Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to talk about a range of Indigenous education matters. It is a subject that I am pretty passionate about and have a strong personal commitment to. In the last week, three reports have been handed down that should not go unnoticed or without comment.

I welcome the release this week by FaHCSIA of the Footprints in time: Longitudinal study of indigenous children. The Footprints in time study provides a picture of the early lives of children through the lenses of health, education, parenting, and social and demographic circumstances across remote, regional and urban Australia. Under the guidance of Professor Mick Dodson, FaHCSIA's research aims to improve the understanding of and the policy response to these diverse circumstances faced by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander children, their families and their communities. The data that is available is rich and valuable.

Footprints in t ime has confirmed just how important education is in helping to give children a strong start in life. The findings detail improvements in outcomes for Indigenous children, reflecting the government's unprecedented investment in early childhood education. For example, nearly 90 per cent of children find going to school enjoyable and this means that these children are attending school—and we all know that school attendance is vital for any long-term success. The Footprints in time study also shows that children who participate in preschool programs or formal education programs, say through their childcare centre, have more developed reading and writing skills and are better prepared for learning in the classroom.

The mothers and the carers who were surveyed see education as an essential ingredient for getting the best possible start in life.

They said in the survey that they want their children to finish high school and to go into further education and training or employment.

The release of this report is certainly important. It is an indicator and confirms for us the importance of retention funding and giving support to families, particularly with children of very young years. In the early lives of children, it can have an amazing impact on the journey for them for the rest of their lives. I congratulate FaHCSIA on this research and I welcome the continued longitudinal study and the outcomes that we will see in years to come.

The second report that I want to talk about tonight is the report handed down by the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs. The report is entitled Our land our languages. It was tabled on Monday in the House of Representatives. I think it contributes significantly to building a complete picture of what constitutes Indigenous languages in this country, what makes Indigenous education highly accessible and what makes Indigenous education successful by delivering the best possible outcomes for students.

I have had a chance to read through the report and I think it encapsulates where Indigenous languages are in this country. It covers the fact that many years ago we had so many, that they are now diminishing in number and that not enough is being done across a wide range of particularly government programs to maintain and keep those languages. The report provides a very good snapshot of what is happening and what ought to happen in our country.

As I read through the report I see many names that I recognise, particularly those people in the Northern Territory who provided submissions and evidence to that inquiry. They are people I have worked with, people I know and people I respect—the Michael Christies of the world and the Brian Devlins of the world and Indigenous people right throughout the Territory who would have passionately given evidence to the inquiry about the importance of language and the maintenance of their language.

I am disappointed, though, that the member for Solomon, Natasha Griggs, was a member of that inquiry and attended only one public hearing in Darwin. I notice that there are no dissenting comments in the report, so I hope that, in supporting all of the recommendations of that report—including the recommendation to support, resource and encourage bilingual education—she takes that commitment to the current and newly elected Northern Territory Country Liberal government and puts that view very strongly.

The committee found that language is inseparable from culture, kinship, land and family and that language is the foundation upon which the capacity to learn, interact and to shape identity is built. The report heard that there was devastation in communities when their language was lost and that the key to developing competency in standard Australian English is for the child to be taught bilingually, with the child's first language to be used as the basis for learning in their earliest years.

I have stood in this place and championed the benefits of a curriculum that supports bilingual education and I have spoken of the cognitive development that is necessary for a child to learn how to read and write in their first language, and I was very encouraged to find that the outcome and the recommendations of that House of Representatives report endorsed my views and sentiments about the benefits of bilingual education.

The report went further to say that what we ought to do is totally relook at the NAPLAN tests in this country and either create a test for year 5 and year 7 children in their own language or in fact exempt children in years 3 and 5 from the NAPLAN test. I would urge Minister Garrett and DEEWR to look very closely at the reasons and rationale in that report for those recommendations. What are we really testing in years 3 and 5 with NAPLAN? We are not really testing the child's knowledge of English; we are testing whether or not they have the cognitive skills to read and comprehend what they are reading. I have always believed that bilingual schools should be exempt from those tests until year 7 or that those tests should in some way be translated into a context that truly reflects what we are trying to test and mark as we put those children through the NAPLAN process.

I commend that report for people who are champions of Indigenous language and particularly champions of bilingual education.

Finally, the third most significant report that was released this week goes to the other end of the spectrum—that is, Indigenous access to higher education. This report was commissioned by my colleague Senator Evans and was of course spearheaded by the work of Professor Larissa Behrendt. The review focused on barriers that are preventing Indigenous people from achieving their full potential in higher education. It recommends actions that will result in parity. Some of the barriers identified are not limited to Indigenous students only, and I think Professor Behrendt makes that very clear in an article that is in today's Australian. Only 1.4 per cent of enrolments in universities around this country are from people who identify as Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and only one per cent of full-time equivalent staff in universities are Indigenous. I notice that Dr Steve Larkin, from the Charles Darwin University and a fine member of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council, played a pivotal role in this report.

The report says a number of things that I think are worthwhile for people to have a clear and concise look at. It says that we should be building a new generation of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander professionals through our university system—and I think people should reflect on that. The fact that we are getting more and more people through with a degree is great, but we need to actually build that community of professionals. Universities are the ones that have to make this difference. Universities have to embrace the outcomes and recommendations of this report and make the change. Governments can back them and support them all the way, but universities have to sign up to making a difference, to making access to higher education easier for Indigenous people, to supporting them on their journey and to then offering them a place as a professional and a staff person in their universities for years to come.