Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is to do with the point that your colleague drew attention to expenditure and to educators, and I am drawing attention to what educators are saying they want this money to be spent on. This program, with $400,000 of expenditure per annum, is to be cut. It supports 160 students. Last year, 19 out of 19 participated at year 12. They all graduated. They have all gone on to higher education, training, employment or, in one case, an overseas Rotary exchange. The interesting thing about these two programs, of course, is that they allow—almost force—me to draw attention to the speech given by the Prime Minister in February last year, in which he made a plea for the closing of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians, said that we would try to halve the education gap, the numeracy gap and the employment gap and said that we would work together across the parliament to achieve these outcomes. He said that it was the time for a new approach to enduring problems. It certainly has been. The approach to these problems has been no funding.

In the few minutes left, I draw attention to the responses from Senator Arbib today, in which he told us that major changes were necessary because surveys indicated that the system was not working. Last week in the committee, I asked if any surveys of job seekers were conducted. The answer was no. Were any surveys of employers conducted? It would appear to me a very interesting scenario if in fact we do not know where this information came from. The tender committee, of course, had no employers, no service providers and no past job seekers.

Question agreed to.