Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia and Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006. Of course, this is not the first time I have spoken on this type of legislation in this place since I first came here in 1987. I have to say that the theme is not going to change much in this contribution because my observations about the state of Indigenous education tell me that it is as powerless today as it was then.

It is for different reasons, but what we do know is that we have to do a great deal more to address the needs of Indigenous Australians generally, to understand the chronic poverty that many Indigenous people and those who live in remote communities in particular experience and to appreciate that, if you want to get out of poverty, you have to address the fundamentals such as education, health and housing. That is something which this government, unfortunately, has failed to recognise and has certainly failed to do.

Nevertheless, I do support the appropriation of $43.6 million from 2006 to 2008 in this legislation, which will be going towards the extension of tutorial assistance for year 9 school students; the extension of tutorial assistance for TAFE, vocational training and education students; school based sporting academies and related activities; supporting Indigenous youth festivals; and programs to discourage substance abuse.

To my way of thinking, a fundamental aspect of this bill is the proposal to extend the ITAS, the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme, to year 9 Indigenous students and to extend tutorial assistance to Indigenous vocational education and training. Unfortunately, the government took a range of decisions over the last 18 months which have militated against getting better achievement and higher success rates from Indigenous communities for Indigenous kids. It is certainly true that tutorial assistance is a key contributor to better school retention.

I have been a schoolteacher and—for the benefit of the Minister for Education, Science and Training, though she is not presently in the chamber—a history teacher. I am now a parent of four, and my kids are at various stages of making the transition from primary school to high school to higher education. So I value all of the incentives that encourage young people to stay at school to learn and succeed. However, it is a great shame—and, indeed, I think it is an indictment of the government—that they changed the Indigenous Education Direct Assistance Program in 2004 in ways that limited parents’ participation in their children’s education and subsequently limited access to ITAS. At the time these changes were made, I made speeches in this chamber, put out press releases and questioned the minister, and got very unsatisfactory responses. In fact, the proof of the pudding has been in the eating: we already know that the government have underspent on ITAS by $124 million-odd over 2004-05. This has all meant limiting the access of Indigenous students and their families to support which they require and should have fundamental access to.

As I said, I spoke last year of how the changes to ASSPA would continue to have a negative impact on schools and communities. Since the changes were made, I have travelled extensively through my electorate of Lingiari, visiting many schools. You would appreciate, Madam Deputy Speaker Bishop, it is a significantly large electorate, covering 1.3 million square kilometres, and around 40 per cent of my constituents are Indigenous. Most of those 40 per cent live in small, remote communities. There are 125 schools in my electorate. I must say that, although I have not visited all of them, I have visited a significant number of schools and communities since last year. The clear message that I gave this chamber last year remains the same today: the changes to the Indigenous Education Direct Assistance Program have led directly to less Indigenous participation in schools, less interaction and less involvement in decision making by Indigenous parents.

This is a view shared by the Australian Education Union, who last year undertook a survey on the impact of changes on schools. Their conclusion was very significant and is worth quoting:

With less opportunity to participate, Indigenous parents are voting with their feet and staying away from schools. Parents have little understanding of the changes, or the reasons for them. Formal avenues for Indigenous participation in mainstream school structures, such as school councils, have been diminished by these changes.

There is a simple point to be made—it should be understandable for the government; it certainly is understood by educationalists: unless parents are engaged in school activities and the education of their children and work with the professional educators in a school environment, Indigenous students will continue to disengage and not attend.

The changes to the funding of the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme have meant that not all students are now eligible for tutorial support—prior to the changes being introduced last year, tutorial assistance was available to all Indigenous students—and I can remember railing against that in this chamber. The changes mean that ITAS funding is now based on the number of Indigenous students who fail year 3, 5 or 7 numeracy and literacy tests in the previous year’s multiple assessment project benchmark testing. I am not sure what idiot thought this process up. I know the idiot who was the minister at the time and who advocated it in this chamber. He did not have an answer when I asked him then and I know there is not an answer now. If educationalists identify that young people need tutorial type assistance when they first enter the school environment, why would you limit it to those years after they have failed a test?

Others have spoken in this place about the failure rates, lack of achievement and lack of attainment of Indigenous kids in these benchmark tests across Australia. I can tell you that the experience of educators in the Northern Territory is that not only are we having less engagement with Indigenous parents but people who would otherwise have been employed as tutors are no longer in the field because they have not been able to rely on those resources for a job. Now I am getting representations from Indigenous communities who say that those people who had otherwise made themselves available for tutorial assistance are no longer making themselves available because they can now get a job with Centrelink or the local council and get reliable work. So now, even if tutorial assistance programs are available, many communities, because of the changing way in which the program is being administered, are unable to find tutors. It seems to me that this short-sighted, stupid approach needs to be reviewed. I said it at the time and I say it again. In the case of Indigenous students in the Northern Territory, I know it very, very well.

We know that funding is based on year 1 to year 9 Indigenous school students who are at risk of not achieving the relevant Northern Territory Curriculum Framework learning outcomes for their year level. What this means is that funding available for tutorial assistance, 2.5 hours tuition per student per week for 32 weeks of the year, will be based on the number of students who are not achieving. There is no funding for those who are achieving and want to get better. This government talks about rewarding and encouraging success. This program militates against that encouragement. It takes away the support and the incentive to get greater improvement. What we now know is that the allocation of resources is based on the number of kids in the class who fail. Even if we could get better results for those kids who are passing and who want to achieve higher results—perhaps they are gifted—we cannot provide it because the resources are no longer being made available.

What this has meant is that schools in the Territory have had to consider new ways to deliver tutorial assistance to ensure that all students who want assistance can get some tutorial support. Teachers and parents have had to do more with less financial assistance. As I pointed out, because there is less money, there are now fewer Indigenous tutors, with flow-on effects to family stability, attachment to their community and indeed community life. The combination of making it harder for parents to be involved, to make their decisions about their children, and less ITAS funding means that there is real danger that much of the good work done in the development of the curriculum programs to encourage and support attendance and literacy and numeracy development may well wither. In the long run, what we are doing is turning back the clock.

I mentioned earlier that I am a proud parent of four. My children are very fortunate. They live in a community that is supportive and encouraging in the development of their positive self-identity. They participate in a range of activities, social, cultural, academic and sporting. They feel safe and comfortable in the education system and have a sense of achievement in any number of ways. They are also from a wealthy middle-class family. They have got everything going for them. My kids, like many others in their circumstances, see attendance at school and learning as a natural activity. Although occasionally they moan and groan about getting up and attending, particularly at the start of each semester, they know the routine and have a sense of purpose as they go about it each day. They understand the purpose of it and they are prepared to dedicate themselves to it. If we want Indigenous kids to have the same sense of purpose and to be comfortable with their identity and environment, we need to provide the scaffolding and networks to support social, cultural, academic and sporting activities in Indigenous communities.

The previous structures in place for ASSPA committees and for access to ITAS funding for all students provided key ingredients for students to have a supportive and encouraging environment attune to their needs so that they too could develop positive self-identities. I welcome the extension of ITAS to VET students; however, as parents and teachers will tell you, by the time a student reaches 13 or 14 it could well be too late. In fact in many of these communities unless you get the kids in year 1 or year 2 you may well have missed the boat. This is particularly the case if they have not learnt to read and write by the time they get to that year 9 stage.

If they have not had encouragement and reinforcement for what we might think are minor achievements, if they do not feel comfortable, if they are embarrassed, if a learning environment is foreign, then it is too late. If they suffer from otitis media, which is a chronic ear disease for many kids in the Northern Territory who cannot hear properly, if they do not have a proper diet, if they do not go to school with full bellies, if they do not get lunch, if they live in a house where there are 20 or 30 other people, how do we expect these people to achieve? Yet what we see in this program, as a result of this legislation, are some of the supports which were helping these people being withdrawn.

I am getting a bit sick and tired—in fact, very sick and tired—of seeing respective ministers in this government swanning around the bush as if they know every bloody thing when on most occasions they know next to nought, pontificating on how to get better results, telling people to take rocks off roofs and not addressing the underlying issues. It is about time they did.

I have to say that I am encouraged by some aspects of this legislation. I was at a community in June of this year—I cannot remember exactly which one it was; during that month I had been to quite a number. It could have been Elliott, Yuendumu, Borroloola, Harts Range, Utopia or Ntaria—it could have been any number of places. I came across an old Furphy water tank embossed with its famous motto: ‘Good, better, best—never let it rest—till your good is better—and your better best’. I think this is as good as any motto for Indigenous Education Direct Assistance. We can never let it rest. While I support this legislation, I think we really need to do a great deal more. I believe the government needs to go back to the drawing board and work out how it can provide more effective assistance to Indigenous kids. I have to say that I am encouraged by the support for the sporting programs that are in this legislation.

Today during question time in this chamber you may have noticed, Madam Deputy Speaker, that a number of Indigenous kids were sitting up in the gallery. They were from Ntaria and Areyonga in Central Australia and Sanderson High School in Darwin. I wish they were here tonight because they would appreciate what we are talking about, they would understand the issues which I have spoken about and they would know the concerns that their parents have about their ability to access regional education outcomes.

I also want to commend the support for the Indigenous festivals and, whilst the amount is minuscule, the money to discourage students from substance abuse—but it is minuscule. I first started working on substance abuse programs in 1979. I can tell you that from 1979 until now, no reasonable, real effort has been made by any government of any political persuasion anywhere in Australia to provide the resources that are absolutely necessary if we are to hit this problem on the head, and it is still the case.

The member for Batman referred to a very proper observation made by Bruce Harvey from Rio Tinto. We have had a lot of debate in this place about skills shortages recently. He made this observation in the Financial Review last Friday:

Most of our long-life mines are in northern Australia—

and this is significant—

and, by 2020, every second Australian living above the Tropic of Capricorn or above Port Augusta in South Australia, will be of Aboriginal descent.

I know that Rio Tinto has done an enormous amount to ensure that Aboriginal people around the mines in which Rio Tinto work are being fostered and encouraged through the school system by this company. Other companies are making similar efforts, but many in other industries are not. This government needs to encourage those companies who are working in or near these communities to understand their obligation—an obligation which will affect their bottom line in a positive way by providing them access to skilled workers in due course. We need to say to these people: you too need to make a contribution to assist Aboriginal people in regional and remote Australia to get decent educational outcomes which will hopefully lead them to meaningful jobs. (Time expired)

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