Rachel Siewert (WA, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2013. While the Greens do not have any fundamental concerns with this bill—we think that the changes are reasonable and the right way to go in terms of ensuring this funding—we do have some concerns about comments made by the Minister for Indigenous Affairs in his second reading speech that linked these programs to school attendance. We are concerned about some of the school attendance measures that have been canvassed in the media and that we understand are being considered by the government. If the government is not considering the underlying causes of non-school attendance and some of the other issues of disadvantage that Aboriginal students and communities face, this targeted spending is not going to achieve its objectives.

School attendance, we appreciate, is critical to learning. We have no dispute on that issue. Our dispute is to do with the fact that we are not focusing on addressing the underlying issues that affect a child's capacity to attend school, that undermine a child's ability to attend school. Also, just getting a child into school does not always address the issues, unless we address some of the fundamental barriers to their being able to gain the best experiences from that school. I am talking, for example, about issues around hearing. We need to ensure, first, that Aboriginal students are attending school and, then, when they are attending school, that we are addressing that fundamental barrier to kids being able to engage with school. I have spoken on that issue many times in this place.

I have spoken about the need to make sure that we are investing in early literacy and numeracy programs, programs that address the gaps in a child's fundamental development before they even reach school, when that fundamental development has been affected by their hearing difficulties. The evidence on that is absolutely clear. Until we start doing that, getting a child into a classroom is not only not going to do that child very much good; it may actually undermine their learning experience: they will feel isolated, they will feel intimidated, they will be bullied, it will prevent their learning and it will further disenfranchise them from the school. Unless we are investing upfront, just concentrating on school attendance numbers will not address that issue.

During Senate estimates, just two weeks ago, I asked about whether we were recording not just enrolment but also attendance in preschool, and we are not actually doing that as a uniform approach around Australia. In the NT, I understand, we are having trouble getting that data. Just having children enrolled in early education does not achieve the desired outcome. Facilitating children's attendance and making sure that they can hear and are engaging with those programs is something that we will continue to follow up with government, because, unless we address that fundamental issue, the money that we further invest is not going to achieve the outcomes.

I want to go back to this issue of school attendance. What we have heard talked about very recently is waving a big stick around and investing in truancy officers to try to get kids to school. Again, we believe that that is going to be a waste of money, a waste of resources, if we are not addressing some of the underlying causes. It is absolutely essential that we engage families. We have no dispute with government about that. It is absolutely essential that we engage those students and families in school. The concern is that having truancy officers running around—it is a very old-fashioned approach, I must say—enforcing school attendance can be demeaning to families. It can also lead to blame within the family and further dysfunction in the family, which is one of the reasons why we also do not support the SEAM program. I have spoken about this on many occasions. The SEAM program ultimately cuts social security payments to families whose children persistently miss school or are not enrolled in school. This has an impact on the broader family, can lead to blame within the family—we have heard this directly from families—and makes it very hard to survive when you are not getting paid any money into the community.

We need to stop and think about how students in remote communities think about and engage with school. Of course, this is not just about remote communities, but a lot of the programs are currently focused on remote communities. We need to make sure that we have programs that are bridging the gap between home life, school and, ultimately, a job. Often the connection is not there for Aboriginal students. They are told there will be jobs at the end of school, but there are not. School is not meeting their needs. It is disconnected from family. There is not, as I said, a clear link between what happens in school and jobs. Often the jobs that are held out are not the sorts of jobs that students particularly want. Quite often, parents have been disengaged from the school system in their lives. They have seen no direct outcomes from their education that have led to improvements in their lives. So therefore we need to engage parents as well. There is a lot of evidence to suggest that engaging parents and families in school will lead to better outcomes. Engaging families and communities in decisions about education, their schools and their local community is also important. Having Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander assistance in schools also produces a good outcome.

Aboriginal students often do not have the same attitudes to school as some of their Western counterparts. Competing on standardised tests and topping the class are not necessarily the drivers for them in school. They quite often feel shame in school that these issues are not adequately addressed, particularly when you layer on top of that the issues to do with their not being able to hear. Going into a situation where you are not being spoken to in your first language; you cannot hear; in some instances, because you have a hearing impairment, you are used to using hand language; and you are feeling alienated in a classroom that is not your usual environment, of course you are going to feel isolated, particularly when people may be raising their voices because you may not be responding to them speaking to you.

These issues are all still happening in our classrooms today and are barriers to learning. We need to look at where we can invest in innovative learning spaces that actually meet children's needs, that are comfortable places for them to learn in. We also, as boys and girls get older, need to look at different spaces for young men and women, because this is still an issue in some schools, and look at how we can do more informal out-of-school learning and make sure we provide those sorts of spaces. All these things, to a lot of people, would seem like common sense, but apparently to some they are not. Looking at culturally appropriate programs is also important, as is looking at bilingual language programs—I am aware of the ongoing dispute around those issues—and making sure that students have access to digital technology and putting sound fields in classrooms. We still do not have a standard approach across Australia around sound fields in classrooms.

As you can see from that list, there are a lot of things that take investment in resources. We are much better off investing in those areas than we are in a standard approach to truancy—the big stick approach. I will not even call what we need to be looking at the carrot approach, because it is not; it is looking at the creative ways we can invest in education to meet students' needs and understand the issues around school attendance. We do need to be improving that, but we need to make sure that we are meeting students' needs, that we have a school system that meets students' needs and that, once we get them into the classroom, they are actually learning in a way that is culturally appropriate and that students can respond to. That is where we need to be investing our money. Punitive approaches do not work and will not work.

So, yes, we will be supporting this particular bill because we think this is a step in the right direction. It means we do not have to keep revisiting some of these issues in terms of appropriations every year. But we are also clearly saying that we need to improve our education system for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. The system is not meeting their needs, and beating them around the head with big truancy sticks will not address the issue. Changing the way that we deliver education and making sure our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students can actually hear when they walk in the door and are on par with non-Aboriginal students in terms of being able to hear are very important. To do that, we need to be investing even before they go to school in early literacy and numeracy programs to cover what they have missed out on in brain development because they cannot hear—I have been through that before.

The activity in our brain gets allocated very early on in our lives. If we cannot hear, that part of our brain that hears gets allocated to other activities, so you do not actually develop the techniques to be able to hear and develop numeracy and literacy. There are now programs available that can help two-, three- and four-year-olds learn how to hear. That is a fundamental step as those children then go into the classroom. It is one of the best things we can do for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children who are affected by hearing problems created through otitis media. I remind the chamber that Australia has a pandemic of otitis media in Aboriginal communities. We need to be addressing that issue, but we need to address the symptoms that that has led to, and those are hearing problems.

All these things need to be dealt with together as a package. Just investing in truancy and punitive approaches will not work. I will be following this issue very closely during estimates. The minister who will be addressing the chamber after me said that the government is still considering the approaches it will be taking to attendance. I hope it will be taking a much broader view than has been previously articulated so that we have a comprehensive package that addresses the fundamental gaps in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children's education. At the moment, the programs do not and will not. As Senator McLucas articulated during her speech just then, we have had some improvements, but on some indicators we have gone backward. If we are going to meet our commitment to close the gap by 2030, we need to make some very significant progress. We will be supporting this bill, but we will continue to watch and pursue changes to the way we approach education for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students.