Andrew Bartlett (Queensland, Australian Democrats) Share this | Hansard source

I will just speak briefly to the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006. This is order of business No. 15, which is rather lower down than No. 6 or No. 7, which is how the order was originally planned. We got a tiny bit of warning that the order would change, and I suspect our other Democrat speaker may be down here shortly. I take the opportunity to note that this is a non-controversial piece of legislation and there are no amendments that seek to modify or improve it in any way.

Often the area of schools is not given adequate attention. There is a lot of understandable focus on higher education and skills development in general and often not sufficient focus on schools in general and some of the policy issues there. In that respect, the prospect of legislation that seeks to improve that situation is something that should be welcomed.

I want to take the opportunity to emphasise that across the board we could do better at examining ways to put more focus on schools—and, indeed, as has been mentioned, preschools and early childhood areas. A related matter is the inquiries in the Senate at the moment about adequacy of government support, for example, in the disability area. There is no doubt that one of the key areas where we are not doing well enough across the board—and this is not a partisan comment; I think it applies across the board—is in using an adequate level of resourcing for young students with what are colloquially called special needs and ensuring that they are properly assisted. If that extra assistance is provided at very early stages, there is no doubt that it can have significant benefit down the track.

Of course, the counter to that is that, where assistance is not provided, there is significant loss down the track. I use by way of example the condition of autism and autism spectrum disorders such as Asperger’s. There is now plenty of evidence that extra intervention and assistance in those very early years in schooling for children can make a very big difference down the track. It costs a little extra money and it does require more individual attention that actually addresses the specific needs and the development situation of individual children. That is always going to mean a little extra expense, but I think that benefit not just for that child but for their family and society as a whole is very much worth the extra amount. So I certainly take this opportunity to urge all of us to look at ways to give that extra support in childhood education and schooling for, for example, children that diagnose with autism spectrum related characteristics, because there is plenty of evidence that that sort of intensive intervention and assistance, while keeping children in the broader school community, bears enormous fruit for them.