Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006 is important because it is vital that we improve the educational outcomes of Indigenous Australians. It is a key to breaking the cycles of poverty and social dysfunction which affect so many Indigenous people. Indigenous children ought to have the same chances and choices in life as we expect for every other Australian. The bill we are debating today provides additional funds for Indigenous education and training in 2006-08. It has a number of measures which are worth remarking upon. The first is the extension of tutorial assistance programs to students in year 9, vocational education and TAFE, although I note that this largely just restores former provisions; the second is support for community festivals promoting health and anti substance abuse programs; and the third is support for school based sporting academies and other activities for Indigenous students.

One of the things that I saw as a positive out of the last budget was the extension of funding for those school based sporting academies. The Clontarf Academy in Perth has had tremendous success in developing opportunities for young Indigenous people. It is focused mainly on Australian Rules football but increasingly on a range of other areas. Of course, the programs extend to women as well. The Clontarf program run out of Western Australia has been a tremendous success and an example of what can be done. It is a tribute to all involved, particularly Gerard Neesham, the former Dockers coach, who is having more success, it seems, in running Clontarf than he ever had in coaching the Dockers. As a supporter I do not mean that in any disparaging sense.

I also have some criticisms of this bill which go to the failure to resolve some of the issues with parent-school partnerships, where there seems to be a drop-off in community involvement. That reflects my concern that the government’s interest is more in top-down approaches than approaches that seriously engage the community and give the community ownership.

Starting on one of the key points that Senator McLucas just made—and that is the question of early support in educational and family program measures—I see, and have done for many years, that this is the key to investment in children, particularly Indigenous children. Last week we saw the release of new research from Professor Fiona Stanley’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. Based on data from more than 5,000 WA children it found that, by the time they began year 1, 60 per cent of Aboriginal children were already significantly behind non-Aboriginal children. That is, by the time they got to school they were already at a serious disadvantage. It found that existing intervention programs were failing to cut through with Indigenous children as they were too little, too late. It highlighted the complex issues which need to be addressed to improve educational outcomes for many Indigenous kids, including providing assistance and support to parents who may be young and lacking in a positive educational background themselves, and dealing with housing, family, and financial strain and stress. One of the real issues in Indigenous education now is the fact that the parents of kids going to school have not had a positive education experience themselves and often have very poor literacy skills, so family support and reinforcement of the value of education is not there.

The Telethon institute report is further evidence that we need a comprehensive early intervention strategy which works with children and families in the very early years. It requires not only a developmental and educational focus but strategies to assist parents with parenting skills and support. It also points to the need to tackle issues including health, housing and family function. These are complex challenges and I do not believe we will make progress with headline-grabbing bandaid solutions that have been offered in recent times. Improving the socioeconomic indicators of Aboriginal peoples’ wellbeing is a complex challenge which requires broad national, long-term, evidence based approaches.

The attitude that we have seen from Minister Brough—a sort of ‘spot the issue’ attitude—that, if you focus purely on law and order, somehow everything will be fixed, is just naive in the extreme. These are complex, multifaceted problems and you have to have a holistic approach, because dealing with just one issue will not lead to success. We need to ensure that Indigenous kids and families are set up for educational success before the kids reach school. There are a number of very good programs around. I went to one at La Perouse the other day. It was a program for parents and youngsters. It works with families on an introduction to reading, familiarity with books and basic exercises that help the parents and help the kids be ready for school. We have to do better, as I said, in the education effort that we apply to Indigenous kids.

Recently there has been a lot of focus on truancy. Clearly, one way to improve the educational outcomes for children is to make sure that they are going to school. I think that is a point on which everyone would agree. It is not a Left or Right issue. Kids cannot get a decent education if they are not at school. In the first half of this year, the government carried out a truancy trial in Halls Creek in the Kimberley. The trial was a voluntary scheme linking parental employment activity and kids’ school attendance to the payment of welfare benefits.

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations recently released an evaluation of the trials, which concluded that they had failed in their intention. The report presented some important evidence about Indigenous school attendance. It concluded that there is a high degree of autonomy among Indigenous kids in Halls Creek and that, as a result, targeting their parents was not the most effective way to improve school attendance. The report underlined the importance of positive school culture and high-quality teaching. The report found that overcrowding and a lack of employment opportunities for parents constrained the families’ engagement in functional community life.

These are important and not counterintuitive findings. And they can be useful in developing strategies for getting kids into school. But discussing the report on Perth radio Minister Andrews suggested that he was considering revisiting the trial in compulsory form. He wanted to keep beating the drum that somehow family payments and educational outcomes were linked. He said:

... the voluntary nature of this trial hasn’t worked and therefore, I think we have to ask questions about whether or not we should make a program like this compulsory, rather than voluntary.

I have read the report. I do not know where he is coming from. Is it ideology or is it evidence based? It seems to me it is ideology. Where does the trial evaluation suggest making the scheme compulsory? It does not. The evaluation recommends ‘that the Halls Creek Engaging Families trial, as it has been implemented, not be extended for another period’. Rather than suggest extending the trial or making it compulsory, it said:

... in an environment where children make up their minds each day as to whether to go to school or not, the significance of the parent as a “method of engagement” for the children declines and the role of the school—particularly in terms of teacher quality and school culture—increases.

The report also said quite clearly:

The type of ‘method of engagement’ used in the trial is very expensive and resource intensive, but can work in a voluntary context where there are no sanctions for not turning up for activities. It is too expensive to be considered for replication elsewhere and certainly should not be rolled out nationally.

That is what the government’s evaluation says. I thought the report did provide some valuable pointers: the importance of teacher quality, providing a social worker, improving employer awareness of the advantages of Indigenous employment and providing more access to jobs and to houses. But if Minister Andrews is looking to make the scheme compulsory, and is looking to the report for support, it is just not there.

Our approach in all Indigenous policy, including education, needs to be evidence based. We need to read what the report says. This report presents evidence of steps which can help, but it seems the government is intent on going down a path that it has already outlined, without regard for the evidence. It is a trend that worries me in a whole range of areas. Rather than focusing on which version of history is taught to kids, or lecturing people on the decline in civility, we ought to focus on the key issues.

The recently tabled National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training 2004 from the Department of Education, Science and Training showed a decrease in Indigenous higher education commencements of 3.2 per cent in 2003 and a further six per cent in 2004. The decline in Indigenous higher education commencements has been linked to the government’s Abstudy cuts by a separate DEST report. It showed that the higher-education retention rate of Indigenous students has remained around 20 per cent below that of non-Indigenous students since 1997. The gap has remained unchanged over eight years. The report showed that the proportion of Indigenous preschool children assessed as being ready for primary school in terms of their literacy and numeracy actually declined in the 2001 to 2004 period. This is not a success.

Despite this, in a February interview with Southern Cross Radio the Prime Minister said retention rates for Aboriginal school children had increased by 55 per cent in the last 10 years and hailed it as marking the success of practical reconciliation. This claim was highly misleading, as the 55 per cent increase largely reflects the growth in the school-age Aboriginal population. Attendance and retention rates in schools have been variable—some getting worse, most staying the same and some marginal improvements in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Victoria. In 2005 there was a 37 per cent gap in the retention rates at year 12 level between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. The fact is that this government, and previous governments, do not have a great record to point to. It is time to put aside the cultural agenda, focus on the basics and implement evidence based approaches.

I think we do need national leadership in all this. I am concerned that we are not getting it. I am also concerned that the government has admitted it has frozen Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives program funding for urban children, claiming that remote education is the priority. This highlights my concern with the government’s obsession with mainstreaming. Mainstreaming for the government is more than just making mainstream departments provide services; it seems now to be about asserting that you do not need to offer separate and additional programs for Indigenous children because of their disadvantage. Labor believes special measures are still required because Indigenous kids, and Indigenous people more generally, do not access services at the same level.

On a similar theme, Labor fully supports offering assistance to regional and a few remote Indigenous children to attend urban boarding schools, and we see the many benefits of those sorts of scholarships for Indigenous kids. However, we do need to ensure that we are providing support for choices and opportunities for Indigenous children, not forcing people away from their communities and culture due to a failure to provide appropriate services in rural, regional and remote areas. At the end of the day, only a small number of kids will benefit from the scholarships. We have to have an education system that serves all children’s needs.

I am also concerned about funding stability for successful Indigenous education providers. Some of the organisations funded under this bill, such as Tranby College, the Institute for Aboriginal Development, Redfern Dance Theatre et cetera, have lost their recurrent funding under the new arrangements introduced in 2005 and are now required to compete through open tenders on an annual basis. This sounds like it is more efficient, but of course it does remove the stability and certainty for those organisations and for the students. It does prevent strategic planning, and I do not think it is helpful.

We have seen a number of reports that have highlighted the problems with this type of funding, where people have to keep reapplying to provide ongoing services. The government’s own review into Indigenous VET providers, conducted during 2003, examined the role of the four organisations affected by this bill and identified insecurity about long-term funding which directly limits opportunities for systemic goal setting.

We have debated before the concerns about some of the changes to Abstudy. The 2006 budget contained measures to tighten eligibility for this assistance, in part to link it to school attendance. I can understand the logic behind that. Increasing school attendance is obviously a worthy goal but it is interesting to note that the government does not seem to expect that to happen. The budget papers as much as admit that the measure will not actually improve school attendance, because they forecast savings of $1.8 million. It seems to me that the focus is at the wrong point. The focus is not on the serious endeavour of increasing attendance but more on some sort of revenue-saving measure.

As I said, we have to address all the issues that impact on people’s attendance at school to try and lift Indigenous participation in education in this country. We need to provide more national leadership and we need to work more closely with Indigenous communities. We need to have an evidence based approach. We do not need to adopt the latest fad. Education outcomes will not be achieved by sending out volunteers to communities on an ad hoc basis. There is no substitute for a serious national plan that tries to tackle the root causes of Indigenous educational disadvantage.

The Halls Creek report pointed to the need for improved housing if we are to get kids succeeding at school. You cannot learn if you do not get to sleep and you cannot get to sleep if you live in a house with 17 other people and there is no room where you can sleep peacefully, particularly if the household has some other aspects of dysfunction. We have to deal with the issues of housing and health if we are going to improve Indigenous education outcomes.

It is not fair to say to teachers that it is all their responsibility when the kids get to school. The reality is that the whole system has to support the educational opportunities for these kids. If we do not tackle some of the health, housing and early intervention issues then you cannot expect underresourced teachers to succeed in educating kids who start well behind when they front up at school.

As I said, it is not a question of focusing on one issue. We have to treat this in a holistic manner and we have to try and address the deep-seated problems that are working against Indigenous kids getting a proper education in this country. One of the things we need to do as part of that is to involve Indigenous people in the decision-making process, in setting priorities and policy design. That is a fundamental prerequisite for success.

The Howard government seems increasingly focused on top-down solutions. Without Indigenous participation we will not make serious progress. One of the issues I wish to highlight is the question of grants. I think we need triennial recurrent funding to try and make sure these institutions have a strong basis on which to proceed.

We cannot underestimate the power of good teachers, and teaching workforce issues are a priority. In making sure that teachers can attend at more remote and regional schools, dealing with questions of teacher housing is an important part of the process. You cannot expect teachers to stay in remote communities doing difficult, if rewarding, work if their housing is so poor as to make the option unviable for them.

There are success stories; I try not to focus always on the problems. We have seen Dr Chris Sarra at Cherbourg State School in Queensland dramatically increase school attendance and performance through quality teaching, strong leadership and a positive school culture. When he introduced the strategy, nearly half of the teaching staff left the school, many of them because they did not believe it was possible to achieve equal outcomes for Indigenous students. I think that is a key point. We have to overcome the culture that says, ‘We accept defeat; we accept lower outcomes.’ We have to have a culture that says, ‘We don’t accept failure and we don’t accept Indigenous kids not achieving at the same level.’

Dr Sarra proved that by fostering an expectation of pride and success Cherbourg has produced some tremendous results. And there are lots of success stories around the country that prove that we can do much better than we are doing. But I want to stress that the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research’s most recent report reinforces once again the need for early intervention and investment in the early years. We know from brain development research that investing in kids at the age of five or six, if we have not invested in them and provided support earlier, is often too late, particularly for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Indigenous communities are marked by issues of poverty. We need to invest in those kids in a way that means that when they do get to school they get an equal chance at success. We will not improve outcomes unless we start earlier. We have to look at those issues. (Time expired)