Greg Hunt (Flinders, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Climate Action, Environment and Heritage) Share this | Hansard source

The member for Lyons finished his very fine speech with the statement that literacy, reading, is something beyond politics. He is absolutely right. Each of us in our electorates encounters families and children in schools who struggle with literacy. They might be migrant families for whom the opportunity has never arisen to learn properly the language of life in Australia. Their opportunities are restricted, their confidence is often limited and their ability to participate is reduced. For children struggling through school it is an extraordinary challenge. I want to take this moment to reach across the chamber to acknowledge not just the motion of the member for Lyons but his own story. We have many disagreements with those on the other side. He is one of the good guys today. I acknowledge what he has achieved against difficult odds and the fact that he has become a national champion for literacy and reading and honesty and reaching out to those who are most in need of adult literacy as well as those who are most vulnerable to falling through the cracks in our schools.

Having said that, let me deal briefly with two elements here: the problem and the solution. I want to deal with the problem from a personal perspective. I was fortunate to come from a reading household, so my circumstances were not challenged as such, though those on the other side may say that my cognitive skills might not be what they otherwise might have been. But the real exposure that I have had over the years was through three fronts. The first was as a literacy teacher at Princes Hill School near Melbourne university while I was a student at Melbourne university, working with kids in their transition years to secondary school and recognising that, for those who struggled, it was very hard for them to acknowledge the challenges they faced. That gave me a sense of the cultural issues, I do not mean along ethnic lines but the sheer secondary school culture and challenge faced in kids acknowledging that they have an issue and a challenge. That is a big thing.

The second was in the housing projects of New Haven when I was studying at Yale in the United States. There was an ongoing program of working with kids, mostly of coloured background, almost all of distinctly disadvantaged background, many of whom had virtually no capacity to read whatsoever because of their social circumstances. To be engaged in that program was to recognise the incredible, fundamental transformative power of literacy and reading, not just in terms of career opportunities but in terms of the ability to structure and think and imagine one's way out of a problem and to imagine one's way forward. It was uplifting, and my only regret is that I was not more involved still in that program.

The third element is in terms of my own town of Hastings. Hastings is where I have my office. According to the 2009 Australian Early Development Index, it showed the highest proportions in Victoria of youngsters starting school with poor language development. West Park Primary is a fantastic school with committed teachers but it has huge social indicator challenges which translate to literacy.

That brings me to the practical programs which are about solutions. I am very fortunate to have worked with the broader program of linking schools and early years. This is where Hastings in particular comes in. Because of the commitment of Hastings Rotary Club and their Reading for Life program under the Linking Schools and Early Years program, we have been able to work on bringing volunteers for literacy to children to help enhance their reading skills, their self-esteem and their motivation. Each volunteer work with a child one-to-one for 45 minutes every week for between 10 and 15 weeks, with enormous real measured improvements in the quality of reading for these kids and therefore their passage for future schooling. The Myer Foundation has provided $3,000 to this program, and BlueScope almost as much. We recently had business operators in the town come to a breakfast. I want to acknowledge the work of Geoff Harvey and Professor Marilyn Fleer from Monash University. Both have contributed enormously at different times in their own way to literacy in Hastings. I acknowledge all of the volunteers and the headmasters of the three schools in Hastings.

My message is that there is much to be done. We have achieved a lot, but there are still numerous kids who need a better start in life and this is best exemplified by practical programs such as Reading for Life, and we will simply keep going until every child in Hastings gets that opportunity to be fully able to read by the time they leave primary school.

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