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

The first thing to say is that that is a very misleading argument. The argument put by the senator goes: 'The only thing you are doing is punishing people by taking away their welfare payments, and there are all these other problems.' The reality is there is a whole range of measures designed to deal holistically with the challenges faced with schooling and school attendance in the Northern Territory, and one of the measures, which is used as a last resort in the process, is the suspension of income support payments.

The senator acknowledges that the evaluation report has provided the basis for what is in the bill. He seeks to create the sense that somehow the only thing we are doing is an income support payment penalty, when in fact the measures in the bill seek to provide and expand a range of other supports and measures. To say, 'Oh well, the kids might have some hearing issues'—quite frankly, that is what the health checks are about. And, no, we do not seek to solve that problem through SEAM. That is why it is a coordinated, holistic approach to try and address these issues. So we plead guilty if the accusation is that we are not trying to deal with the hearing issues of schoolchildren in the Northern Territory through SEAM. That is why we have such an extensive investment in the health checks and the treatment of issues that are identified.

The measures in this bill expand the support to parents and schools and seek to provide additional support. One of the key issues or initiatives is the parenting conference, which is designed to support parents in understanding the problem—why the child perhaps is not attending in the way that they should—and to work with the school, the parents, Aboriginal liaison officers and others to improve school attendance. This measure seeks to expand the supports and services available and to address the attendance issues. It also seeks to work much more closely with the Northern Territory education department, and particularly to enable local tailoring and ensure closer alignment with the Northern Territory Every Child, Every Day strategy.

I think it is unfair to try and paint this legislation as only providing a response which is focused on removal of income support payments. That is a last resort. The evaluation report picks up the need for more resources, more measures to support families and parents, to try and lift school attendance. We all accept, I think, that school attendance is key to improving the educational outcomes and opportunities for young Indigenous children. SEAM has been designed to try and help address that issue. We have also provided huge investment into the schools, into teacher training and into all the other measures that we think can help lift performance in education in the Northern Territory and give those kids a better opportunity. It is quite unfair, and wrong, to pretend that the income support measure is all that is occurring, that it is at the centre of what is occurring—rather, it is there as a last resort, as a tool that is available to authorities to try to change the culture and the terrible school attendance statistics. This bill adds a whole range of measures that will better support parents by trying to make sure we can lift attendance at school of their children.