Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2013. It is not going to fix all ills but it is yet another step forward on a very long journey which has been touched on by many other speakers. It is timely, with an Indigenous round of sport just having happened and several events having happened over this weekend that have put issues of race front and centre of a lot of people's thinking. My only comment on that by way of introduction is that I hope we all respect the comments made by the players who have spoken. I think in both examples—Collingwood and the Sydney Swans—representatives of community have spoken and shown real leadership in the words they have used. From my point of view: more power to them, in the way they represent themselves and their communities.

The other reason for wanting to speak is that, having listened to the debate, I have to call into question some of the arguments being used. The education data in Australia is segregated, and there are real issues in regional Australia, in Aboriginal Australia and in poor Australia. I am pleased in many ways that that is acknowledged by many of the speakers in this chamber. But the member for Aston used that as some sort of argument against this bill or some sort of argument about the lack of effort from government to try to deliver the 'demonstrable change' that is needed. Then why on earth would that same speaker be going against a new funding formula in school education that delivers exactly that—demonstrable change—with a specific loading that addresses the 'intolerable link' between the funding formula in education and the education data that we all agree has problems.

This is not a problem of Aboriginal Australia. It is patronising that that is used in this chamber as some sort of argument against Aboriginal Australia: 'I met an Aboriginal and they could only write their name X. And that is a big problem.' And we go home and quaff our wine and sit around our table amused. That is patronising. It is patronising to say this is a problem of remote Australia in education and a huge failure of others. It is patronising to say the poor people of Australia are failing in education. The failure is us in this chamber. The failure is in the funding model itself that has led to these outcomes in education, in these three clear categories: poorness, rurality and Aboriginality.

I know lots of people are running around saying: 'Gonski! Gonski! What is Gonski?' The whole point of Gonski is that it blew the whistle on the failure of the funding model itself and the intolerable link—an exact quote from the Gonski work—between the funding formula and the education data that is seeing huge segregation in Australian education and huge segregation as a consequence in Australian society.

So, yes, the education data is a problem. It is a problem for Aboriginal Australia in education outcomes, for poor Australia in education outcomes and for rural and remote Australia in educational outcomes. Where does the blame lie? In this chamber right now.

Why on earth we are having a funding fight and a political fight over the funding formula has me beat. Here is the opportunity for demonstrable change. Here is the opportunity to finally deliver on the principle of equity and here is the opportunity, with loadings in the funding formula, to address the failures in the education data. Here, finally, is the opportunity for us to do some nation building.

The people using the data against legislation such as this, and using it in the manner of, 'Oh, woe is everyone else,' and 'Oh, isn't it terrible what is happening with Aborigines'—come on! Here is the chance to actually address something in a substantial way, based on evidence, based on facts and based on actually providing a solution to the problem that has been identified, which is this intolerable link between education performance and education outcomes and the funding formula that has led to those gaps of around 30 per cent when you slice and dice education data in those particular categories.

So I hope the hard and detailed work that the New South Wales education minister and the federal education minister, who is now at the table, have done can at some point soon be committed to by all members in this chamber based on the failures that everyone is recognising in the education data.

This is one step in the journey: a bit of targeted assistance for some sports programs. It is not the whole journey. The big work is the political fight of the moment over Gonski, which is really about blowing open this intolerable link that exists. It has to change. It should not be a political fight. I hope both the New South Wales Nation Party education minister in his visit to Canberra this week can be listened to. And I hope that the data, common sense and evidence can also be listened to.

I also make the point that this is timely legislation, because only yesterday the Joint Committee of Public Accounts and Audit, a bipartisan committee, delivered a report on leadership in Indigenous coordination programs at a Commonwealth level, and it made an important recommendation. The lead agency FaHCSIA does great coordination work in this area with both mainstream and targeted programs, but there is a failing. That failing is the desperate need for leadership from FaHCSIA and from the Commonwealth to do more than just coordinate—to lead. I think the worry that is being expressed by the committee is that within the agencies in Canberra FaHCSIA may not have the power and the authority to really drive a leadership agenda that we are all wanting to see in improving not only education outcomes for Aboriginal Australia but also programs across the board. So this bill is timely, as an opportunity to say that once again, and to hope that all members in this chamber push FaHCSIA or any other bodies, such as the PMO, to really take a strong leadership role in the coordination of programs of assistance for Aboriginal Australia.

The bill also gives me the chance, once again, to talk about spatial data. I remind the House where Aboriginal Australia lives. When you look at where Aboriginal Australia lives, you see that more than 50 per cent of the population is on the east coast between Sydney and Rockhampton. It is lost in the mythology at times that Aboriginal Australia is only remote or very remote—it is only Cape York; it is only the Northern Territory. I remind the House that Aboriginal Australia and the majority of the Aboriginal population is on the east coast, living in the best parts of Australia—from a parochial point of view, like many others—and quite often there is a difference between where programs from this chamber are targeted and where money is spent versus where the majority of the population lives.

We can all argue the toss, for example, over the rights and the wrongs of the Northern Territory intervention and the number of programs from the Commonwealth into the Northern Territory. I just take the chance once again to remind the House that there are plenty of issues, plenty of challenges and plenty of opportunities to target programs for the majority of the population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australia, and it is in that window, on the east coast, from Sydney to Rockhampton, where there is a need for more attention, more resourcing and more support if we are really serious about tackling issues in the majority of the sector involved.

The final point I make is one of grabbing this legislation and shamelessly endorsing the recognised campaign. Only last Sunday, the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, the Leader of the Opposition, Minister Macklin, the Attorney-General, the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs and I—and many other members of parliament as well as many artists and celebrities and plenty of the Melbourne community—all started the Long Walk with Michael Long, the AFL player who is on the journey from Melbourne to Adelaide after which they are all cutting up through to Darwin over the next three or four months and finishing, I understand, at the Garma Festival. It is an extraordinary push to try to get Australia excited about what Australia should be excited about, and that is dealing with the open wound in our lead document, trying to take the opportunity to remove 'race' from our Constitution and undergoing the difficult exercise of finding some words to celebrate 40,000 years of history and not just a couple of hundred years of our history.

I take this opportunity to endorse that and wish them well, and I invite as many people as possible listening—either within this chamber or via radio or any other means through the House of Representatives broadcasting—to have a look at the Recognise website and do what you can to reflect and think about the importance of this bipartisan referendum question that is coming in the next couple of years. It matters. It matters for Australia, and it will be a huge opportunity missed if we do not progress on that correcting of the record.

See this speech in context