Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think I have only three minutes in which to finish my contribution on the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007, having spoken on it late last night. Before I stopped at 11 o’clock, I was talking about this government’s proposal to put flagpoles in schools. I want to make two points about that.

One was about truly supporting Indigenous education. Most of my speech last night was about this government’s lack of recognition, under the Investing in Our Schools Program, of Indigenous schools. I recognise the fact that $100,000 worth of capital equipment will not go as far in a remote school as it would in a school in a suburban centre in a capital city on the eastern seaboard. Therefore I was a bit perplexed as to why government schools, which might have a majority of Indigenous students, were not entitled to much more than $100,000, but so be it. This government continually wants to crow about the fact that Indigenous students are not doing so well. That is predominantly, supposedly, never ever its fault, but when it gets an opportunity to provide more money to those school students it does not do it.

Going back to the issue of flagpoles, I have had many requests from Indigenous communities and schools wanting to know if they could get two flagpoles so that they could fly the Indigenous flag as well as the Australian flag. But under this scheme it is one flagpole and one flag, and the flag has got to be the Australian flag, not a flag that Indigenous people might want to hoist up a pole and have just as much respect for. The crux of the matter for this government is that, while it goes on at length about flagpoles, about citizenship and values in schools and about trying to pay teachers for their improved performance in the classroom, it never really looks at the real substantive issue here: providing schools, particularly Indigenous schools, with the fundamental resources that they need. It never dips into its pockets and it never says: ‘As we’re talking about literacy and numeracy outcomes for Indigenous kids, how can they possibly meet a year 3, 5 or 7 benchmark in literacy when there is no nationally funded oral program? Basic How to Teach Reading 101 says if you can’t speak the language, you can’t read it.’ We never hear the minister talking about having a comprehensive oral English program out there so that the Indigenous children of this country might be able to speak the language that they have to read, which they are then measured against. The logical extension is that now teachers will be measured against it. (Time expired)