Scott Ludlam (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

The Australian Greens oppose schedule 2 in the following terms:

(6)   Schedule 2, page 14 (line 1) to page 23 (line 20), Schedule TO BE OPPOSED.

We are proposing to remove the schedule in the legislation relating to the school enrolment attendance through welfare reform measure. Again, this is an issue that I addressed briefly in my second reading remarks. The discussion on school attendance received a great deal of media attention with regard to the intervention—everybody wants to see kids in school when school is in session. The consultation report used a large number of quotes strongly emphasising the role of parental responsibility in getting kids to school. On reading the report quickly it would seem that there is a widely held belief in communities that parents are sorely and entirely to blame for poor school attendance. However, the number of people holding these opinions is never really quantified, so, in reality, there is no indication of how many people expressed this concern and how many contrary views were expressed.

In asking communities what the government could do to encourage school attendance, a specific reference to linking attendance with welfare payments was made. Subsequently, many responses to this issue directly commented on the idea of linking income support to school attendance. It is interesting to note, however, that almost nowhere in the report was this solution offered to deal with the issue of poor attendance. It appears that the government was very keen to focus the conversation towards this outcome, which is at odds with the existing evidence of the effectiveness of such an approach. In essence, it is a kind of prejudging of the outcome: no matter what it was that you were hearing, the government had already, in effect, it appears, made up its mind as to the kind of approach that it wanted to administer.

In Senate estimates it was confirmed that the impact of the government's school enrolment attendance through welfare reform measure, which I will refer to as SEAM from here on, is unquantifiable: the results are mixed at best and it cannot be linked to educational outcomes. So I will pause here before continuing my remarks and we will begin with the previous set of amendments. Can the minister provide the chamber with any evidence of any kind—peer reviewed, anecdotal, written, unwritten, handed in on bits of bark—that quarantining income or welfare payments pending children's attendance at school actually improves the kinds of outcomes that I understand everybody in here is seeking to achieve?