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

I rise to contribute to the debate on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007. This is another in a series of bills that we consider in this chamber each year to ensure that Indigenous education around this country continues to be supported. This bill appropriates additional funding of $26.1 million over the 2007 and 2008 calendar years, explicitly to expand the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program and the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program. It provides infrastructure for boarding schools and it provides for the conversion of a limited number of CDEP positions to full-time positions within education.

As this is a bill that adds funds to Indigenous education, I certainly welcome it. Those of you who know my passionate interest in this area would not be surprised to learn that this bill is supported in principle by the Labor Party and, in particular, by me. But Senator Sterle is correct in saying that it does not go far enough. It is a start, but the measures in this piece of legislation do not go anywhere near addressing the particular needs that have been identified. We know that, of the total additional funds, some $2.6 million goes to expanding the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program. It will give us about an additional 860 places over four years. That is on top of the 600 or so students who already benefit from this program, giving us a total of 1,460 students. The Indigenous Youth Leadership Program will be expanded by up to 750 places over four years, with $4 million allocated for the first two years. So the total impact will be 1,610 students. There is $14.1 million for infrastructure to enable boarding schools with a significant number of Indigenous students to repair and replace old facilities.

I know from my questioning of Aboriginal Hostels Ltd during the most recent estimates process that, under the Families, Community Services and Indigenous Affairs portfolio estimates, it says at page 164 of Budget Paper No. 2 that FaCSIA will establish three new boarding hostels and expand two existing boarding hostels at a cost of $38.8 million over four years. Aboriginal Hostels Ltd, of course, will operate two of the new boarding hostels at a cost of $2.4 million over 2009-10 and 2010-11.

At the Standing Committee on Community Affairs estimates hearing on 28 May, Mr Clarke, from Aboriginal Hostels, could only give me the details of one of those hostels, which will be built at Kununurra to cater for 40 secondary students. In addition, he thought that maybe one hostel would be built in the Northern Territory, possibly at Nhulunbuy on the Gove Peninsula—though that had not yet been decided—and that one would be built in Queensland, possibly in Townsville. He said that he would also be looking at partnerships—for example, he would talk to the McArthur River Mine about a possible boarding facility at Borroloola. He also said that there had been a budgeted allocation for partnerships for secondary education, either for recurrent costs or for construction. So we know that Aboriginal Hostels, by and large, has carriage of the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program. This program encourages Indigenous students who live in remote or very remote areas, or maybe even in outer regional areas, to relocate to major centres to board and to study. So it is certainly an initiative that we would encourage.

The overall effect of this bill is to assist young Indigenous people to relocate to undertake accredited education and training and then, hopefully, gain employment. It is always a very difficult decision to send your child away from home to attend different schools. It is no different whether you are an Indigenous parent or a non-Indigenous parent. But Indigenous parents in particular feel that their children will lose their culture and not return home, or that they might meet their demise through succumbing to some of the attractions of the capital cities. It is a decision that all parents confront at one stage or another. But it is a decision that does give Indigenous people some possibility of providing their children with better and further education.

Education is important, and Indigenous parents do make that choice. We see that in the Northern Territory in respect of Kormilda College, an independent coeducational secondary boarding school in Darwin. It has arguably the largest enrolment of Indigenous students from remote communities in Australia. The parents of those students do recognise the value of education and they send their kids into Darwin to board at the college.

While I say that this legislation and the additional funding is welcome, it does not go far enough if we are talking about encouraging children to stay on to year 12 and then take up structured training beyond year 12. To see that, one need only look at the statistics on and also at the needs of a place like Kormilda College. They have, from my recollection, lobbied this federal government for many years now to take account of what is happening in their boarding school in terms of infrastructure. And when I say that the funding in this legislation is welcome but does not go anywhere near meeting the need, Kormilda College are one example of that. They have a total enrolment of 1,050. Their Indigenous enrolment is 310 students from 70 remote communities—from Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. They offer the Northern Territory Certificate of Education, the International Baccalaureate and also some vocational education and training programs. So you would think that a college like this should be a great beneficiary of the legislation that we have before us, but it is not so.

In 2006, 35 per cent of all Indigenous NTCE graduates from remote communities studied at Kormilda College. The third generation of students from Indigenous families now board at Kormilda College. In 2007, among their year 12 enrolments, they had 17 Indigenous students, including 13 remote boarders. In 2007 they had the first Indigenous candidate for the International Baccalaureate Diploma, and the attendance rate for Indigenous students was around 95 per cent. If you looked at those statistics and had some kind of report card—by which the current minister would want to judge educational outcomes—you would have to say that Kormilda College are doing it pretty well. But they have a chronic need in terms of their current boarding infrastructure facilities. Anyone who knows and appreciates Indigenous culture would understand that, at this particular school, there are boarding facilities for girls and boys, and they are quite distinct and separate. Their current boarding capacity is 330 students but, in recent years, they have had to close 60 beds due to excessive maintenance costs. There is asbestos and concrete cancer in the existing boarding facilities. Recently, I had a meeting with the current principal, Malcolm Pritchard, and he told me that they currently have a waiting list of more than 200 remote students and, of course, no capacity to meet this demand.

We have a bill before us today that will establish some boarding hostels around this country, auspiced under Aboriginal Hostels Ltd. But, from what I can see, there is no additional funding to meet the incredible demand that a place such as Kormilda College will have and no intent that any of the money from this bill will go to places such as Kormilda College. They have closed some of the boarding facilities because the infrastructure is diminished and they need to be demolished. Currently, they cannot offer 60 beds, and they have over 200 students on their waiting list. They need to replace two condemned boarding facilities at a cost of around $15 million. The total capacity under threat is around 260 beds.

Here we have a college in the Northern Territory, in Darwin, which is doing well. It offers a fantastic program and it attracts and keeps Indigenous students—it has an attendance rate of 95 per cent—from 13 Indigenous remote communities across the territory, which this government has continued to turn its back on. Successive principals at Kormilda College have lobbied this government for $15 million to improve the boarding infrastructure, and it has not been forthcoming. This bill is another example of how this college will not be able to get the money that it needs to maintain and meet the unmet demand of its boarding school. On the one hand, the government is saying that it wants to improve the retention rate for Indigenous children in year 12 and beyond while, on the other hand, we have a perfect example in Darwin of where $15 million could be targeted and spent. But Kormilda College has been totally ignored by this government, year after year. The proportion of Indigenous children reaching year 12 is well below that of their non-Indigenous peers—we have known that for years—and the proportion of Indigenous children finishing year 12 is slightly worse.

I commend the government—and I have done this successively—on putting out the National report to parliament on Indigenous education and training. The latest one is for 2004. This is the fourth report which has been produced. It is good to see this government front up and report to the federal parliament on the progress—or, in some instances, lack of progress—in Indigenous education. Unlike other programs that this government oversees where it is not so willing to publicly report on the outcomes, it is willing to publicly report on outcomes in Indigenous education. Year in, year out, the statistics do not improve. On page 34 of the last report, with respect to year 11 and year 12, it states:

There is a further decline in this rate in 2004—

here we are talking about the retention of Indigenous students in schooling—

to produce the worst result for the period. Between 2003-04 there were declines in the rates of five of the eight states and territories, with only South Australia, Victoria and the ACT showing an improvement. The 2004 rate of 64.7 per cent is below the 2000 rate of 60 per cent, indicating that over the period of the quadrennium there was no overall improvement.

Good on the government for actually reporting it but, throughout this document, year after year, while I do see some improvements—I will admit that—in some areas, I do not. This bill is an attempt, one would hope, to encourage a turnaround of those statistics, but it is not good enough and the money is certainly not well targeted. Any measure that may help to reduce the gap and see more Indigenous people finish year 12 and go into some form of higher education or training is certainly welcome. Indeed, it is long overdue.

The Department of Education, Science and Training’s Higher education report 2005 showed that the number of Indigenous students fell by 5.9 per cent in 2005—an occurrence that will do nothing to reduce the education gap. I could go on and talk about measures that the Labor Party has committed to. They include concrete goals and targets to eliminate the gap in life expectancy within a generation, to halve the Indigenous infant mortality within a decade and to halve the gap in literacy and numeracy levels at primary school within a decade. Why is that important? It is crucially important. If you have an educational background and know anything about the first steps in life then you would know that, when it comes to retaining kids in year 12 and encouraging them to move to capital cites or regional centres to take up further vocational education and training, we can move as many bills and acts in this parliament as we wish but, unless we get it right in the first five or six years of a child’s life, they struggle and play catch-up for the rest of their school life. The evidence is out there. We know that, unless you ensure that the life expectancy of Indigenous children is increased and unless you have a commitment to set a target for improving literacy and numeracy at the primary school level and help them get it right in the first couple of years, then all of the funding that we appropriate in this place, which is targeted at year 11, year 12 and beyond, will go nowhere.

The Labor Party have said that we will set targets and measure outcomes—unlike so many programs under the Howard government’s mainstreaming policy where red tape and bureaucracy continue to defeat Indigenous progress and the achievement of outcomes. We have committed $450 million a year to provide early education of up to 15 hours a week for all four-year olds for up to 40 weeks a year. As I travel around the Northern Territory, I see many schools that do not have efficient preschools or kindergartens operating. That needs to change. We have committed to halving the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students in reading and writing within a decade. We will need significant resources and effort to achieve that, but at least it is a performance indicator. At least it is something that we will be able to measure the success or otherwise of within that 10-year period.

Before I finish my speech, I want to talk about the move in this legislation to convert into full-time jobs 200 places in education for CDEP participants. People will know that I personally think that the CDEP has run its course, but it is still useful in remote communities in some parts of this country to get people job-ready. In 11 years, the Howard government has done nothing to improve CDEP in terms of providing education and training in those very remote communities to give people the skills to move off CDEP and into real jobs. No labour market has been stimulated and no remote training educators have been funded or provided over and above what current institutes like the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education and Charles Darwin University can provide out of their current funding. I want to talk about what is happening in urban areas. We know that these 200 jobs are part of the 825 jobs identified in this current budget to move people off CDEP and into paid jobs in urban areas. Obviously, DEST have identified that they have at least 200 of those. I understand that the urban areas will take priority as CDEP is changed, reviewed and restructured by this government over and over again. This job conversion must be taken further to convert more jobs into more full-time positions in some of the isolated areas.

On 1 July these 200 people, out of the 825 in CDEP positions around this country, will be moved off CDEP. Let us talk about what is going to happen to those 825 people. There is one measure by this government that will improve what will happen to them: they will either move into full-time employment, and that is welcomed, or they will move onto the STEP program or Newstart. But in doing so they will lose, as a consequence, access to free hearing services. This is an issue I raised with the Office for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health during the last Senate estimates, and this government is aware of it. Is it an unintended consequence of this policy shift? Who would know? If departments were actually talking to each other then surely someone should have said: ‘We’re going to move people in urban areas off CDEP and onto either the STEP program or Newstart. Then of course you realise they’re going to lose access to hearing services.’ It is unfortunate that this government is going to ideologically push ahead with that agenda and not put it off for 12 months to sort out what will happen to these people who had access to this service offered by Human Services. It was a program that was initiated in 2005 and it should be maintained for these people. (Time expired)