Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to speak on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2013. I do so because I have quite a determined interest in the issues which surround the targeting of this bill. The purpose of this bill is to extend funding for assistance programs under the IETA for a further year and then reallocate some funds to other programs and initiatives. The bill does not provide for any new initiatives.

I will not go into the detail that Senator Scullion has put out in relation to the lack of regional targets, or just throwing money at numeracy and literacy programs. In fact, as he points out, it has gone backwards in some areas. I want to talk about the programs that work. In 2007 the Council of Australian Governments, or COAG, agreed to six targets for Closing the Gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. It wanted to halve the gap in reading, writing and numeracy achievements for Indigenous children within a decade and to halve the gap for Indigenous students in year 12 attainment to equivalent attainment rates by 2020. As part of the actions linked to this targeting they had six priority domains: school readiness; engagement and connections; attendance; literacy and numeracy; leadership, quality teaching and workforce development; and pathways to 'real' post school options. Excellent!

I want to talk today about one of the programs that is really working in the area of sporting chance—that is, the Clontarf Foundation, based in Western Australia but now being rolled out throughout Australia. To put it on the record, this foundation is run by the CEO Gerard Neesham, who was a footballer who played for the Sydney Swans and was the inaugural coach of the Fremantle Dockers. After he was sacked after his time at the Dockers, as a schoolteacher Gerard decided he would do something in the Indigenous area. I know Gerard because I went to teachers' college with him—he was a year behind me—and so I have a relationship with him from our old days at Graylands Teachers College, where I rucked in the college football side. I used to put the ball down his neck and he would kick it to the centre half-forward and our full forward kicked a hundred goals that year—I digress.

As I said, the CEO is Gerard and the chair is Ross Kelly, who was also the chair of the Dockers. The reason I give this background is to show that we have people in the field who know this area rather well. Also, the patron of the foundation is the Governor-General. The Governor-General just recently launched this program that is before the House and many people attended. Unfortunately, the media did not attend and so it did not get the exposure that it should have.

This program started at the Clontarf school on Manning Road in Bentley well over 10 years ago. It started with just a handful of students. I have mentioned in the House before, so I will not dwell on it too long because of the time, that originally Phillip Ruddock went out and made sure that ATSIC, as it was then, handed over $30,000 that was owed to them and Brendan Nelson, as the then minister, saw that they received their first $100,000 and then their first million dollars. The program has rolled on since then.

I want to make sure it is fully understood that this program works because it encourages young Indigenous boys of high-school age to come to school, because they believe they are going to school to play football. They believe that, by going to school, they are going to become AFL stars. And there have been some AFL stars who have already come out of this program: Lewis Jetta is one at the moment who is playing AFL in Sydney. The reality though is that most of these boys do not end up being AFL stars—but it gets them to school. We know that by getting young Indigenous boys to school they can turn their life around and, by turning their life around, they are not involved in crime or any dysfunctional or antisocial behaviour which is far more costly than sending the boys to school under the Clontarf program.

Clontarf then rolled itself out from the original campus. By the way, the Queen visited this program during her jubilee year visit to Perth. She was photographed, not bouncing the ball but holding the ball up for the boys, in the middle of the football oval. It helped to celebrate the great work that is being done over there. But the program was rolled out throughout Western Australia. As I have said in this place before, Clare Martin, then the Chief Minister of the Northern Territory, invited the Clontarf Foundation to roll this program out through the Northern Territory. Now, they have 54 academies around Australia. The template worked because they have great mentors whom the boys respect, from football backgrounds, and they have good quality staff to see that the boys are well catered for when they get to school.

I say the template works because it has gone from AFL to New South Wales, where they are using it in rugby. Dare I say, the member for Parkes told me recently he has had four academies in his electorate—the largest one is in Moree—and they are really achieving some fantastic results. There is a guy named Smiley Johnson, a well-known Indigenous rugby player who is helping to mentor this program there.

There are four academies in Victoria. There are none in South Australia because the South Australian government has not invited them there, though there are overtures from the Queensland government to take this program there. However, there is something stopping this—and you know it is funding. I will get to that in a moment. It costs just over $7,000 for each boy to be in this program. The funding model is this: they rely on one-third of their funding from the federal government, one-third of their funding from the state government and one-third of their funding from the corporate world. But everything hangs on the federal government funding because they cannot get the states to get on board unless the federal funds flow.

Of course, the corporates are saying, 'We are happy to pay our third, but we want to see the other moneys first.' So you have Goldman Sachs, BHP and a whole range of large corporates like Fortescue who willingly put their money into these programs. People bag the billionaires in this place but they are all behind this program. Twiggy Forrest is making sure that the Indigenous boys are not only funded through his company but that they get jobs there afterwards.

At this stage they are short of funds to roll this program out any further. In New South Wales they are already there in rugby. They could actually take another 5,000 boys. At the moment there are 2,850 boys in this program and they could extend this to an extra 5,000 Indigenous boys in New South Wales alone. That is going to cost $35 million. They need a third of that from the Commonwealth government. They have been making overtures. I give Minister Macklin her due. She has been working well with the people in Clontarf to assist, as did Kevin Rudd as Prime Minister, as has Julia Gillard Prime Minister, but there is a bit of a block when it comes to the education minister's office. They have a submission in there to expand this program and I understand they are being told, 'We cannot do anything, we are waiting for Gonski.' So everything is on hold in terms of any future expansion because they have been told that the submission is sitting in the minister's office and they have not had a response on it. That is disappointing because every one of the boys who ends up on this program achieves some fantastic results.

Let me give you just one of the results. Part of the Indigenous targeting was about school retention. They say Indigenous school retention rates are improving. The retention rate from years 7 and 8 to year 12 has improved from 40.1 to 47.2 per cent in 2010. That is good. But under the Clontarf program the retention rate is 90.27 per cent with an attendance of 76 per cent—well and truly above the national average, isn't it?

Recently, I was fortunate enough to go the launch of a program in my electorate at Coodanup Community College. Can I say that all these programs are attached to an existing education institution, generally a secondary school. Coodanup Community College is in a pretty tough area. Demographically, it is tough. It is in the paper so I do not mind saying that a group of 14-, 15- and 16-year-old Indigenous boys were involved in a murder of a man at Mandurah. This is the crime that happens if you cannot get yourself to school and get into a decent program.

The principal at Coodanup, Vicki McKeown, has allowed Clontarf to attach themselves to the school. The academy director is a guy called Craig Callaghan, who is a former Dockers footballer. The program was launched with the boys there with a whole lot of people and supporters, including the local mayor, Paddi Creevey, in attendance. Beautifully, a young Indigenous guy called Jayden Grazier was the MC. He was conducting the whole event for the launch. He proudly told us that he had 100 per cent attendance at the academy. Isn't that fantastic? A young Indigenous boy who probably would have been lost to the education system unless he had the ability to be at Clontarf.

The Clontarf program has the opportunity to grow. That is why they need more funds to do that. I heard the member for Makin, whose heart is in the right place, talking about other programs. But that is the problem with this Indigenous funding: it is sprayed around everywhere. We will have 15 sites here and a trial there. Many of these do not work. Without mentioning names, there are some high-profile Indigenous ex-footballers who are receiving bucketloads of money to run programs. Essentially, they give themselves and a few of their mates a job and they drive around and talk to a number of Indigenous kids in different areas but there is no real program that goes with it.

This Clontarf program is one that works. It achieves fantastic results. For example, 300 of the boys that are in the program at the moment are in year 12. One in four Indigenous boys in year 12 in Western Australia are in the Clontarf program. It gets them to school and keeps them at school. A lot of these boys never make it as AFL footballers. This program then links them to a job and that is the key, so they have a transition from year 12 into employment.

This week the Financial Review covered the CEO of Qantas, Alan Joyce, at the Clontarf academy saying that Qantas are going to be a vehicle for allowing boys to go and work at Qantas as ground crew in Perth. They are not only going to help back the academy—that is part of the corporate funding—but they are going to see the boys go from these academies into work with Qantas. The north has QantasLink fly in, fly out, so there is a lot of work for boys, not just on the mines but in infrastructure and transport and all those sorts of areas. It is fantastic to see someone like Alan Joyce getting on board.

I not only recommend maintaining the funding for Clontarf academy but I am also taking Tony Abbott out there, as soon as I am organised, to go and see this program as Brendan Nelson did when he was minister, to say this program needs further funding. I know there is not going to be a lot of money around but I suggest that some of the programs that are not working might want to be closed down or downsized so that more money can be put into Clontarf because it has this model that will not only deliver kids to school and out of trouble but into a job afterwards. It will save a generation of young Indigenous boys who would have been vulnerable had it not been for programs like Clontarf.

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