Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

I want to speak on the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008 because, while I will vote for it, I do not think it is going to be effective and achieve the outcomes desired from it. I want the parliament and the people of Australia to know what my concerns are in relation to this particular piece of legislation.

There is no doubt that everybody wants to see kids go to school, and do so regularly, and have a good education, because that is what will stand them in good stead for the rest of their lives. There is also no doubt that there is a fair bit of truancy out there and that in certain communities kids do not go to school regularly. It is happening more and more in mainstream communities. In my electorate is Palm Island, which I think, Mr Deputy Speaker Adams, you have been to. It is a beautiful island with an Indigenous community, but both the government school and the Catholic school have difficulty in getting many of their students to attend school regularly. It is such a shame, and Indigenous leaders recognise this. Certainly, Reverend Shane Blackman at Shalom Christian College on the mainland in my electorate is ferocious in telling parents, ‘You must get your kids to go to school because it is how Indigenous Australia is going to get ahead.’

There is no doubt that Indigenous Australians are just as capable as any other Australians of achieving. We have proved this at James Cook University in my electorate in Townsville, where each year we enrol Indigenous students in the medical school program; those students graduate as doctors. But, across the economy, you will find Indigenous people who are doing just as well as any other Australians.

So I come back to Palm Island. I come back to the need to get the students to attend school. It is just such a shame that, for whatever reason, students will just decide, ‘Well, we won’t go to school today; we’ll just go horse riding.’ In other communities you find that there are cultural reasons why young men decide not to continue at school, because once they reach manhood in Indigenous culture it is considered kind of beneath their dignity to go to school. That attitude has to change.

The bill before the parliament today basically says there will be penalties for children on welfare payments who do not go to school. My concern is how you actually, in practice, make this work. The bill requires schools to report nonattendance to Centrelink. Centrelink then looks at that and says, ‘Well, we’ll dock welfare payments.’ But do we really think that schools have the time to report students who do not attend to Centrelink? Do we really think that is going to happen? You know how school officers are so busy trying to keep up with the administration that is needed in a school of this modern era. Do we really think that schools will say, ‘Well, okay, we’ll take on this extra load’? The answer is no. The problem for the Commonwealth is that schools are under state jurisdiction and we cannot order a public school to report to Centrelink. Indeed, some states have said, ‘We can’t report anyway, because it is a privacy issue.’ That is particularly so with Tasmania.

So the legislation is doomed to failure, but the philosophy is right—and that is why I will support it. But it is a shame that legislation goes through the parliament that in practice will not work. Nobody will be reported to Centrelink. There is a bit of cynicism here, I guess, where the government takes the credit for doing something that everybody wants to see happen but in fact the wool is being pulled over their eyes because it is not going to happen. I find that very unfortunate indeed.

We have to get kids to school. The Liberal Party for its part believes in mutual obligation. It believes that, if government support is provided to Australians, there should be an obligation to return something in response to that support. We think that it is reasonable to request that children attend school, but this is not going to happen. I think we all struggle to find ways that enable us to get our students to stay at school, that we can convince the mums and dads that they have to get their kids to attend and that we can convince the students that it is in the interests of their future lives to attend school. I will conclude there by indicating my support for the bill and my disappointment that this bill is not in fact going to do what the people of Australia expect it to do.

See this speech in context