by the Northern Territory education department and properly trained and supported so they became literate, numerate English-language speakers, who could then help to give a more meaningful school experience to their students.

If the school is a poorly resourced place, if it does not teach adequate English, if it does not teach literacy and numeracy, if it looks like any other run-down shack in that community, if it is hot, dusty and dry, if teachers are overworked and if they depend on the welfare-paid teachers’ aides to do most of the heavy lifting, why would a child be excited by the prospect of learning in that place? So we said to the Northern Territory government: ‘Get your act together. Here’s at least $30 million to go to those schools with those Indigenous teachers’ aides so you can put them on a proper salary. Give them a proper job. Give them the professional development that they need. Give them a sense of pride in a career—it could be permanent part-time; that is up to the individuals—and in that way we can help build the experience of school as a good place for boys and girls in the Northern Territory.’

I am saddened and sickened to say that the Northern Territory government has not used those millions of dollars to transfer the Indigenous teachers’ aides onto Northern Territory payrolls. I think that is a disgrace. So here we go: we are now going to ask those hard-working, overtaxed school principals to dob in the kids not going to school, track down the parents, if they can, take them off their income support for up to three months and tell them they have got three months to get the kids into school—and then presume the job is done. Well, it may not be. The coalition would never have put this on the plate as a stand-alone, simplistic, silver bullet solution to a complex, longstanding, difficult situation. We also would not further enforce the notion that this is a problem just for Indigenous families. We would have had a number of sites trialled across Australia, not just in Indigenous communities, because failure to attend school occurs across Australia, in particular in areas under great financial distress and with low socioeconomic status.

While of course I support anything that is going to help give children a decent education in this country, that starts from families being sufficiently resourced, sufficiently secure and functional, so they understand the importance of the child attending school and they can supply that child with the physical and emotional support they need to go to school. That includes a good night’s sleep, a decent meal, hearing them read—and if the parents are not literate, that is also a problem needing attention. I want parents to be very much a part of this movement to help kids stay in school. Under this legislation, parents are simply going to be the ones with their incomes removed.

I do not think this is good stand-alone policy. I think it should be part of a total package or strategy. Certainly, in Halls Creek in Western Australia, where a similar process was trialled, it worked. But, with the process that occurred in Halls Creek, there was a whole range of other measures in place and in parallel. I ask this Rudd Labor government not to go again for the quick headline or the quick TV show appearance. Let us be serious about this. This is a chronic and serious problem for a developed nation. It is a problem which, if not properly addressed, condemns a child to another generation of unemployment, alienation, poor health and lower life expectancy. So, while I support the principle of improving school attendance, I say, ‘You have got to do much better.’

Andrew Southcott (Boothby, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Employment Participation and Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The concept of mutual obligation is one that the Liberal and National parties are proud to take credit for. We pioneered mutual obligation in the area of employment services—the Job Network—over the opposition of the Labor Party in every case. The introduction of activity requirements and the dole diaries—all of these were measures which were opposed by the Labor Party.

Last year, we, the former Howard government, introduced legislation to quarantine the welfare payments of parents who did not ensure their children regularly attended school. So the concept of welfare quarantining is not one we are opposed to; it is one that we introduced—it is one that we support. There is a remarkable lack of consistency in the approach which is taken by the Labor Party on this issue.

When we were in government, the Labor Party was quick to criticise our Welfare to Work reforms, which were implemented by the former Howard government. It must be stressed that the measures we put in place were not designed to punish people. Rather, we believed very strongly that people should accept personal responsibility. We believe that, if you are supported by the welfare system, you can and should contribute back whatever your level of capacity.

When we look at the approach that the Labor Party have taken on this and look at the approach they take to the suspension of welfare payments, there is a double standard. As soon as the government were in, one of the very first actions they took was that the Minister for Employment Participation rushed to write to all employment service providers—all the providers of Job Network and the other employment services—and urged them to go easy on job seekers who did not meet their mutual obligation requirements. So they were urged not to breach people who did not turn up for job interviews, who did not turn up for meetings with their employment service providers or who did not turn up for their work for the dole activities. Before the new government had even completed their review of employment services, before they had even shaped the new employment services that they wanted to operate from 2009 onwards, the Minister for Employment Participation had already signalled that he did not want to see anyone breached, he did not want to see anyone reported and he did not want to see anyone penalised for not meeting their activity requirements. This letter was followed up by a letter from Malisa Golightly from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations. It reiterated taking a more lenient approach on those who failed to attend appointments with their employment service provider, failed to attend interviews with potential employers or failed to attend Work for the Dole activities.

What this lack of consistency demonstrates is a much wider truth. It is becoming increasingly apparent that Kevin Rudd is very fond of the small picture. Paul Keating was someone who liked to paint on a big canvas. He was the Tom Roberts of the Australian Labor Party. He liked to paint on a big canvas. He had the big vision. Kevin Rudd reminds me much more of the guy who gets in the Guinness Book of Records writing the Lord’s Prayer 25 times on the back of a postage stamp. This is one of the problems that you have when you just pick up some thought bubbles and try to merge them together. We have the extraordinary thing after nine months where what we see with the Rudd government is that the sum of the parts is less than the whole. We have the left hand of the government not knowing what the right hand is doing. After nine months it is very clear that the government has run out of ideas and has run out of steam.

In the area of employment, the suspension of welfare payments for those who fail to meet any of their work obligations has in essence been abolished. But now Labor are saying that they want to adopt this system for parents if their children wag school. The logic of this escapes me. On one hand an adult job seeker who fails to attend an appointment, an interview or a mutual obligation activity on more than three occasions without a reasonable excuse will no longer be penalised; yet, if a child skips school, the parents may incur a non-payment period. We believe that parents are role models for their children. But we also believe that Labor should have a consistent approach to the quarantining or suspending of welfare payments. For whatever reason, the Labor Party are sending different messages to different constituencies. It is a very mixed message.

In concluding this speech, I want to make a couple of points about something that very few members of the government have mentioned: we do have, in every state and territory, truancy laws. These laws are not effective but, more importantly, they have not been enforced by the state and territory departments of education. We have information from the Bureau of Statistics that suggests that nationally there are 20,000 children of school age who are not in school. While we support the principle of this legislation, we have to question how effective, how practical, it will be. We are looking at just one set of payments going to the parent rather than looking at things like the truancy laws and the enforcement of them that is done at a state and territory level.

I would say not to expect too much from this legislation. The Minister for Education in her second reading speech, said:

It is anticipated that a very small number of parents will have their income support payments suspended and even less, if any, will have their payments cancelled.

So we are asked to believe that we will see big changes of behaviour without much of a stick being offered in terms of the welfare payments. The expectation is that we may actually see no-one having their welfare payments cancelled from this. If the legislation does operate in this way, it will be very similar to the state and territory truancy laws that are there. The laws are there and you can see them. They are good laws; they just do not work. They are not effective and they are not enforced.

Finally I would just like to say how clear it is that this is one of the problems of running a government by thought bubbles and just waking up one morning and deciding, with the hollow men, what you will come up with for the next media cycle. It does not offer much of a theme for the Rudd government. There is a remarkable lack of consistency in the way they deal with welfare payments and the quarantining and suspension of them.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to talk about the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 and its effect on the people of my electorate of Swan. I rise not to oppose the bill but to speak about some of the areas that I have grave doubts about with this legislation. Today the member for Moreton spoke about his union time involved with schools and recognised the member for Canning for his time as a teacher. He seemed to intimate that their involvement with schools gave him and the member for Canning some exclusive rights to talk on this bill. I would let the member for Moreton know that, as a humble parent, I think I also have a right to speak on this bill. The member for Moreton spoke about his brother’s truancy record. I advise the House that I too have a truancy record. It is not something I am proud of but it gives me a life experience and an ability to comment on this bill.

Yesterday in the House the member for Parramatta made a speech about this bill, and I happen to agree with her—I do not favour punitive approaches except as a last resort. But the real issue, as also referred to by the member for Parramatta, is that this is a state issue and the states have sat on their hands and done nothing about this problem for years. In her speech the member for Parramatta said there is already a last resort at state level which is called prosecution. The member went on to state that historically this has not been used. Wouldn’t it be simple enough for the COAG to get their collective ‘no blame game’ hats on and solve the truancy problem at a state level, as it should be? My colleague the member for Cook remarked in his speech yesterday that this bill is a further measure in the Rudd government’s bid to cover the incompetence of the state governments.

As honourable members will know, the immediate effect of the bill is the implementation of the school attendance and enrolment pilot. The pilot, commencing from January 2009, will operate in six Northern Territory communities and two metropolitan locations, one of which will be Cannington in Western Australia, part of my electorate of Swan. Under the pilot, all parents who are also income support recipients will be required to notify Centrelink of their child’s enrolment at school. State education authorities will be able to notify Centrelink of a child’s nonattendance at school. Centrelink will then be able to advise the parent that taking steps to ensure school attendance is a condition of receiving income support.

Having not been consulted by the government on this important issue concerning my electorate, my electorate office contacted the Cannington branch of Centrelink for more details on the proposed measure. These hardworking Centrelink people, who as a result of Rudd’s razor gangs faced significant job cuts this year, helpfully informed my staff that the Cannington scheme will involve Centrelink customers of the Cannington, Victoria Park, Gosnells and Midland branches.

Among the schools that could be expected to administer this scheme is Bentley Primary School. Bentley Primary School opened on its current site in 1953. It was once a school of 900 students, with demountable classrooms dominating the landscape. In 1973 the current open area classrooms were built and the administration block established. It was the first school to participate in the school renewal program, and it was decided in 1991 to amalgamate the junior primary and senior primary schools. As a result, the resource centre was built to provide a state-of-the-art computerised library with accompanying art and music rooms. This resource centre, the Shelagh Shannon Resource Centre, acknowledges the outstanding services of Mrs Shannon, who was registrar from 1969 to her retirement in 1991. The original Bentley Junior School buildings were leased to the Islamic community in January 1994.

I provide the House with this information not to digress but to demonstrate the importance and the fragility of the services local schools provide. I had the pleasure recently of being invited to Carlisle Primary School to take part in their ‘Kick Around Australia’ celebrations. A diverse group of children took part in an extravaganza of kicking, handballing and banner-making fun. In my role as the Director of Junior Development for Perth Demons Football Club in the Western Australian Football League, I appreciate the efforts of the Carlisle Primary School and commend Sports Director Clint McNerny for his efforts in organising a great day.

When I read through Ms Gillard’s legislation, I asked myself one simple question: how will this affect the invaluable services that schools provide to the people in my electorate? In the case of Carlisle Primary School, how would the government’s legislation specifically affect their capacity to organise such events as I just spoke about? This is a question I shall come back to.

Before examining the bill before the House in detail it is important to consider the Western Australian state government’s response to truancy. The Carpenter government’s response to this issue extends to funds being provided to each district education office to develop a retention and participation plan. The plans must include processes for identifying and profiling the district’s alienated student population, prevention strategies for each phase of schooling, intervention strategies for those students identified as alienated, strategies to improve literacy and numeracy outcomes for these students, and interagency collaboration.

SMS technology has been introduced to enable schools to alert parents about their children’s absence from school. However, there are reports that the technology is not working and that only a few schools are using it. I refer honourable members to an article by Y Phillips and J Strut ‘Schools wag SMS’ in the West Australian of 14 June 2008. There have not been any prosecutions for nonenrolment or nonattendance since the School Education Act 1999 came into effect in 2000.

This hands-off approach by the state Labor government is inexcusable. As always, when a state government fails—which is a frequent occurrence in Western Australia—it is up to the federal government to make up for the shortfall. In this context, it is appropriate to make my first point on the bill. I restate the fact that the states have always had responsibility for school attendance. The principle of compulsory education and the requirement that schoolchildren be enrolled in and attend school, registered for home schooling or eligible for exception is ensconced in state and territory education legislation.

What have the states been doing? I have recently made speeches in this House about the homelessness crisis in my electorate and about the growing violence around public transport nodes. These are both state issues looked after by HomesWest and the police department. Will the Rudd government step in and take over these state issues as well? When will the federal government in the new environment of supposed COAG cooperation ensure that the states are accountable for education and its integrity? How long must the people of Western Australia and Swan continue to suffer while we wait for some responsibility to be taken?

I draw the attention of the House to the fact that this policy seems to ignore the recommendations of widely accepted research. According to US analysis of the research into effective truancy prevention and intervention, those approaches that have ‘solid research evidence for their effectiveness’ are intensive ongoing interventions involving well-defined attendance policies, parental engagement, family counselling, individualised plans, a team approach, trained school staff and ongoing evaluation. There is no mention here of extreme policies that take money away from vulnerable families. Indeed, the same analysis actually singles out financial sanctions against families and tying benefits to children’s school attendance programs as ‘not having an impact on truancy’. Evaluations of US school attendance programs found that case management, not sanctions, was the most important attribute of successful programs. Given the convincing nature of this research, I find it remarkable that this Rudd Labor government has chosen a big-stick option. Additionally, I am not convinced that in putting this legislation before the House the government has thought through the implications of the Privacy Act. To place such a burden on schools such as Carlisle Primary School would inevitably lead to resources being diverted away from events like Kick Around Australia Day and towards Rudd red tape.

I note the member for Warringah’s important contribution to this debate yesterday. The vital question he posed on privacy, which was summarily dismissed with carefree abandon by the member for Bennelong, has yet to be properly addressed. I repeat his question: will Centrelink have to provide all schools with details of those living on welfare? I also ask: will the principal of each school want to provide information on his students and their parents to Centrelink not only as a privacy issue but also as a social issue? Families have to be able to trust their teachers and principals and this legislation will drive a wedge into that trust. The feedback I get from teachers and principals in my electorate is that they do not want to be responsible for running a government stunt.

The government knows the legislation proposed is unworkable. The Tasmanian government has already indicated that. This boils down to another example of government grandstanding to catch media headlines. Given the points I have made, I object to the district of Cannington in my electorate being used as a trial site. Why does the minister not run this pilot program in her own electorate? That way she could keep a close eye on it.

Given all these problems and unanswered questions, it was not surprising to read a report in the Age on 26 August that federal Labor backbenchers were angry about the welfare policy announcement. Apparently most of the 18 members who spoke either opposed or expressed concern about the bill. The Deputy Prime Minister noted recently in her second reading speech on the bill that up to 20,000 Australian children of compulsory school age may not be enrolled in school. Something should be done to address this issue, but the flawed nature of the bill as it currently stands means that it needs the closer scrutiny of a Senate committee.

I agree that all children have a right to an education and it is the prime responsibility of their parents to avail themselves of the opportunities provided by the states and their education systems, no matter how run down they are. This is an on-ground issue which cannot be controlled from Canberra but which needs the lazy Labor states to ensure there is a cooperative attitude amongst parents of children and the education system in each state. In my role as the Director of Junior Development at the Perth Football Club I see what it takes for children in my district to improve their levels of competency in sport. There is no tricky scientific solution. The children who develop the quickest are the ones who have parents who are involved in their lives and who take seriously the responsibility of bringing up their children. It certainly is not punitive, last-resort stunts.

I will support this bill because its intent is honourable and correct, but I believe the process is wrong. When the lazy state governments pick the ball up and encourage people to take their children to school under any circumstances with programs that make it easy for the parents who struggle with the concept of educating their children, then we will see some real results. In my electorate a group of self-motivated volunteers have started a breakfast program at a primary school and, as a result, attendance at the school has increased. I applaud this simple and pragmatic program. Where was the state government when the program started? It was nowhere to be seen. It was done by the community and the champions of our society—volunteers. It was achieved by the efforts of people who really want to see the children of our communities at school where they should be with a non-punitive program. In closing, I urge the government to look closely at the effects and results of this pilot scheme and ensure it has the will and flexibility to implement necessary changes that will surely arise.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to say that the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 before the parliament seems like a good idea because it is a good idea that has been discussed in this parliament before. For that reason, I am not opposing the bill. I am querying, though, the bona fides of the government in bringing this bill to the parliament. It does represent a leopard changing its spots and I think the Australian public have a right to be, at best, curious but, at worst, deeply suspicious about this legislation. This initiative—if I can call it an initiative—seems to have had many announcements but not a whole lot of action or focus on implementation of the ideas it seeks to embrace, so I just wonder whether it is more of the politics of the stunt and the set piece event rather than the policies of sound government. It is very much in the government’s court to prove that it is fair dinkum about this and to back up the legislation that we are debating today with a concrete plan of action and some bona fides on the measures that it plans to put in place and to provide some justification to this parliament and to the Australian public about why this enormous change of heart when measures of this kind have been stridently opposed by the Australian Labor Party time and time again.

That is the context in which I make my remarks. The bill itself aims to introduce conditions on the receipt of income support payments whereby parents are obliged to ensure their children of compulsory school age are enrolled in school and that those parents are taking responsible action to ensure regular school attendance. The bill provides the mechanism to suspend or cancel welfare payments of parents who are considered negligent in this role, and previous speakers have discussed some of the practical implementation issues of how those judgements will be made, who in fact will make those judgements and, when a conclusion has been arrived at that someone has been negligent in this role, what happens when they take adequate steps to no longer be negligent in those responsibilities. I certainly recognise an added burden that will be placed on school councils, on parents and particularly on principals that might find themselves involved in this regime that seems to be very broadly outlined with a crayon in this legislation.

The Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 goes further than a bill that was introduced and passed by the parliament in the term of the Howard government. The previous government’s legislation permitted welfare payments to be quarantined in the event of bad behaviour by welfare recipients, such as not sending their kids to school or so neglecting their children that they were brought to the attention of the child protection authority.

It is not easy to determine how many children of compulsory school age are not actually attending school. Some place a conservative estimate at around 20,000 Australian children of compulsory school age who are not enrolled to attend school, but the data that is available—collected and published in New South Wales and Victoria—is that, on any given day, 10 per cent of the student population may not be there. If those figures are accurate and give a reasonable picture of the overall situation, we could be looking at 200,000 school age children not attending school on any one day. This is a staggering figure and it does not really capture the issue of irregular attendance—that is a more complex thing to draw out—but, in referring to those statistics collected and published by New South Wales and Victoria, it does raise the point that other speakers have raised: isn’t this what state governments are supposed to be doing? Aren’t enforcing truancy laws and the responsibility of jurisdictions to see that children of compulsory school age are attending school things that the states and territories do? Most people would nod their head and say: ‘Yes, it is,’ yet from what you hear in many of the contributions in this place, particularly from the government members advocating this measure, you would not think there was such a thing as a state and territory government or that there are responsibilities that those jurisdictions are charged with discharging.

This is an interesting context: what are the responsibilities on those state and territory jurisdictions to carry out their roles and responsibilities? If the Rudd government were consistent—heaven forbid—would you see a reduction in payments to the states and territories if they do not carry out their roles? That would be analogous to what is being done here in relation to parents, but of course you do not hear that, because that is not what this bill is about. This is not about ensuring that those with responsibilities carry out their role; this is about something else. You have heard people talk about the need for the Rudd government to look like it is serious about these things. We have the announcement but not the action plan, not the implementation agenda and not the evaluation framework to see whether this is actually working or not.

We look at some of the work that has been done in this area. In his paper to the Learning Choice Expo, Graeme Withers, a senior research fellow at the Australian Council for Education Research, suggested that there are many key reasons for unauthorised nonattendance at school, and these reasons ring true with, I think, the experience of anyone who has had an involvement with school age children. Issues include family relationships; family values and the emphasis placed on school attendance and the value of education as a platform for future opportunities; ethnic values; excessive home responsibilities; peer pressure amongst friends and, dare I say, amongst enemies where children are frightened or bullied into seeing nonattendance at school as an option in dealing with challenges that they are facing in the school environment itself; strong attachment to friends or siblings that might have lost their way; poor reading skills and therefore an inability to engage in the curriculum and to benefit from the learning that is available; anxiety about course deadlines—a no-show because there is work due; fear of bullying, which I have touched on; maybe dislike of particular lessons or units that they are studying or even of some of the teachers; and maybe a feeling of being disengaged because of perceived irrelevance of the curriculum.

I am quite familiar with that challenge, having been a former secondary school council president. Our mission was to offer an engaging learning environment for our secondary school age kids in the school community for which I was responsible for a period of time. We would offer a rich range of course opportunities that the young people would see as valuable, as engaging, as worth while and as connected to future opportunities, and we would make that effort to piece that story together—that participation and commitment to education at secondary school meant a whole lot of opportunities in future life. We made that our goal and saw very encouraging improvements in attendance and also in passion and enthusiasm. Engaging learning is an enabler that says to people, ‘I want to get involved; I can see the benefits of applying myself.’ We also recognised that we needed to tell that story to the parents, where households might not have had a parent who finished even their secondary education and the young person might have been getting a message that the value of their education was not as highly prized as we thought it should be. That was part of our work.

Withers believed there was no such thing as the typical early school leaver or truant and that there were a whole range of reasons for that kind of behaviour. States have always had that responsibility for school attendance, with legislative requirements in place that school-age children must be enrolled in and attend school. That should be implemented and governed by state governments. Where is the collaboration that is needed to make this work? Where is the effort that was made by the Howard government in putting together a collaborative and cooperative approach to tackling truancy, notwithstanding the at times less than full commitment and assistance of state and territory governments, mainly of the Labor persuasion? The policies and programs that need to be talked about to support this crayon drawing of a headline of a piece of legislation are what is going on in those schools and what is happening with school-age people during working hours.

It is interesting that we are focusing on those receiving welfare payments. My experience is that some of those families whose primary source of income is welfare payments are the most committed, the most available and the most engaged in the school community. They are the parents involved in looking after the canteen and helping with reading recovery programs. They are always there and can be relied upon for a school excursion or a sports day. Because this measure targets those on income support, the inference is—and I imagine that this is the government’s argument—that there is somehow a correlation between households relying on income support and school nonattendance. I do not think that is convincing. I do not think it reflects reality, and it certainly overlooks some of the experience that I have been exposed to in an outer metropolitan community where parents may have considerably long commutes to work—the latchkey kid phenomenon—and might not actually know about the school attendance of their children. That puts a different light on things and leads you to ask: what else is going on to address this range of problems—none of which are common or consistent and for none of which a single reason can be pointed to—that Graeme Withers talked about? Where are those broad initiatives to make sure school is engaging and that support is there for young people to attend? Where is the counselling and mediation, if that is required? Where is there some recognition of a need for exemptions around distance eduction and other options?

So this is an interesting bill. I suppose it is a headline bill because that seems to be what it aims to achieve—getting headlines. Why else would you announce it three times? You would get on with it, you would put together a comprehensive package and you would talk about what you are doing to implement and support the idea behind it. The idea is not one that this parliament is unfamiliar with. The coalition’s truancy initiatives, borne out of the July 2006 COAG agenda, agreed that jurisdictions would work together to address school attendance in Indigenous communities.

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Bowen interjecting

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member opposite says that it was all talk. Well, it was full of Labor state and territory Premiers. I wonder whether they are now feeling more inclined to do things of little substance and dubious consequence but high potential for harm when there was a more comprehensive program in place and we saw state and territory Labor ministers there for largely ornamental value. That seems to be something that is being developed very quickly by this government.

In April 2007 the meeting of the Ministerial Council on Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs also agreed on the attendance—

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Macklin interjecting

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is interesting, Mr Deputy Speaker, that I have two hecklers across the table and you are doing a stealth-like job influencing the behaviour of your colleagues—

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member should be allowed to continue his speech without interruption

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and I thank you for your help! Had they been listening or been in the chamber hearing the thoughtful contributions of many of my colleagues, they would know clearly what our position is. That April 2007 meeting of the ministerial council agreed to get attendance data reported to the National Student Attendance Unit. Ministers also agreed to establish a process to enable the sharing of enrolment information among states and territories, particularly South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, to address absenteeism in Aboriginal homelands resulting from the movement of families between communities in the area. Those were the plans put in place by the Howard government, which was committed to achieving those goals. That is why the opposition is not opposing this bill, but, as I said, one is entitled to be extremely dubious about the motive behind it, given its announcement has taken up more energy than putting in place an implementation program.

In closing, it is interesting—

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Macklin interjecting

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am grateful that the Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs is here heckling me during this debate. She might actually want to do something about an issue relating to children at risk and children at risk funding. I have been contacted by the directors of the Kids Paradise Child Care Centre and by families in the community that I represent who are very concerned about a family with three children that is under great stress. Two of the children attending that childcare centre found themselves needing to be removed from their mother and placed in foster care. Had these children been assigned to a selfless family to receive that foster care, they would have continued to receive children at risk funding and the financial support of the Commonwealth. Instead, those children are being cared for by their grandparents. Those grandparents, who are not at all wealthy, who are in need of the support that would have otherwise been available had they been foster carers, are denied that support.

These children have been provided with a loving and caring household in a reasonably familiar family environment. Under the current regime that the minister at the table is overseeing, that family, those grandparents, are denied the very support that would help them in their role of caring for those children at risk. I am hopeful that she will turn her mind and focus in on that issue rather than playing the blame game. I have written to her about it—

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And in 12 years you did what?

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Broadband, Communication and the Digital Economy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

and I would be grateful if she would—obviously not now but in a more thoughtful, reflective moment—put her mind and energy to the substance of that concern, and then she would be in a position to do something to support children at risk. That would be a pretty worthwhile use of your time, I believe, Minister.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst not rising to oppose the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 I do seek to raise a range of significant concerns I have with the bill. Primarily, the bill seems to lack any degree of substance or indeed concern. One could even go as far as to say that the bill is somewhat of a charade, that it was announced in the media to take the focus off a declining economy, perhaps. Not even Labor revisionists—and indeed the Labor storytellers—could spin some of this. Growth figures for the previous quarter announced yesterday of 0.3 per cent compared to 0.7 per cent the quarter before is something that a bill like this cannot cover up. New South Wales growth was in negative territory at minus 0.1 per cent.

The Labor caucus did not even know this bill was coming up. The majority of Labor members of parliament found out about this bill—and I assume this includes you, Mr Deputy Speaker Bevis—through the media when the spinmeisters put it through. When caucus met, 38 speakers lined up to speak on the bill—35 against and three for. The Labor members did not even know the bill was coming. They heard about it in the media and the majority disagree with it. This is the genesis of this bill that this government seek to bring forward—a bill that is disingenuous, a bill that is designed to hide an economy that is going downhill because of a lack of confidence of Australian people in the Treasurer and, indeed, the Rudd Labor government.

Furthermore, the bill is steeped in duplicity. It seeks to force parents to make children go to school and then to punitively punish them if the kids do not go. Yet the Minister for Employment Participation has previously written to the Job Network providers and to Centrelink saying: ‘Go soft and have compassion on those looking for work. Go soft and have compassion on those who are seeking work for the dole and those responsible for mutual obligation.’

The government released the new employment services discussion paper on 16 May 2008 which said that negligent job seekers on the dole would not face automatic suspension after three strikes; rather they would be referred to comprehensive assessment. Furthermore, on 16 May the Age reported that the minister said, ‘We are not going to allow children to be affected adversely because of a breach by a parent.’ In the workplace participation area, we have a minister saying: ‘Don’t go hard on the parents if they do not want to go to work. It’s all right; they do not have to go to work. Show compassion. We are not going to allow children to be adversely affected because of a breach by a parent.’ But on the other hand, in a hypocritical and duplicitous manner, the government say about the same parent: ‘It’s all right if you don’t go to work. We don’t want to adversely affect your kids. But, if the kids don’t want to go to school, we’re going to punish the entire family by taking away welfare payments.’ The duplicity is outstanding even for this ‘hollow man’ government.

In the Social Security and Other Legislation Amendment (Welfare Payment Reform) Act 2007, the Howard government said it permitted welfare payments to be quarantined in the event of bad behaviour by welfare recipients—that is, not sending their children to school or neglecting them. This struck the right balance. There was no need for any further act of parliament. This again reinforces that the only reason a government would bring this to the parliament without telling any of their Labor members, and letting them find out about it in the news, is that it is a charade. It is an act to cover an economy that is slowly going downhill because of an incompetent frontbench. This bill goes to quarantine, suspend and potentially cancel welfare payments to those parents who apparently do not properly do their job. It is not a problem if the parent does not want to get a job—no drama at all—but if they do not do their job at home the family will be punished. I think the average Australian can work out their hypocrisy in that.

The cancelling of welfare payments includes, of all things, social security pensions, social security benefits, service pensions and income support payments but does not adversely affect family tax payments. So this government is happy to say to veterans, ‘You can do everything you can to help your kids go to school, but if they don’t go we’re going to hit your service pension.’ The hide of this government to look men and women in the face who have faced bullets and war and danger and suffering, and say, ‘We’re going to take the pension away because your child doesn’t want to go to school’—without offering a range of incentives, support and help, they are going to say that to veterans. But I guess this is in line with what this Labor government put through in the budget—it took away $110 million of veterans entitlement. I guess they are consistent in their seeming dislike for veterans.

I agree with the government that bad behaviour should have consequences—

Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Bowen interjecting

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

as the Assistant Treasurer nods his head. Bad behaviour should have consequences. However, the Labor ‘nanny state’ should not be telling families how to raise children. It should be following the previous Howard line to permit welfare payments to be quarantined in the event of poor behaviour by welfare recipients. This bill is rushed, and anything rushed that has not been thought through will have unintended consequences. The unintended consequence of this bill is that it will be completely, utterly and totally ineffective.

Punitive actions are not always the best responses. That is difficult, I know, for a party controlled by unions to understand. Punitive actions do not always work. Some argue that you catch more bees with honey than, indeed, with vinegar. This bill lacks a range of support measures needed to attract kids to school. Some schools are doing things like providing free breakfasts for kids from families where they are not getting fed, providing a range of extra support and tuition, and offering a range of activities that connect more with the culture of the day. These things are appropriate and relevant.

The bill singles out needy families for punishment. If you are a wealthy family and your kids are going to school, ‘We’re not going to do anything,’ says the Rudd government. But, if you are hurting, if you are needy, if you require support, ‘We’re going to kick you so hard in the guts, it will give you a nosebleed’—that is what this legislation says. For a party that stands up here and purports to represent working families, this is an appalling piece of legislation that has not been thought through.

Firstly, this is a state responsibility. The two ministers at the table should understand by now that this is a state responsibility. There comes a time when the federal government has got to stop bailing the Labor states out—difficult, I know, for a government that is putting aside $40 billion in slush funds to help their Labor mates out. But this is a state responsibility.

The Courier Mail reported on 7 April that in my home state of Queensland hundreds of Queensland students are skipping classes undetected and are not even enrolled in school. Yet only one parent was prosecuted in 2007 for failing to ensure their child attended school. The parent pleaded guilty but no conviction was recorded and they were placed on a six-month good behaviour bond. Minister Welford, the education minister for Queensland schools, said that a system was in place which involved phoning parents and holding meetings with them to ensure their children returned to school. Yet a report the Labor state government of Queensland refused to release actually showed that 800 students at Logan High School alone were absent for a third of the school year. Education minister Welford also admitted there was a problem.

The government believes that taking all of the parent’s money is one of the answers. Labor is looking to remove, at its worst, the funding from 800 families in Logan, one of the most socially disadvantaged areas between Brisbane and the Gold Coast. I believe it is held by the member for Rankin—has anybody told the member for Rankin that the parliament is looking at passing legislation that will take away the very support that 800 families in one of the most socially disadvantaged areas of Logan need? Has the member for Rankin been told that 800 families will be suddenly thrust onto the poverty line if this continues, based on current statistics?

Minister Welford, whilst admitting there was a problem, said that prosecuting parents was not the answer to combating the truancy problem. Has anybody told Minister Welford that, apparently, the Rudd government is actually going to take away their very means for survival? Based on this, and based on the comments that Minister Welford has made, I doubt very much whether the states are likely to agree to the collection of data. Minister Welford would not even release this report on truancy. The Courier Mail had to uncover it through the ways and means that the press gallery is used to. He would not even be upfront with the people of Queensland to say that these are the problems with truancy and kids not going to school. He was not even willing to engage the people of Queensland in a discussion on the issue. It is farcical—almost comical—to think he is happy to engage with this Labor government to publish these figures and to remove welfare payments. On the data right now, 800 families in Logan, one of the most socially disadvantaged areas in South-East Queensland, would have their payments removed.

Considering that, I doubt whether schools are likely to report. Why would schoolteachers and school principals start reporting data to Centrelink when they do not think they ought to report that data to their own head offices—and which their head offices have shown they are not willing to report to the people of the state? Why would they report this data when the consequences of that reporting would mean the family about which they are reporting would be totally without income? Many of these schools are running programs like providing breakfasts, extra tuition assistance, and phoning parents and other siblings to find out where schoolkids are. They are running these programs because teachers genuinely care about the children. Why would a teacher, who has gone out of their way to run a range of programs, who genuinely cares about children, make that phone call that would see that child’s family thrust into impoverishment? What will the schools in Logan do? What will they do about 800 families with children who have missed a third of the year? If the two ministers opposite think those schools will call Centrelink and say, ‘You know what? Eight hundred children from the most disadvantaged homes in the state are not coming to school. The best thing we can do is knock out all their money—that will get the kids to school,’ then I think they are on a planet different to mine.

The final point to consider is: as this government moves to punish a family for the failure of one child, what will the impact be on the other siblings? Let us take a hypothetical situation of mum, dad and three kids, with two children working their guts out and mum choosing to stay at home to take care of the kids. There is little support from the government—this government believes in supporting mums who go out to work with a 50 per cent childcare rebate; but if you want to stay at home and take care of the kids, there is nothing in that respect. Dad is out working, mum stays at home, there are three kids, and they are doing it tough with the mortgage. One of the children does not want to go to school, not matter what assistance, love, care or support is provided—and it is reported to Centrelink. There are two children busting their guts at school—studying hard with a vision for what they want their lives to be, a plan for how they see their futures—but one of their brothers just does not connect with the schooling system. It goes to Centrelink, and Centrelink speaks to the family resulting in 28 days and a range of things in place. The kid still does not want to play. Suddenly this legislation will take away the entire family’s income. It will punitively push the two siblings that are busting their guts onto the poverty line because of one other sibling. And you have the hide to look me in the eye and say that you know what it is to be a working family, and to stand up for working families.

This bill is a charade—it is a disgrace. It is an absolute cover-up for an economy that is hurting. This bill will be so ineffective and will not achieve anything because the reporting will not be in place, the states will not play, Centrelink will not play and the schools will not play. We will not oppose the bill because Labor needs to understand the consequences of their own poor legislation. It is not the coalition’s responsibility to save a rudderless Rudd government from itself. Minister, it is not my responsibility to save you from your own decision-making and from your own poorly, rushed-through judgements. It is up to you to save you from yourself; it is up to you to face the consequences of moribund legislation.

This bill needs to be referred to a Senate committee. It needs an enormous amount of scrutiny because that scrutiny has not occurred. The Labor caucus was not informed. No-one on the Labor Party back benches knew about it. It was announced in typical Prime Minister Rudd style to catch a media headline without thinking it through. I only hope a Senate committee will go through it, point out the range of egregious errors of judgement that the bill is predicated on and seek to bring back to the House a bill that makes a lot more sense and is in the nation’s greater interest.

Jenny Macklin (Jagajaga, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Families, Housing, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the House for the opportunity to sum up the second reading debate on the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 following its introduction by the Minister for Education. For the benefit of the member for Fadden, who has just spoken, I reassure him that most of what he said is wrong and I will go through all the details of that in my summing up remarks so that he can correct the record when he is speaking to his constituents. The same applies to the member for Dunkley. I thought it was unfortunate that he finished his remarks on a very personal case which related to some people in his electorate who very much deserve our support. I can respond here—and, of course, I will respond in writing as well—by saying that he would be aware, because the rules for grandparents have been in place all the time that he has been in the parliament, that people who are on an income support pension can receive the grandparent childcare benefit which pays the gap in childcare costs. Grandparents also receive all the family tax benefits for the child if they are assuming the care of the child. These are very difficult issues faced by grandparents who have the task of taking on the care of their children. I think it is appropriate that these matters be dealt with in a much more sensitive manner than the member for Dunkley chose to do.

The bill represents a very significant step in the government’s broader agenda to reform the welfare system to make sure that we provide the support that families need and to protect vulnerable children. This bill is all about giving effect to measures that were actually announced in the 2008-09 budget under a $17.6 million package of welfare reform initiatives, with this bill enabling implementation of the improving school enrolment and attendance through welfare reform measure. Under the initiative, parents in the trial sites who receive income support will need to give Centrelink evidence that their children are enrolled in school. This will be a condition of receiving the welfare payment. If a school reports that a student is not regularly attending school, that student’s parents may have their income support payments temporarily suspended if they do not take reasonable steps to engage with the school and the school continues to be dissatisfied with the child’s attendance.

The bill gives legislative authority for the trials of these measures. In both June and July I announced the locations of the trial sites in the Northern Territory and in the suburbs around Cannington. Another trial site in another metropolitan area is also under consideration. We expect that these trial sites across Australia will cover around 3,300 children. Without this legislation, these trials would not be able to proceed. If the trials are successful in getting children to school and keeping them in the classroom, the legislation will allow, after a proper evaluation, for the rollout of the policy to other areas.

It has been estimated that around 20,000 Australian children of compulsory school age may not be enrolled or regularly attending school. Many more are not attending school regularly enough to meet any reasonable benchmark. The government’s view is that we have to explore every single avenue available to us to fix this problem. I think it is important that we remember that each and every one of these 20,000 children will have their life opportunities constrained or diminished as a result of not going to school. Part of the way to fix that is to find ways of encouraging greater parental responsibility so that parents are making clear their expectation that their children will go to school.

This is a very important part of our child-centred approach to family policy. We are taking a number of other initiatives in our efforts to make sure that we support disadvantaged families, including the development for the first time of a national child protection framework, our early childhood development agenda, a national plan to reduce violence against women and children, and our homelessness strategy. We have a number of very significant initiatives aimed at making sure that disadvantaged children in particular grow up in happier and healthier families. These strategies are all about making sure we improve support for families.

Consistent with this, we as a government have a responsibility to make sure that the money that is made available from the Commonwealth to families—in this case, welfare payments—is put to the use for which it was intended: that is, to help families provide a safe and supportive environment to raise children. That is why in the 2008-09 budget we had a package of welfare payment reforms designed to assess a range of different approaches to improve the quality of care provided by disadvantaged families to children. I just touch on a few of them. Firstly, there is the approach to income management in prescribed communities in the Northern Territory. That will cost more than $63 million in this year alone. Secondly, we have an agreement with the Western Australian government to implement the income management for child protection measure, under which the Western Australian government department for child protection can refer parents who neglect their children to Centrelink for income management of a portion of their payments. That will cost $16.9 million this financial year. Thirdly, we are supporting the introduction of the Cape York welfare reform trials, where welfare payments can be linked to meeting parental and community responsibilities. That will cost $12.6 million this financial year.

The legislation before the House asks that parents meet a basic responsibility that each and every one of us as parents has—to take reasonable steps to make sure that their children are enrolled in and attending school on a regular basis. It does not of course require that children never miss a day of school. Of course we understand that children get sick. We also understand that some children have unsatisfactory school attendance despite the best efforts of their parents. But we do think it is reasonable to require that parents work with the school and education authorities for the benefit of their children.

There is another correction I need to make to comments made by those opposite: the bill does not change the balance of responsibilities between the Commonwealth and the states and territories. Like the child protection measures that we have put in place in trials in Western Australia and in Cape York in Queensland, this bill involves the Commonwealth working in partnership with our state colleagues, each of us using the tools and powers that we have as governments to try and achieve positive outcomes for our children. This government will be introducing this initiative—I gather with the support of the opposition, even though they made a lot of noise along the way. We will be evaluating the initiative along with other welfare reform initiatives, and we will use this evidence to shape our further policy development and implementation. This is a trial.

We know that there are at least 20,000 children either not enrolled at or not attending school, and it is important that we try new approaches and use all of the tools available to us to get those kids to school. We know that issues such as poor school attendance and child neglect do not generally occur in isolation either. There are very strong links between disengagement from school, childhood neglect and other social exclusion factors that come from homelessness, drug and alcohol issues and joblessness. All of these issues together can be helped by this measure. Some critics have argued that the welfare payment reform approach is paternalistic or punitive. I actually see it quite differently. Given the adverse and lifelong consequences of non-attendance at school, I think that we, all of us in this parliament, have a responsibility to use and evaluate the full range of tools that we have at our disposal to improve the life chances of Australian children.

There are a number of misapprehensions about this initiative that have appeared in the debate in the parliament and also in the media. I just want to go through some of them to clarify these issues. First of all, parents will not lose payments where they cannot, after all their best efforts, control their child’s behaviour. This legislation is quite clear that parents should take reasonable steps to ensure their child is enrolled at and attending school. If, despite these steps, a child persists in truanting, this will not affect a parent’s payment. We certainly recognise that, especially as children get older, no matter how hard some parents try, they just cannot get all of their children to school. So if parents are trying their best and if they are doing everything they possibly can that is reasonable to get their kids to school, this measure will not apply to them.

The measure does allow schools who are having difficulty engaging with parents to ask Centrelink to remind parents that they have an obligation to make sure that their children go to school. If parents continue to ignore both the school and Centrelink then normal Centrelink procedures, including payment suspension, will apply. I think this is the other thing that many commentators, including members opposite, do not seem to recognise. It is normal, current Centrelink practice—which existed all through the time of the Howard government as well—that if an income support customer repeatedly fails to engage with Centrelink then their payments can be temporarily suspended for up to 13 weeks. They are the rules now and they were the rules under the previous government; they are rules that are necessary to make sure that people engage in a proper way with Centrelink. It occurs, for example, when there is no response to requests from Centrelink for information about a person’s income or their current address details. Suspension is not the first step; it is the last step. If a family is in this situation, they will be offered case management for support from schools and from Centrelink social workers before any consideration is given to suspension.

Another important correction to make is that suspensions are not designed to last for 13 weeks. In most cases, we actually expect that the suspension will only last for a few days until the parents re-engage with Centrelink and their school. This is the way in which the suspension mechanism currently works with Centrelink in the areas that I have already mentioned. Once the re-engagement with Centrelink and the school occurs, then full back pay for the days that the parent had refused to engage will be provided. In these cases, parents are plainly not going to lose their benefits. The approach is fundamentally different—and this is also an important correction that needs to be made to comments made by those opposite—to the eight-week non-payment period penalty faced by job seekers not meeting their obligations. I think it is critical that those opposite get that right. The privacy of parents on income support will also be respected. Schools will not be given a list of families on income support. The details of how the data exchange will operate are being negotiated with the states, but there certainly will not be a wholesale release of data by Centrelink.

There were some specific questions asked by the member for Warringah. I want to respond to those. He asked whether or not we are going to be able to implement these measures in the trial sites as we have announced. I can inform the House that preparation for these measures is well underway with both the Northern Territory government and the Western Australian government, and the measures are expected to apply from the beginning of the next school year. Once again to respond to the member for Warringah: there are no savings to the budget. No savings have been factored in because, as I have just indicated, where re-engagement by the parent occurs, full back pay is going to be provided. We do expect that parents will respond and make sure that their children go to school. The member for Warringah wonders whether we have agreement with the respective governments. To respond to his third concern: we have got agreement from the Northern Territory and Western Australian governments. We are in the process of developing protocols in the areas where the trials will take place and developing the protocols for the necessary exchange of information. Any suggestion that that has not taken place is just wrong.

It is also critical to make plain that this is not a measure that is targeted at Indigenous children. We recognise that Indigenous and non-Indigenous children in many parts of Australia are not attending school. The trial sites that we have identified in the Cannington district in Perth is in an ordinary suburb in Perth. Even in the communities and towns in the Northern Territory, there is a mixture—Hermannsburg, Wallace Rockhole, Tiwi Islands, the town of Kathryn, Kathryn Town Camps and Wadeye. And, as I mentioned earlier, the final site will also be in a metropolitan area.

Some critics have also argued that we should be working on improving schools and providing more support for children who are struggling rather than focusing on increased parental responsibility—as though the approaches in some way are mutually inconsistent. As far as we are concerned we cannot see any reason why we should not be doing both things at once, and we are. Just last week we say saw the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister setting out our next chapter for the education revolution, improving quality teaching in school, measuring school performance, helping our disadvantaged school communities. All of these areas are critical to improve the quality of education across the country. All those things are necessary, but children are not going to get a world-class education if they do not turn up to school. The measures in this bill will ensure that the education revolution actually works for those children who at the moment are either not enrolled to go to school or not attending on a regular basis. Each and every one of them needs to go to school to make sure they get the advantage of the improvement to education that we are putting in place.

Welfare conditionality linked to school attendance does work best when combined with other support services—that is absolutely true. That is especially the case with direct case management. The school enrolment and attendance trial will in fact be delivered in this way, with Centrelink and schools working very closely with communities. The trials will operate to trigger specific case management where children are not being supported to attend school. Results in the selected locations will be carefully monitored and evaluated to provide an evidence base for us to go ahead in this area. I do think that the trials will also help us to improve child protection systems. We are all very well aware, each and every one of us, of the very distressing cases of neglect or abuse where children involved were not enrolled to go to school. So linking welfare to enrolling children will actually help make sure that those children do not fall through the cracks. If children are at school they are much more likely to come into contact on a daily basis with their teachers and principals, and with Centrelink. And if those children are being subject to abuse they will have a much greater chance for early intervention or rapid response if the teachers know about it.

The government very firmly believes that meeting basic parental responsibilities is a reasonable expectation to place on families receiving welfare payments. We obviously are aware that measures of this kind are controversial but we think they are necessary for a very simple reason: the consequences of not exploring every possible avenue are far too serious to ignore. Financial levers actually work. We have seen that most significantly with the measure the previous government put in place, which I support, where we saw a huge increase in immunisation rates following the introduction of the maternity immunisation allowance and the requirement that parents have their children immunised in order to receive the childcare benefit. So this is what it is all about—linking personal responsibility to financial reward. It can change behaviour. That is what these measures are designed to do. Suspension is a last resort but a necessary element of these reforms.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.

Message from the Governor-General recommending appropriation announced.