Nigel Scullion (NT, Country Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Nationals) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a second reading contribution to the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008. This bill seems to go a lot further than the legislation introduced by the previous government. We legislated for welfare payments to be quarantined in the event of the bad behaviour of welfare recipients—such as not sending children to school and neglecting children to the extent that they were brought to the attention of the child protection agencies—and where there appeared to be no amelioration of that behaviour. But this legislation provides for the actual suspension and potentially the cancellation of welfare payments.

This is where things really start to divide. This is where the rubber hits the road. This is a very sophisticated and complicated social policy environment. The government is now introducing legislation where the compliance penalty will be to take money from families—simply to take money from families and ensure that that is sufficient leverage. But, as we know, taking money from a family has a direct impact on a range of people who perhaps were not the perpetrators in the matter. The previous government, of course, said welfare quarantining would ensure that at least the children who were supposed to be going to school still had food on the table. We ensured that the basic commodities needed at what was sometimes a very difficult time for these individuals were there. Perhaps those on the other side did not have enough time. Perhaps they were a bit busy and had only a few moments to cobble the legislation together. But it is an extremely unsophisticated and clumsy approach to policy to have the sort of compliance that is going to make the circumstances of these individuals and families worse.

Of course we all want kids to go to school so that they receive the best possible education. I understand that at the moment some 20,000 children of school age are not enrolled, and some of the reports indicate that, on any given day, around 200,000 children are not attending school. There is no doubt that this legislation, which we will be supporting, clumsy though it is, is an attempt to ameliorate the parlous circumstances that these children find themselves in.

Like most of us in this place—or perhaps not—I was certainly a child who needed all the assistance he could in getting to school. Had it not been for the size 12 boot of the local constabulary, I would not have attended at all. I understand why some children do not find the school environment particularly attractive. But it is the responsibility of the states and territories, and for someone of my generation it beggars belief that they would have 200,000 kids on any given day not attending school. We used to wag every now and again, but someone was on our case all the time. Think about the future of those 200,000 kids. In this place we talk very glibly about rights. The word rolls off the tongue. Rights seem to be something you can pull out of anywhere. But I would think nobody would disagree with the fundamental right of access to education.

The states and territories have let us down dreadfully. It is surprising to see such truancy, which is effectively what it is. The fundamentally Labor states and territories have failed this country so badly that they are now calling on the Commonwealth government to act to make sure the kids go to school. That is the sort of abject failure we are seeing around the country. I am not sure what they will be asking us to do next—rates? Rubbish? I am not really sure. Maybe we are going to be asked to provide Commonwealth bus drivers to go and get the kids. This is a monumental failure of the state and territory governments.

We support the federal action, but the states have to be involved. The government talks about ending the blame game; there is a lot of rhetoric in that area. Ending the blame game does not mean saying to the states and territories: ‘Sorry about that. You’ve forgotten to do your job, so we’ll just take it over.’ The states and territories have to be involved in lifting capacity in the medium term to ensure they can get back to doing the job they should be doing.

The situation will be that schools and principals will have to report attendance figures to Centrelink if they are not currently providing this information to their own state education departments. So often the state education departments, when you say, ‘How is it going—what is your attendance like?’ find it very difficult to provide that information. But now a principal will have to make the decision. He might say, ‘We know that Johnny is a bit like Nigel and he is down the creek, fishing every day. There may be a bit of a difficulty with Johnny and his family and, as the principal of the school, I have to ring up Centrelink and tell them that they have to cut off their dole.’ I think that is a pretty tough call for a schoolteacher, or any person who is caring for children, to make. They are going to have to make that call. I think it would have been a lot better and a much more sophisticated approach to say to these principals: ‘You have to make a decision so that there is some leverage and they will still be able to feed their kids. They might even be able to afford the bus fare, to make sure the kids can go to school, now they have decided to do it.’ But in this unsophisticated approach they will be taking the money away again. Our approach was a much better system, which was simply to quarantine the welfare.

Mr Rudd has been very big on demanding benchmarks and critical performance indicators for all the legislation. He talked about closing the gap. He said we would get specific benchmarks and we would know when we had reached them and when the policies were absolutely successful. But if you read this legislation there is nothing like that in it. What are we attempting to get? Is it 100 per cent attendance? Is it 95 per cent? Is it 90 per cent? We are not really sure, but we are going to implement this legislation and just hope for the best. It is very clumsy. It seems to be inconsistent with the rhetoric from those on the other side about putting in specific targets. It is going to be very hard to judge whether there is success or failure. This is a bit of a stunt. You read on the front pages of the newspapers that government is being hard and decisive and taking tough action. We will speak about the tough action in a moment. I wonder about the stunt aspect of that.

We have raised concerns through the Senate committee process about Centrelink resources. Is Centrelink going to be able to process all the attendance reports from every school around the country and isolate individual parents who may not be sending their kids to school? It is unfortunate that the minister is not here because then I would have had the opportunity to bail him up personally about this. I am sure he is listening. At the moment there is a bit of a crisis in Centrelink. Most people in business understand that when you make a change in a $100 billion business you have a look at the reactions to that. We have made a number of changes here. The government said, ‘We’re going to remove the liaison officers.’ So what changed? There was an eight per cent increase in complaints. Every single indicator to do with Centrelink shows that it is underresourced and the staff are overworked. I pay huge credit to the wonderful Centrelink staff, who work their hearts out in an ever-changing and difficult environment. This is going to be another impost, a new area. The message is: ‘Centrelink, by the way, you are now going to be responsible for truancy.’ And we do not seem to be providing any additional resources for that.

You can imagine the difficulty in contacting and counselling parents and in breaching them so that their payments are stopped. This is an entirely new area and quite a difficult area to deal with. It is certainly something that the states and territories have put in the too-hard basket. It is an enormous job. It is going to be resource intensive. But the real point is that this entire thing will be a complete stunt. We will support it, but it is going to be a complete stunt and a complete waste of time. It is another half-baked idea. Remember the old pie that is still frozen in the middle? It is going to be one of those, because they have not resourced Centrelink sufficiently to be able to perform this new task.

There are also a couple of legal issues—again, I am not sure whether this was done in a rush—to do with providing information to Centrelink. Most state and territory governments do not appear to have reliable attendance data. That has been a problem for some time. Even if they had the data, I do not know whether they would be prepared to provide it to the Rudd government. In 2006 COAG agreed to provide attendance data, but here we are today, in 2008, and there is no attendance data. In fact, after agreeing to it, Tasmania said, ‘I think we’ve got a terrible problem under the Privacy Act and that’s the reason we can’t do it.’

How is this going to work, given that the states and territories said they were going to provide the data and two years later they still have not been able to do it? The fundamental process of identification in this matter is through the attendance data. I cannot see anything in the legislation about how this is going to be addressed. If the minister has an opportunity to address that issue, I would certainly appreciate it. So the real question is: are the state and territory governments on board? It has been their responsibility. We have been letting them off the hook. But are they now on board to provide the vital data to Centrelink which, under this legislation, this entire process hinges on? If they are not capable of providing that then this is just a tough bill stunt to try to make the PM look like he has a bit of spine that, in effect, does absolutely nothing. This is spin over substance. Really, the only outcome being sought is a newspaper headline. That is why it is absolutely essential that we ensure that the resources are there so that Centrelink has the appropriate support. We need really strong action in that regard. Otherwise, this legislation will have absolutely no effect.

What are the states and territories going to do to support truancy officers? They have to make a commitment. I will be supporting this legislation in the short term because, hopefully, it will get kids to school and support the states and territories up to a point. But there has to be a point where they take responsibility for their task. That has to be a part of these negotiations. There has to be a commitment from government, through COAG, that the states and territories will start playing their part. Perhaps I am a bit naive, but I think that the Commonwealth and the states should be working together to ensure that we enrol all children. Surely we as a nation have the capacity to find out where the 20,000 children who are not enrolled live. We should have compliance services to ensure that they remain at school. You can imagine that, with all kids at school enjoying a full and well-rounded education, the outcome would be that all Australian children would have much brighter future prospects. That is something that I would call an education revolution. It would be a revolution that this side would be prepared to support.

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

The Australian Greens believe that the best educational and social outcomes for Australian families and their children will be achieved if the children are enrolled in and regularly attending school and actively participating in an education that is relevant to their lives, their culture and their aspirations. However, we do not believe that this is what the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 is all about. This bill is not a genuine attempt to deliver educational engagement. It is nothing more than an exercise in crass populism, with no evidence base whatsoever, from a government that should know better.

The vast majority of witnesses and nearly all of the submissions to this inquiry—29 out of 31—were highly critical of the rationale for this initiative. They pointed to the failure of overseas trials of punitive measures and argued that these measures were likely to succeed for the same reasons. They also pointed to the success of positive initiatives such as those based on a social inclusion framework, using strengths-based teaching measures or improving educational engagement and outcomes. They also questioned why, if this was really meant to be a trial to gather evidence, it only focuses on punitive measures and only targets families on income support when there is no evidence or reason to believe that their children are the only ones skipping school or that parental responsibility is the primary reason for low attendance rates. The evidence points to other factors.

From the Australian Greens’ point of view, the most disappointing aspect of this legislation is its inconsistency with government policy commitments. We welcomed the ALP’s election promise of an education revolution, as we saw a real need to address the failure of our education system to engage with some of our children, particularly those from disadvantaged and socially excluded backgrounds. We believe that more needs to be done to address the educational needs of Indigenous students; of children from migrant and refugee backgrounds, for whom English is often a second or third language; and of children growing up in households experiencing complex and multifactorial disadvantage, as described by Tony Vinson in his work on ‘poverty postcodes’. Senator Stephens will know full well what I am referring to. However, we do not believe that this approach is, or ever could be, part of a genuine education revolution. We are concerned that these measures will actively undermine efforts at progressive education reform by unfairly targeting one group of disadvantaged students, a group whom the current system is failing, and making them directly responsible for the ill fortune of their families, rather than addressing the educational barriers they face. What the government is doing here is extending the concept of mutual obligation to third parties who are children. I cannot think of a measure more likely to further alienate disadvantaged families from schools, with which we badly need them to engage; to incite and inflame family conflict; and to increase the social isolation and exclusion of children from a disadvantaged background from their schools, the education system and their peers.

The government’s social inclusion agenda, according to the Parliamentary Secretary for Social Inclusion and the Voluntary Sector, is a very ambitious agenda in which every one of us has a part to play. We have to identify the systems, attitudes, programs and processes that prevent everyone having a fair go in our society. We have to understand why people are not able to engage in work and education or make connections with family, friends and their local community. Please tell me how this approach could possibly be consistent with what everybody accepts as the definition of ‘social inclusion’. How does it identify the systems, attitudes and processes that lead to the exclusion of children from disadvantaged families? How does it initiate and promote social inclusion? How does it bring about a revolution in education?

The Australian Greens do not believe that the proposed legislation reflects a commitment to a social inclusion agenda or is part of a genuine effort to engage with the causes of social inclusion rather than the symptoms. There is no evidence of a concerted effort by the government to understand the reasons why children are not engaging with the education system or to address the systemic barriers that prevent them from having a fair go. According to the explanatory memorandum, the purpose of the bill is to engender behavioural change in parents who are receiving income support, with the aim being to improve the school enrolment and attendance of the children. The entire approach taken in this bill is built upon the premise that parental encouragement and a lack of parental responsibility among parents on income support is the key factor and the primary cause of poor attendance and that a punitive, sanctions based approach is the most efficient and effective way to improve school attendance. The Greens believe that this approach and these assumptions are fatally flawed and that the system is not only unlikely to lead to better school attendance and improved educational outcomes but likely to lead to an increase in family stress and social exclusion for those affected.

The logic and assumptions underlying this policy approach are not based on the wealth of international and domestic research concerning school attendance, improved educational outcomes and social inclusion. They do not reflect best-practice models or the findings of successful programs. While we have heard a lot lately about the importance of consultation with the community sector and the idea of a compact, we note that all of the charities and crisis support groups who gave evidence to the inquiry complained that there had been no consultation with them about these measures, no consultation about their capacity to support likely increases in demand for the service and no extra resources provided to the already overstretched service providers in the affected areas.

WACOSS, the Western Australian Council of Social Service, told the committee about the already high level of unmet need in the Cannington trial region in WA and the number of people who have already been turned away from crisis centres. There were 9,750 people turned away from overloaded services in 2006-07. The Greens are deeply concerned that no additional resources are being provided for case management or financial counselling of the families affected and that no resources or services are being provided to the schools, who will have an obligation under this bill to engage with these families and offer them support programs to help re-engage their children in school. ACOSS warned that the trials would impose serious implementation and resource challenges and noted that there was potential for the policy to be applied unevenly across the trial sites, depending on the schools’ capacity to work with families to address underlying issues.

For a trial that is limited to eight communities and does not put any resources into education or social support, this is an expensive exercise. The administration budget is $17 million. We also know that 80 per cent of the $12.6 million cost of administering the schooling requirements bill has been allocated to IT staffing alone. As welfare quarantining and the NT intervention have also shown, this kind of punitive approach to using the welfare system to push people around has been very expensive to administer. We need to ask ourselves some serious questions when the limited money we have to spend on education and social policy is all being eaten up by bureaucrats and so little of it is being spent on teachers, counsellors or direct support to those in need.

The Australian Greens believe that this money would be better spent on addressing the underlying causes of poor attendance and education outcomes, on building on successful programs like those that engage Aboriginal families and communities in the life of the school, to build on kids’ strengths, interests, knowledge, skills and culture; to excite and inspire them; and to build their confidence in themselves and in their capacity as learners and contributors and as the workers and leaders of the future. The reasons for poor school attendance and engagement and for poor education outcomes are complex and multifaceted and those relating to Aboriginal students are doubly so.

A simplistic approach that reduces the problem to an issue of bottoms on seats and forces children to attend school is unlikely to produce any long-term improvement in educational outcomes for marginalised kids. If they do not want to be there and resent the way they have been forced to attend, how is that going to improve their learning opportunities? Unless the approach taken to school truancy addresses the complex barriers to educational engagement and tackles the underlying causes of nonattendance it will not deliver results. There is a huge body of evidence out there about the underlying causes of poor attendance and poor outcomes and about which programs and interventions have been shown to work and make a difference.

The findings of the Western Australian Aboriginal Child Health Survey and the work of Professor Fiona Stanley and Colleen Hayward indicate that low school attendance was most likely to result from student disengagement arising from frustration and lowered self-esteem as a result of poor school performance. It suggested part of the problem was a lack of understanding and identification with the values, expectations and ethos of the school and the failure of the school to be culturally relevant in ways that respect and validate the student’s identity, culture and life experience. It also suggested the failure to provide educational experiences that were relevant to the child’s life circumstances was a much greater factor than parental responsibility and was highly dismissive of the stereotypes presented by the media which sought to blame lazy and neglectful parents for the truancy of their kids—the same stereotypes that now seem to be informing the approach being taken by this government.

The factors the WA Aboriginal Child Health Survey found to be associated with attendance at school by Aboriginal students in particular included Aboriginality and poverty. Students in schools with a high proportion of Aboriginal students, schools that had Aboriginal and Islander Education Officers and government schools in the highest quartile of socioeconomic index for schools were more likely to have poor school attendance. Other causes included: trouble getting enough sleep at home, often due to overcrowded and inappropriate housing and a rise in family conflict; the education experience and achievement of the carers; the presence of clinically significant emotional or behavioural difficulties; the number of recent significant family life stress events; the lack of access to early childhood education; and nonattendance at day care. Students were more likely to have missed miss 26 days or more of school a year if their main language spoken in the playground was Aboriginal English or an Aboriginal language.

One significant finding of this research is a direct empirical link between intergenerational trauma and poor school attendance. Children whose primary carer had been forcibly removed from their family as a result of policies which produced the stolen generation were much more likely to be absent from school, and I quote:

The survey found that the proportion of students who has missed at least 26 days of school was significantly higher among students whose primary carer was forcibly separated from their natural family than among those whose primary carer had not been separated.

This is why I find it particularly disturbing that the same Rudd Labor government that commenced its term by delivering a historic apology to the stolen generations could be so blind to the impacts of the trauma of that removal that it would continue to implement and expand policies that exacerbate the ongoing problems of those Aboriginal families. It is entirely understandable that parents and carers whose experience of education was being brought up in institutions that brutalised them and denied their humanity, their worth and their culture would have a low opinion of the worth of schooling and a distrust of educational authorities. Of course these values have been passed on within families. It is little wonder that parents and carers who were removed from their families and brought up in institutions subsequently struggled with child rearing when they had families of their own. For this group in particular, who represent a significant proportion of the Nyoongar community concentrated in the Cannington trial area, a punitive approach to schooling engagement is particularly inappropriate.

In evidence to the committee, Professor Larissa Behrendt summarised the results of a number of studies which showed that poor school attendance by Aboriginal children was associated with low socioeconomic status, low parental achievement, domestic violence, child abuse and drug and alcohol abuse. Others, including WACOSS and the ALS in WA, highlighted the link between poor health and school attendance. For instance, the NACCHO Ear Trial and School Attendance Project found that children with chronic ear infections missed more days of school and had much worse educational outcomes.

The 1999 NT Learning lessons report also found that children with low attendance rates were more likely to have hearing loss resulting from chronic ear disease. If these kids were unable to hear what the teacher was saying it is little wonder that they were doing poorly at school. Poor nutrition, together with hunger from not having breakfast or not being able to bring lunch, have been found to impact on both school attendance and school outcomes. So too have inadequate housing, homelessness and a lack of sufficient sleep. I could go on and on. These are all significant issues which create real barriers to school attendance and educational outcomes, and they should be addressed by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments as a priority.

I mentioned earlier the NT Learning lessons report from 1999. This major report also found that there was: ‘A widespread desire amongst Indigenous people for improvements in the education of their children.’ It blamed long-term systemic failures within NT education and described poor attendance rates as ‘an educational crisis’, recommending major changes to the Northern Territory education system and a significant commitment of resources to address underlying issues in health and housing as well as to provide more teachers, classrooms and education resources. It also pointed to the need to collaborate and engage with Aboriginal families and communities, saying that there was:

... a need to establish partnerships between Indigenous parents, communities, and peak bodies, the service providers and both the NT and Commonwealth Governments ... to honestly acknowledge the gravity and causes of declining outcomes, its destructiveness to future Indigenous aspirations ... and to assume the joint responsibility of immediately reversing the downward trend.

That was in 1999, and the NT government has yet to implement the recommendations of this report. It has not even developed an attendance strategy, as was recommended in that report.

We need to build on what we know works. We should be fixing health and housing, addressing poverty and making sure kids are not starving and can hear and understand what is going on in their classroom. We should be encouraging families to get more involved with the school and making school more relevant to the interests, experiences and culture of the kids—not wasting money on these ill-founded, wrongheaded, punitive regimes. Focusing on addressing these underlying causal factors and building on existing successful programs is a more sensible, evidence based approach which is more likely to produce worthwhile outcomes and deliver value for money.

We know the NT government currently lacks the capacity to cater for all of its eligible students. If all of those students who should be at school turned up tomorrow, there would simply not be enough desks, classrooms or teachers to cope. The Commonwealth government has a four-year plan to address capacity and resource constraints within the NT school system and has committed $98.8 million in the 2008-09 budget to provide for 200 new teachers. Perhaps it would make more sense to roll out these positive programs to engage Indigenous students in the NT as teachers, schools and desks become available. The Australian Education Union doubts if enough experienced teachers can be found to fill these places. The NTER review report thought that much more needed to be spent to close the gap in education and said an extra $1.7 billion was needed over five years to provide more teachers, more staff and more infrastructure.

One might ask: is it really a trial when the legislation is not limited to eight trial sites? The legislation could be rolled out across Australia. If in fact it is only a trial, we believe the government should accept the amendments the Greens are seeking to move—amendments that really limit this trial to the eight sites the government says it is going to be applied to. There is no sufficient detail on how this is going to be evaluated. This is a punitive approach. There is nothing to say that it is a positive approach, an incentives based approach, and at this stage there is no time limit. I have many, many questions to ask during the committee stage of this debate. Many questions arose during the committee inquiry that remain unanswered and many questions have arisen since then.

Why are we not looking at the positive approaches that can be taken, rather than the punitive approaches? There are examples of best practice programs in education which focus on increasing student engagement by making educational materials and programs more relevant and accessible and by engaging families and communities in the cultural life of the school. That is where we should be investing our resources. Has the government thought about how it is going to deal with the many issues that are going to arise out of this trial? What happens to vulnerable children and their families? What happens to the young carers who, during the committee inquiry in Perth, we found were a particularly at-risk group? Young carers are a not properly identified group that are going to be adversely impacted by these so-called trials. We believe this will have a disproportionate impact on young carers who are already struggling to care for a parent or a family member with a disability or chronic illness. Many of these young carers are embarrassed or ashamed of their caring arrangements and are known to be reluctant to acknowledge issues and come forward for health. This issue may become particularly fraught where they are caring for parent who has an intermittent mental health problem—which would be likely to be exacerbated by contact from Centrelink and the threat of income suspension. We are particularly concerned about this group.

We are deeply, deeply concerned about this legislation. We oppose it to the hilt—in case anybody has not got that clear message. It is not the appropriate way to deal with these significant issues of disadvantage in the year 2008. I urge the opposition, with all their concerns about this legislation, to stand with us and oppose this and push the government into taking a truly socially inclusive agenda. I cannot believe a Rudd government would bring this in. (Time expired)

Anne McEwen (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to incorporate a second reading speech on behalf of Senator Xenophon.

Leave granted.

Nick Xenophon (SA, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The incorporated speech read as follows—

I rise to indicate that while I support the second reading of these bills, I will be monitoring the bill’s implementation and trial closely.

The Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 will allow the suspension or cancellation of income support payments to a parent whose child is either not enrolled in school or has unsatisfactory attendance at school.

It also provides for a trial in a number of sites before its future implementation nationally.

From the outset, I want to make it unequivocally clear, I support any measure that will get and keep students in school.

The evidence is clear that the more and the longer a student is at school, the better it is for the lifelong employment, health and socio-economic prospects.

It results in better quality lives for the individual and ultimately less demand on the taxpayer.

However, my concern with these bills is that they do not go far enough.

It is my view that the Government could be doing much more than what is contained in these bills.

What concerns me further is that the Coalition, by indicating it will support these bills, may be taking an easier option with truancy.

Mr Acting Deputy President, truancy and student disengagement are serious issues in our schools.

According to the Minister, currently up to 20,000 children are not enrolled in school.

School attendance rates vary, but in my home state of South Australia, the latest official estimate of overall non-attendance was around 7% of students. Of these, over 17% were indigenous.

In a specific study in Term Two 2004, over 10% of students were absent for more than 20% of the term.

The highest rates of unexplained absences in my state are in Year 10 - when one in ten students give no reason for not being at school.

School retention rates are also a problem and while State Governments are loath to release this data, official estimates are that one in four students who start Year 8 do not complete Year 12.

The Government rightly points out that the challenges of enrolment, attendance and retention are greater in urban fringe schools and socially disadvantaged areas.

However, what is the Government’s solution?

To take away welfare payments to parents for up to 13 weeks if their child is not enrolled in or attending school.

I see a number of challenges with this strategy.

Firstly, there is the assumption that people receiving welfare are the problem. It is not just the unemployed or those in need of income support that may not ensure their children attend school regularly.

There are also the underemployed, the single parents, those with mental heath issues or parents with drug problems, all of whom may not receive pensions, but some of whom may condone truancy.

And what of those parents who are more affluent but still turn a blind eye to truancy, is their child’s lack of attendance any less important?

I would have liked the Government to have brought a more comprehensive approach using other incentives, perhaps tax penalties, for all parents who do not insist on their children attending school.

Truancy comes at a cost to the individual and the taxpayer, both now and in the future.

Yet some could interpret this bill to be less like an education revolution and more like an education devolution of responsibility.

Where is the evidence that parents on pensions value the education of their children less than other parents?

Why does support for one’s income imply less support for education?

Surely a case could be made that it is those without work who are most keenly aware of the value of education for work.

The risk with this bill is that it obscures the multiple and complex influences on truancy, which demand serious and sophisticated response.

Many other things can influence truancy beyond just the actions of the parent. For instance, there is lack of transport, bullying, having to care for family members, poor health and poverty, just to name a few.

And what about the responsibility of schools?

School culture, irrelevant curriculum, poor quality teaching and lack of time for individual attention can all contribute to truancy.

When one reads the research in relation to the middle years of schooling, it becomes quite clear that the transition between primary and secondary school can also be a major contributing factor to student disengagement and truancy.

Research on South Australian schools confirms that unexplained absence rates increase significantly as students enter the high school years.

As students shift from a form of schooling that focuses on the individual and the interdisciplinary, to a form that emphasises the competitive and the disciplinary, many students struggle to cope.

The longitudinal surveys of youth, conducted by the Australian Council of Educational Research, highlight that many of the students who are deciding to leave school early, in fact do so in the first years of high school.

This involves planning and funding, not just pension cuts.

More funding to attract better quality teachers.

More funding to develop innovative and relevant curriculum.

More funding for smaller class sizes and more attention to individual student needs.

Governments need to consider ways to invest, rather than ways to divest.

In the light of research that shows that punitive measures have little impact on serious cases of truancy, why focus solely on taking away parents’ pensions?

What are the possible negative consequences for cancelling payments to the child through things further social exclusion?

Will this provision act as a disincentive to foster carers or others who would otherwise seek to help children in need, but do not want to risk their welfare payments?

Amongst lower socio-economic areas and amongst consistent truants there are issues of students shifting between schools, due to shifting between parents, or school suspension, or behaviour issues. How will this issue of student churn be addressed so that those most likely not to be enrolled are not overlooked?

Different states have different policies and procedures, so potentially a parent could lose their pension in one state, while another parent keeps theirs. How is this fair?

This equally applies to schools. How will consistency be maintained to avoid the risk that some schools penalise certain parents, but respond less harshly to others?

Will this bill result in an even greater administrative load on teachers, who are already stretched to find enough time in the day to meet their teaching responsibilities?

Government and non-government schools have different methods of recording attendance, how will consistency be maintained?

How will the department really know what is going on with such diverse reporting methods?

In his submission to the Senate Inquiry into this bill, Mr Graham Carters, Deputy Secretary for Employment and Policy with the department admitted that the Government does not know if the approach will be effective.

I believe there is merit in the Government trialling this measure, to see if it makes a difference and to see if my concerns are validated in the real world.

And the case can be made that despite all these challenges, any measure to curb truancy is better than none.

That is why I support these bills.

But my most serious concern is not so much about the trial, but more about the nature of trial’s review.

In short, there is limited detail about how the trial will be handled.

No report to parliament.

No role for an Ombudsman or auditor.

Doubt about an independent review.

Not even clarity about if and how the department will release the results.

I have concerns about a bill that provides for a trial to be extended nationwide without independent review, parliamentary scrutiny or even the publication of its outcomes.

I wonder how representative this is?

It is a bit like asking three people with debt problems how much they owe on their credit card and without consultation setting a nationwide limit on credit.

I urge the Government, in coming weeks to clearly addresses this issue of proper, public and independent review of the trial, prior to its broader implementation.

Not because it will win my vote and not because it will change the Senate’s vote – but because it is the responsible thing to do.

That said, I indicate that I will support this bill and will be seeking information from the Minister in coming months to monitor the outcomes of this trial.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In summing up the debate, I thank senators for their contribution on the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008, and I will seek to put the government’s position. Senator Siewert has expressed her views on the matter very strongly. I think that it is important to set the record straight. The fundamental position that the government argues is that it is absolutely critical that all children attend school. We cannot have educational attainment if people do not go to school.

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

Senator Siewert interjecting—

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a fundamental proposition.

John Williams (NSW, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There’s no argument here.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I appreciate that there is no argument there, but I think it needs to be emphasised that this bill is aimed at ensuring that all children in Australia go to school.

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

No, it’s not.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge Senator Siewert’s points and the deeply held view that she has and that there are concerns being expressed in the community at large about this matter, but it is important to emphasise that this simple proposition involves a trial in selected locations around the country. It is a trial to establish whether the strategies proposed here will have a positive impact on school enrolment and attendance rates. This is an opportunity to demonstrate whether or not these strategies actually work.

There have of course been sincere concerns raised by community organisations who have made submissions to the Senate inquiry on these questions—which were reflected in some of the passion with which Senator Siewert has approached this matter tonight. However, it is important to get the facts on the table in this regard. The proposed trial phase of the measure and the evaluation will be considered carefully by the government before any extension of this program is approved. This is a measure that is aimed at ensuring that parents in the trial areas do all that they can to ensure that their children go to school.

There are measures in this bill which do involve possible temporary suspension of Centrelink payments. Such sanction will be used as a last resort and only after multiple opportunities have been provided for parents to engage with their children’s schools and with Centrelink. Whatever one says about the merits of such an approach, you cannot deny the fact that this is not unique with regard to the application and the operations of Centrelink. Centrelink suspending payments and restoring payments is not a new practice; in fact, it is normal operating procedure for Centrelink. This, however, has to be seen in the context of this particular measure, which is aimed at encouraging people to do all they can to make sure their children go to school.

With respect to the overall package, it would be wrong to address these issues merely in terms of the discussion around sanctions, because this is a bill that provides some $17.6 million in federal funding to support these measures. That involves support under the Northern Territory emergency response funding. Eighteen new classrooms are expected to be completed by the end of the year at remote schools—14 in government-run schools and four for Our Lady of the Sacred Heart School at Wadeye. Funding was also provided through the 2008-09 federal budget for a further six remote area classrooms. The Australian government is also contributing $16 million towards the construction of the Tiwi College and almost $100 million over five years to place 200 extra teachers in remote area schools.

The Australian government is also providing $8.4 million in 2008 for a quality teacher package and an accelerated literacy measure. The package will assist in reducing teacher turnover in remote schools by strengthening the skills of the existing educational workforce with a particular emphasis on local Indigenous staff. It will provide assistance to 45 remote government and non-government schools, including those at Wadeye, at Hermannsburg and on the Tiwi Islands. A further $5 million will also be provided to build 10 new teacher houses at Wadeye. This is part of the Australian government’s commitment to help recruit quality teachers and improve learning opportunities for Indigenous children.

So I would suggest to the Greens in terms of their critique of this particular program that they look at the full program and actually take a balanced view on these questions. In essence, the government is saying that, if you want to ensure that every child is able to attain the maximum of their ability within our education system, a fundamental requirement is that they go to school. We will do all we can in terms of the Commonwealth providing resources to ensure the quality of the education experience for children who do go to school. But it is also up to parents to ensure that their children attend school and take advantage of those facilities.

This is an additional tool, and the government is prepared to evaluate it and, after careful consideration, assess how it works. The truth of the matter is: for too long in this country we have had attainment rates that have meant that significant proportions of the Australian population have missed out. They have missed out in many respects. All the indicators suggest to me that, in terms of the equity measures, we are falling behind. It is the government’s view that further additional measures need to be taken to evaluate whether or not we can improve our performance. This is one such measure. I commend the bill to the chamber.

Question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.