Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am appreciative of the opportunity to be able to speak in this debate because it allows me to talk about an issue quite dear to my heart—social equity. Senators would know that one of the determinants of success in life is the level of educational outcome that students throughout our country achieve. All the research shows there are several factors which mean that different students are unable to reach the level that their potential would indicate. Those issues tend to be around whether or not a student is living in a rural or remote area, whether or not English is the first language spoken at home, whether or not that person is of Aboriginal descent, whether or not that person lives with the disability, but most significantly, whether or not that person comes from a low socioeconomic background. This seems to be one of the strongest determinants about whether a student is able to reach a reasonable level of educational outcome.

There are many ways that this can be addressed, and one of the ways that it is being dealt with in my home state of Tasmania with a great degree of success is through the establishment of child and family centres. Child and family centres were the initiative of former Premier David Bartlett. Originally there were going to be 30 rolled out around the state, but to date, only 11 have been. It is my hope that they will be rolled out throughout the entire state in the years to come. There is a degree of expense involved. Where child and family centres have been established and are working well, the outcomes for those communities are quite considerable.

I want to give honourable senators an indication of how the child and family centres work. They have a physical building, usually placed close to existing community homes or primary schools, and they act as a community service hub in the area. The child and family centres are designed to be very welcoming places where people can go—young mums, for example—to receive assistance in a whole range of programs. The idea is to find a carrot to attract a young mother to go to the child and family centre. It may be for a cooking class or a sports class. It might be for a social gathering but, once that young mum has turned up at the child and family centre, usually with young children, they can then be introduced to a whole range of programs that can help.

There is an important role in this for the child health nurses, because quite often they are the first point of contact for a young mum with a new baby for the services that are available to help them Traditionally, child health nurses have been there for physical purposes, to weigh babies, check their feeding habits et cetera—even things like measuring a baby's head and growth rates—but that role is developing into a much broader social role. There is also the opportunity for that child health nurse when they are visiting a home to check to see whether the house is warm, whether there is food in the fridge and whether or not that young mum needs a whole range of supports. By having that invitation and, hopefully, that attendance at the child and family centre, quite a lot of the issues that can hamper a young family from being effective can be addressed.

We all know that those first years of life from birth to about four or five years are the biggest determinant of long-term outcomes for any given child, so it is really important that every opportunity is taken for early intervention, should there be any problems identified.

One effective program that has been used in Tasmania for some time is what is known as Launching into Learning. This program is run through existing schools, child and family centres and, in some instances, through community houses to introduce young parents—or parents of young children—to the different ways they can facilitate and help with their child's education and all-round growth.

I have had the opportunity to attend some of these courses, and it is really good to see 25 young children, all preschool age, often with young dads, learning constructive play and some of the activities such as prelearning for literacy, which can put a child in good stead for the future. Also, there are courses on nutrition, which is really important.

Even with all these good intentions, you cannot guarantee that every child is going to reach kindergarten and prep with all the skills that we would hope all of our young children would have. We cannot be absolutely sure that they are ready and have basic home based numeracy skills. We cannot be confident that attitudes have been instilled at home that encourage learning. Even with all the hard work done through the child and family centres and with good programs like Launching into Learning, there are still children turning up at school—not all in the same place—who are not quite ready, which is when we need to introduce programs that can address that deficit.

Another very effective program being used in Tasmania is known as Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap. As the name indicates, raising the bar is lifting the expectations, the standards, that we want for all our children when it comes to literacy and numeracy; and, as the second part of the program's name implies, closing the gap is making sure that all of the students reach that level.

These programs are mostly being rolled out in primary schools around the state in the low socioecomic areas, because that is where the need is most obvious. This involves considerable funds being expended mostly through the additional employment of teachers to provide one-on-one learning, smaller class sizes and specific professional development for teachers to make sure that they have the best tool kit of skills when it comes to addressing any deficits in numeracy or literacy for those students. And the results are quite encouraging. Where there has been quite a large deficit in literacy and numeracy, in some of our grade 3, 5 and 7 testing, that deficit is being addressed and a lot of the young students in these areas are finding their literacy and numeracy levels rising.

Another important initiative to try and identify the deficit has been through the establishment of Gateway Services. Senators would be aware that there are a whole range of services that families can access, but sometimes that very act of accessing services can be quite daunting in itself; being able to find out what services are out there, how to contact them, how physically to get there. So the establishment of Gateway Services in Tasmania has been a very effective tool in addressing that problem.

Gateway Services is a physical presence in four regions of the state: either side of the city in Hobart; one in the north, and one in the north-west. They are literally a one-stop shop. Any person who feels that they need assistance can go into Gateway Services, where they will be interviewed. It can also happen over the phone; the people who answer the phone are very well trained and they go through a checklist, if you like, to find out exactly what the issue is and what problem the client needs addressing.

Sometimes those things may be around financial difficulty; they may be around accessing health services, counselling services or drug and alcohol services. Sometimes the problem with which someone presents is only scratching the surface. Someone might find, for example, that they need some emergency food vouchers. And they can ring up the Gateway Services. It might be simple; they might just be referred to one of the not-for-profits that are engaged in that area. They might be referred to a great program that is being run with the assistance of Anglicare in Tasmania around family budgeting. They might be directed to NILS, the No Interest Loan Scheme, which enables someone to get around $1,000, to purchase a fridge or washing machine, something that is vital for the family to function well.

About two years ago Gateway Services also took on the role of providing information on access to disability services, and that has been very effective. It is showing great synchronicity with the outcomes expected through the NDIS trial that is going on in Tasmania which is looking at the needs of those taking part in that particular trial—about 1,000 young people between the ages of 18 and 25 who have experienced difficulties in the past. Quite often people coming out of the education system have had a great deal of assistance as a person living with a disability, but often they have not had to seek out those services because they are physically available through the school or college that they attend. It becomes a bit of a maze after leaving school. You can understand that quite often people have difficulties working out where to go and what to do. But access to Gateway Services is certainly improving that. I know that there are similar programs in other jurisdictions.

It is good to see that we are targeting these issues through providing early family services, through places like the child and family centres; through providing an easy one-stop shop for people to be able to access services they need, like Gateway Services; through running programs in schools for preschoolers, like Launching into Learning; and then later when students are at school through programs like Raising the Bar, Closing the Gap and addressing literacy and numeracy deficits. It is good to see those happening, but inevitably there are those students who get through the school system and come out the other end without the level of skills we would hope for, without the level of qualification that enables them to gain gainful employment or go on to further study. Unfortunately, often it is those students who have fallen through the cracks—through primary school, through high school and into their teens—that are being identified and represented in our youth justice system.

Youth justice, I think, is one of the most difficult areas for any government in any jurisdiction in any colour or stripe to address. Usually it is not a large cohort of students and usually you would find if you spoke to the primary school teachers of Johnny Smith—a hypothetical student—they would say that this is the child who for different reasons missed a lot of school. Perhaps the family moved a lot. Perhaps the student did not have an environment at home that made it easy for homework to be done. It is the student who did not come to school with a good breakfast, the student whose family life is disturbed with family violence or with drug and alcohol or poverty issues who are often the students who appear within our youth justice system.

In Tasmania, we have one institution that is actually a youth detention centre with a limited budget. My last reckoning of the budget for youth justice in Tasmania was less than $15 million per year—and about $11 million of that is taken up with the running of the Ashley Youth Detention Centre. It does not matter what the offence is, it does not matter whether it is a repeat offender or if it is a young person who has been incarcerated for having committed a very serious crime, all of those young people are in together. Primarily they are boys but usually no more than 19 or 20 at any given time are up at Ashley.

Because of the nature of it being a secure facility, Ashley absorbs $11 million of about $15 million for the whole year, so it makes it very hard for effective diversionary programs to be run—very difficult indeed. In fact it puts a terrible burden sometimes on our magistrates who, when they find a person before them having committed an offence—as I said it might be very serious one or it may be an offence where a 12-year-old boy has got into trouble—have nowhere for that young person to go. There is no responsible adult for the magistrate to refer that person to so the magistrate has no option but to send that young person to the youth detention centre.

People working in the youth justice sector have been crying out for options for a very long time, not just in Tasmania but all around the country. They want bail options. They want other accommodation options. One would hope that it will not be very long until we see a situation where youth justice will be sufficiently well funded, perhaps even by the closure of the Ashley Youth Detention Centre, to enable the redirection of those funds to enable the magistrate to be able to say, 'Is there a responsible family member for this young person to be put in the care of?' In the absence of that then that young person, rather than being sent to a youth detention centre on remand and becoming part of that culture which we so much want to avoid, can go to what is often called a bail house. The young person then is safe and they have access to counselling and other support services that could hopefully get them off that path to more serious crime.

It seems a tragedy to me that we can so very early on identify families that are at risk. You can identify children at risk before they have even gone through the school gates. We become aware of these difficulties right the way through school. The kids self-identify just by their behaviour or their absence from school. Then the police know who they are and then they start up in front of magistrates with escalating levels of offence. Yet we do not seem to be able to put a stop to it. I think probably one of our prime responsibilities as legislators is to make sure that we give the tools and resources to the experts in our community—the teachers, the social workers, the youth justice workers and our police—to make sure that they can all work collaboratively to save these young people from a wasted life, a life of crime, a life of poverty, a life often associated with alcohol and drug abuse. If we can do that, not only do we, on the sheer economics of the matter, save hundreds of thousands of dollars from the costs of having people in jail—with the negative impact on the community when crimes are committed, because break-ins, muggings, car theft and all of these issues have a terrible impact on the victims of those crimes—but we also get to exercise and use the social capital of those people. It is my firm and fervent belief that there is truly inherent value in every single citizen of this country and we cannot afford to waste any of them.

I hope that, when we are talking about issues such as appropriation, at the front of our minds at all times is the fact that we can make our first priority our citizens—most particularly our most vulnerable citizens. Thank you.

Concetta Fierravanti-Wells (NSW, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Social Services) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to bring the debate on Appropriation (Parliamentary Departments) Bill (No. 2) 2013-2014, Appropriation Bill (No. 3) 2013-2014 and Appropriation Bill (No. 4) 2013-2014 to a close. I wish to thank those senators who have made a contribution to this debate. These additional estimates appropriation bills seek authority from the parliament for the additional expenditure of money from the consolidated revenue fund. I would like to highlight three areas relating to the delivery of the government's commitments that are supported by these bills.

First, over $8.8 billion is proposed for the Treasury primarily to make a one-off payment to the Reserve Bank of Australia to help ensure adequate resourcing for the bank to conduct its monetary policy and foreign exchange operations. Second, over $2.5 billion is proposed for the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade primarily for it to administer official development assistance programs that moved last November to that department from the former agency AusAID. Third, over $1.1 billion is proposed for the Department of Immigration and Border Protection. This includes over $620 million in relation to illegal maritime arrivals issues as well as almost $400 million for offshore asylum seeker management. The total of the appropriations being sought through these three appropriation bills is just over $14.8 billion.

Question agreed to.

Bills read a second time.