Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Will the Prime Minister outline the importance of the new Home Interaction Program as part of the Rudd government’s education revolution?

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. As I indicated to the House earlier today, I was with the honourable member today at the Minto Family Centre in his electorate, along with the member for Bennelong, the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Childcare. As the member indicated in his question, the government is committed to an education revolution—that is, we want to make sure that we are building the best educated, best trained and best skilled workforce in the world. That is the ambition which Australia needs to have for itself in the global economy of the 21st century.

We know for a fact that, to make that work, you have to make it work at the earliest stage of a kid’s education. That is why this government has paid particular attention to early childhood education. Early childhood education and our commitment to making those opportunities available to every four-year-old in the country is out there for all to see. We intend to implement it, and we are in the process of implementing it. When you go particularly to those even younger than that, some of the data that we have got from the preliminary paper for the 2007 National Report on Schooling in Australia shows that by year 3 children from families where neither parent has worked for 12 months or more do considerably worse against reading, writing and numeracy benchmarks.

I draw these figures to the attention of honourable members because they are really important in terms of real challenges being faced by families out there. Only 88.5 per cent of kids from jobless families are meeting reading benchmarks compared with nearly 94 per cent for all students, only 87 per cent of kids from jobless families are meeting writing benchmarks compared with 93 per cent for students in other categories and 87 per cent from jobless families are meeting numeracy benchmarks compared with nearly 94 per cent for other students.

The government is committed to building an Australia for the future, one where we are not left behind by the rest of the world and also one where we do not leave individual Australians behind. That means ensuring that these kids get the best possible start in life. The question is: what do you do about it? What we have done about it is our Home Interaction Program, whereby we are establishing 50 centres nationwide. They will operate by providing a grant to a local community organisation. That community organisation will then engage tutors who will then provide home based services to kids in these particular disadvantaged circumstances. The idea is that if the young kid is not getting enough reading or writing opportunities or is not being taught basic things like counting at the home front—for a whole range of reasons—we have got the flexibility to get those tutors into the house to do that sort of work after school and to help the kids with their homework.

What we have done today in the honourable member’s electorate is precisely that. At Claymore in his area there will be one of these centres. It will be up and running soon. Today, the parliamentary secretary has announced that 13 of these centres will now be operating nationwide. We will be rolling out 50 nationwide. This will literally help thousands of families with kids who are the life and soul, and the human faces, of those cold statistics I read out before. Having talked to some of the mums and some of the kids in Minto this morning, this is a really good thing to see happen. This morning, we saw the Burnside charity, which operates I think as an extension of the Uniting Church, operating in conjunction with the state government of New South Wales, making sure that they have got some home based programs of their own to help in all sorts of other areas where these kids are often in distress. This provides an additional level of service. What we know for a fact is that, if we do not get kids in the habit of reading in the earliest years of their lives, it gets harder and harder to get them back on the road to recovery.

Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Tuckey interjecting

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would suggest that the honourable member for O’Connor just regard this one as serious. I know he regards this as just a general circus for his own performance.

Ms Julie Bishop (Curtin, Liberal Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Ms Julie Bishop interjecting

Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would just suggest to the honourable member opposite that those mums and dads who happen to be watching the broadcast today, or listening to it, are as interested in early childhood education as they are in the electorate of the honourable member for Curtin. I would suggest to her that, rather than interject in the negative way in which she has just done, she should take an interest in the early childhood education opportunities of kids in WA and kids right across the country. I would have thought, as a former minister for education, she would be out there cheering from the rooftops for a practical, positive initiative like this. The government is on with the business of implementing an education revolution. It is part and parcel of preparing Australia for the 21st century and, for young kids who are facing disadvantage, of making sure that none of them are left behind.