Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take the opportunity in tonight’s adjournment debate to put on record my strong support for the Rudd government’s program to introduce more computers into schools and to indicate my very great concern that the opposition has announced that if it wins government its intention is to scrap this program. As a former high school teacher myself, I am very passionate about the importance of this program in our schools. There is no doubt that for young people entering the world of study and work after leaving school the capacity to work effectively with computers is significant, no matter what they end up doing.

Obviously it is not difficult for most of us to imagine that undertaking university study, no matter what subject you are studying, requires skills in research and the use of computers. It is also the case that in this day and age even students who are going to do, for example, a VET course—a vocational education course—also have components of their study that rely quite heavily on computer-based skills. Indeed, a plumber who came to my house only a couple of weeks ago and who had his apprentice, who was also his son, in the back seat said to me, ‘He’s in the back seat because the computer has to sit on the passenger’s seat.’ As he gets calls, he utilises his computer to make quotes and provide information to people, and he said that it is an important part of the toolkit for him. The students who are going on to vocational study or indeed into apprenticeships and traineeships certainly need to be computer literate, as do young people who go straight into the workforce. There are very few occupations in which familiarity and comfort with the use of computers is not an important component.

Add on to that how important computers are in our lives—in our home lives in particular. Many people now do their banking online, organise engagements with government departments and local councils online and, indeed, do their shopping online. The variety of activities for which we rely on a computer are increasing and will continue to increase. So it is really important that young people not only are technically capable of using a computer but also understand its capacities and limitations. My committee, the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, has a current inquiry about school libraries and school librarians. As we go around and talk to people we hear an amazing amount evidence about the savviness of young people with computers and, in some ways, about their naivete of the information and the resources they use on those computers. We talk about many of the challenges for young people in their lives. At the moment as a society we struggle with cyber-bullying and some of those kinds of issues. Some young people doing research for a school assignment think that, when you Google something, all of the things in the long list of references are reliable because they are on the internet. Our need to teach them to engage with that information, be critical about it, analyse it and use it is very important for modern citizens who use computers not only in the workplace but in the broader community.

I am very passionate about the importance of having a computers in schools program. I was thrilled in the lead-up to the last election when my party committed to the program. I am very pleased about it rolling out. In my own area, over a number of rounds of computer announcements, we are seeing over 2,000 computers going into local high schools. I was a bit bemused to see my colleague the member for Gilmore in question time today interjecting loudly on the Deputy Prime Minister. As I understood it, her complaint was that they had not rolled out fast enough and there were not enough of them. I would just like to draw to her attention that the opposition’s policy is to cut off the scheme. The complaint that she was making, that she was unhappy with the speed with which the computers had arrived, is to me in contradiction to her own party’s position, which is to cut the scheme off. It would be a very false economy if the opposition were to do this. It might be a cheap and easy way for them to drop $700 million, but this money is critical to the future of young people, critical to the future of education and critical to equity. Some young people have access to computers at home and often have access to their own laptop and yet there are an awful lot of young people who do not. If we are concerned about equity and fairness, we would not scrap this scheme. (Time expired)