Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Speaker has received a letter from the honourable member for New England proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

Improving Educational Pathways for Country Australians.

I call upon those members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank members for endorsing what I believe is a very significant motion before the House, particularly for those of us who reside in country Australia. At the outset, I state that I would like to see this debate take place in a constructive sense as to the sorts of things that can happen in pathways to improve education in country areas. There are some issues out there at the moment and some of those have been talked about today. I believe there are an enormous number of positive things that can occur into the future, not least of which is a modern broadband network across regional Australia that may well have enormous implications for not only education but also other aspects of country life.

There will be a number of issues discussed today, but I intend to use most of my time to talk about one initiative that started at the University of New England, which is in my electorate. It was put together by the National Centre of Science, Information and Communication Technology, and Mathematics Education for Rural and Regional Australia. As I said, it is based at the University of New England. It is headed by Professor John Pegg, who is ably assisted by Associate Professor Lorraine Graham. I believe the program that I refer to has enormous potential for students at our primary schools—the sorts of students we all know of—who are starting to lag behind in their achievement levels. We have all seen it in the past and we are seeing it now. For students who start to lag behind in achievement levels, their confidence levels, belief in themselves and self-esteem drop off exponentially over time if neglected. When I was at school, they were the kids who were sent outside to mow the lawn and we just assumed that they would drift through life and find a way of their own. We have always struggled to find programs that can bring those young people back to the fold, in a sense, when they get behind and take them forward in their achievement.

I believe the program that I refer to today is probably the only program where there is empirical evidence that we have something that is working. It is called the QuickSmart program. It has been used to improve literacy and numeracy since 2001. It was set up at the University of New England. It has been in use across most of the states and territories, including the Northern Territory. I will refer to some evidence in relation to the Northern Territory in a minute, particularly in terms of Aboriginal children. It has been used with enormous success. This year there will be something like 200 schools across Australia using the QuickSmart program. It is about helping those kids who might be three or four years behind in their literacy or numeracy. They might be 10, 11 or 12 years old. It is a 30-week interventionist program where the children are taken out of the classroom for a period of time—I think it is three times a week—and given specialist teaching. It is a reasonably expensive program—not very expensive—but, given the outcomes of this program, it is very cheap. One of the reasons for raising it today is to make sure that the government is well aware of this program and looks to the future with the evidence coming out of this.

The University of New England is monitoring the progress of the students. In some cases, some of the programs used are good while the child is on the program and then there may well be a drop-off in the pathway that the child is achieving at school. Part of the research that the University of New England is doing is to not only develop the program in the first place but also follow it, question it and evaluate it against other comparisons from the various state and territory departments of education. On all levels there is tremendous achievement occurring through this particular program. The rate at which some of these children are improving, not only during the program but two, three, four or five years on, has been determined at QuickSmart. So they have been not only able to bring some of these kids forward three or four years but also able to maintain that push, so that children who would have left school at an early age, disappointed and assuming they are failures in academic ability, are lifted and then push themselves forward. With the research that has been done by following those students through the program and through their progress long after the program is finished, the empirical evidence indicates that those children are maintaining that pathway.

Whenever I talk to schools, school principals or teachers who are involved with this program, they all say that it works and that they have never seen anything like it: the way in which it works, the way in which it lifts the children and the way in which the children enjoy the process. Obviously, they are building their own confidence levels as the process goes on. I will reflect on a couple of examples at this point. I have a quote from one student:

When I am in QuickSmart I really feel smart—like I am not dumb any more. When I wasn’t doing QuickSmart I felt dumb. I didn’t really know how to do maths but it helped me in a lot of ways, like how to do problems and teaching me all my times tables. If it wasn’t for QuickSmart I don’t know where I would be right now. I love QuickSmart.

I have watched videos of the students being taught and you can see the interaction and the way in which the confidence and academic levels build over a period of time. A parent says:

QuickSmart has had a huge effect on our daughter’s performance at school—most notably the Basic Skills results. In Year 3 she was in the bottom 30% of the state. This year, in Year 5, she was in the top 30%. She is able to complete homework tasks without much assistance. She was already confident and capable with all other areas of the curriculum but was not confident with maths. Her confidence has increased considerably.

Another recommendation is from Peter Westwood, an emeritus academic at Flinders University and the University of Hong Kong. He says:

QuickSmart is clearly one of the few (possibly the only) intervention programs implemented in Australia to have been subjected to such rigorous and thoughtful evaluation over a period of almost nine years and across diverse settings. As such, it certainly merits the description of an evidence-based approach.

A research document on QuickSmart produced in the Northern Territory says:

In the Northern Territory, data collected over the past three years indicates that schools can expect on average a 10% improvement on standardised test results of QuickSmart students in the first year of implementation and that jumps to approximately 20% improvement in the second and subsequent years of implementation.

I know the member for Page has been very supportive of this program and has been working with it in her electorate for some years. Over the last five years in the Lismore diocese, the results of QuickSmart students in the state-wide basic skills tests improved substantially. With numeracy assessments, 92 per cent of students improved by at least one band and 40 per cent of students improved by at least two bands. I think that gives an indication of the empirical evidence that this research is starting to show. Forty-two of the 44 Orara High School students, at Coffs Harbour, who undertook the QuickSmart program in 2006 were above benchmark on the 2008 national NAPLAN test in year 9. The two students who performed below benchmark were diagnosed as IM students in year 7. Each of these students, however, managed above-average growth for the period 2006-08.

Interestingly enough, the principal of that school was so enthusiastic about the program that he put 44 students on it to bring them forward—not the top students, but students who were behind. The next year the school lost its disadvantaged schools money because it had lifted its results. It makes me wonder what we are trying to achieve with some of the programs we have put in place.

QuickSmart has received many awards: the American Educational Research Association Award, the Learning Difficulties Australia Tertiary Student Award and the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research. I will not go through them all, but anybody who is interested in this particular program should look very seriously at it. In the year ahead I think something like 200 schools will be participating in the QuickSmart program.

The people at the university whose brainchild this has been, John Pegg and Lorraine Graham, have done an extraordinary job in promoting this program—a lot of it in their private time. This is not about money-making for them as individuals or for the university. It is about putting in place a program that actually delivers. If we are serious about eradicating a degree of delinquency in our children, if we are serious about doing something about closing the gap for Aboriginal kids and if we are serious about really bringing people forward so that they can achieve academically at universities later on et cetera, we have to look at these sorts of programs. Even though this does take time and money, I would urge all members to find out where this program is working within their electorates—city or country—and have a look at the program and the way it is being conducted, and the results. Go and talk to the principals that are conducting this. I know the principals in my area, from every school that the program goes to, just cannot believe the results they are getting with kids that they would have once sent out to mow the lawn. They just cannot believe the results they are getting.

I thank the minister as well, because I spoke with her earlier about the QuickSmart program and I have had meetings with some of her senior people in the past about the program. I know the minister is at an important meeting with the Prime Minister at the moment but I thank her for her for giving her attention to the program. One of the things I would like the minister to look at closely, though, is the situation in relation to TAFE. There is a lot of talk in this place about skills development and education in terms of the competition between private providers and TAFE. I know people have different philosophical views in relation to that but in country locations there are areas where, if TAFE is weakened much more by the private providers coming in and then moving out, we will run the risk of having quite large areas that may not be serviced in respect of the skills that we are all saying we need out there—particularly when the economic recovery comes on.

The youth allowance has been debated at length and I have supported the government on the amendments, but there are still some issues there. I would like the minister to clarify, publicly, the 90-minute distance test for country students being able to get to a university, because I think it is not well enough known in the community. It means that most students who do not live near a university will be able to apply for some form of youth allowance through the income test if they cannot get to a university within 90 minutes.

In conclusion, I congratulate one of the great organisations of rural and regional areas—the Isolated Children’s Parents Association. I think they are an extraordinary group of people who represent their constituency in a very great way and when they come to Canberra I think everybody from the Prime Minister down knows that they are very serious about these issues. (Time expired)

Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Employment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for New England for bringing this important matter of public importance to the House. It is obvious from his contribution that he cares very deeply about his electorate and the education opportunities available to country Australians.

I have a confession to make: I am a city boy. But in the last few months I have spent quite a bit of time in country Australia. I have been travelling with Lindsay Fox and Bill Kelty as part of the Keep Australia Working program in 20 of the government’s employment priority areas around Australia. Twelve of those are outside the major cities of Australia, everywhere from Cairns to Tasmania. Some of these areas, like Port Augusta and Whyalla, have high levels of manufacturing and they have been hit hard. Some are very reliant on other industries. Cairns, for example, has a very high reliance on construction, mining and overseas tourism. As a result it has been hit very hard.

But the common thread across all of these priority areas—city, regional and rural—is a low level of education attainment. It shows a direct link between unemployment and levels of education attainment, particularly in the bush, where rates of education are more often than not lower than in metropolitan areas. Areas of the member for New England’s electorate are in the Richmond-Tweed and also in the Clarence Valley employment priority region—towns like Tenterfield and Glen Innes. In these areas you find only 34 per cent of the priority region’s working age population has finished high school. Across Australia the average rate is 46.5 per cent. Only 11.4 per cent of people have obtained a bachelor’s degree or above. Compare this with the rest of Australia, which is 17.4 per cent.

The member for New England is right when he says that areas like the one he represents face greater challenges than other parts of Australia, so I was interested to hear what he had to say about the QuickSmart program this afternoon. I can relate to this. One of the first things I did when I became a local member was visit my old primary school, Cabramatta Public School. I spoke to the principal about the children who were there and the challenges they were facing. He told me that, of the whole group of children who had started kindergarten that year, 80 per cent came to school not being able to speak English or had very great difficulties writing English and even spelling their own names. But within three years, because of the programs running at that school, when they sat the basic skills test in third grade they were equalling or exceeding the state average. That is the power of education and of good programs that are targeted at young people who need extra help with literacy and numeracy. I think there is something similar happening in New England, judging by the contribution the member for New England made today.

The member for New England raised the issue of continued funding for the QuickSmart program, developed in his electorate at the University of New England. This program aims to boost numeracy outcomes for students through intensive interventions with students and teachers. As the member has noted, QuickSmart has produced some outstanding results for the children falling behind who participated in the program. I know the member for New England has been a strong advocate of this program for a very long time. He has been banging on the door of government in support of what he tells us is a very worthwhile program—because that is what good local members of parliament do. I can inform the member that I had a discussion with the Deputy Prime Minister about this program this afternoon, and I know he has also been in regular contact with her office. We both agree that the program is certainly worthy of further consideration and we will look very carefully at what further support the Rudd government can provide to this program into the future. Currently the government is funding the program through the literacy and numeracy pilot to the tune of $832,000. Through this program, I understand QuickSmart is being trialled in 13 schools in Lismore and Armidale. It involves around 156 participant students and 75 comparison students. Results of the pilot will be available in December 2010.

The program was also provided with funding of $1.5 million as a ‘closing the gap’ measure for Indigenous literacy and numeracy. In addition to this direct support, the Australian government is investing $540 million to support literacy and numeracy reform through the Smarter Schools national partnership for literacy and numeracy. Through this partnership, state based education authorities are responsible for selecting and implementing interventions and reforms in their school systems. I am happy to advise that several states and territories have indicated that they are considering rolling out QuickSmart to their schools as part of the national partnership for literacy and numeracy.

This is one of a number of programs that we are rolling out in regional Australia—programs built specifically to support the education of children living in regional areas and the schools in which they study. An example is Drought Assistance for Schools. The Drought Assistance for Schools program is a big part of the government’s $715 million package of drought assistance for farmers, small businesses and communities in regional Australia. The funding can be used to subsidise excursions or extracurricular activities for whole classes or an entire school which may be cost prohibitive for families doing it tough as a result of the drought. Principals can also choose to direct some of this funding directly to families in need. Up to $10,000 is available each year for rural and remote schools located in towns with populations of fewer than 100,000 in exceptional circumstances declared areas. In 2007-08, more than $22 million was delivered to 3,030 government and non-government schools across Australia. A similar amount was available last financial year and I understand that program has been extended until 30 June 2010.

The Assistance for Isolated Children Scheme helps primary, secondary and some tertiary students to access education when they are unable to attend a local government school. It provides families with a number of allowances which they can use to meet additional costs they incur when they need to either send a student away from home or undertake distance education. Last year, this program helped 11,212 young people from rural and isolated schools at a total cost of $60.7 million.

The Country Areas Program is provided to improve educational opportunities and outcomes for students who are disadvantaged by their geographical isolation. In 2008 this program provided $30.5 million to government, Catholic and independent schools in all Australian states and the Northern Territory. This year Country Areas Program funding for government schools has been incorporated into the National Education Agreement. Country Areas Program funding for all Catholic and independent schools is covered in the Schools Assistance Act 2008. Country Areas Program funds are provided in recognition of the higher costs of delivering education services in regional and remote areas. Funds are distributed on the basis of the number of remote and isolated students attending a rural or remote school.

In the area of training, the declared drought area incentive helps primary producers who hold an exceptional circumstances certificate to continue to offer apprenticeships and traineeships to people living in a drought declared area. Eligible employers can apply for up to $1,500 as a declared drought area commencement incentive and a $1,500 completion incentive for apprentices and trainees who meet the eligibility criteria. This is in addition to other incentives available to employers who take on an apprentice, including the new program that the government has recently announced called Apprentice Kickstart.

As I was travelling around the country with Bill Kelty and Lindsay Fox as part of the program, as I mentioned earlier—and I know there are also members in the House who have participated in that program—one of the things that employers told us everywhere we travelled was that they needed more support to put apprentices on, particularly in regional Australia, at the present time because of the pressures imposed upon them by the global recession. I checked the evidence, and they were right. There has been a drop over the course of the last 12 months of 20 per cent in the number of apprentices that have been put on around the country—a drop of 10,000. And when I looked at what happened in the nineties I saw an eerie resemblance to what had happened then: the recession hit and a big drop in the number of young people taken on as apprentices—a drop of something like 35 per cent from 1990 to 1991. But what surprised me was that we did not recover and return to the same number of apprentices starting until 2004. So it took 13 years between 1991 and 2004 until we started recruiting and training the same number of apprentices as we had before the last recession. It created a skills crisis. It created a bigger problem for Australia than we needed to have. That is why we have implemented Apprentice Kickstart, which is tripling the upfront bonus to employers to employ up to 21,000 apprentices this summer in traditional trades—butchers, bakers, electricians, plumbers, pastrycooks and hairdressers. It is designed to tackle what is a real and emerging problem, one that is as real in metropolitan areas as it is in rural and regional Australia.

For young people from regional areas going to university, regional universities are supported by a regional loading to boost the Commonwealth assistance these campuses receive. Per capita funding is provided for rural and remote non-government school students in further recognition of additional education costs. A remoteness loading is calculated as an additional percentage above their per capita general recurrent grant funding for students studying at eligible locations. The Commonwealth has a big role to play here supporting students while they study with payments like youth allowance. In the last 24 hours this support, unfortunately, has been threatened by the reckless actions of the opposition in the Senate. The biggest risk to educational pathways for country kids today is the insistence of the Liberal and National parties on blocking our income support reforms in the Senate. After 12 years of coalition neglect of the current system, student income support is fragmented. It has failed to deliver support to those who need it most: students from disadvantaged backgrounds and those from rural and regional Australia. While the coalition claim that their opposition to the bill that is now back in the Senate is because they want to help regional students, the reality is that in the last five years of coalition government the number of students from the bush going to university has actually fallen—it has gone down. Our reforms would see more students receiving support, a massive expansion of scholarships—more than 28 times the number of education costs scholarships provided than when we took office in 2007—and would ensure that the money goes to those who need it most.

Last night the coalition stood shoulder to shoulder to rip off 150,000 students, including many young people from rural Australia. They did this by tacking amendments onto our legislation which would blow a $1 billion hole in the budget, effectively blocking the legislation. They did this because they want to see students from families with incomes of around $300,000 a year continue to get youth allowance. That is the impact of their amendments. The coalition cannot expect to criticise the government about debt and deficit on the one hand and then ask us to take this kind of hit to the budget on the other.

Blocking the legislation will directly affect thousands of families who will, as a result, continue to struggle to send their children to university. We know that, statistically, rural and regional families tend to have lower household incomes. As a result of the bill being blocked, almost 25,000 families with incomes between $32,000 and $44,000 will miss out on an increase in their support to the maximum rate. A further 78,000 who would have received a higher part-payment or who would have received youth allowance as a dependant for the first time will now miss out. If the legislation that is now in the Senate is effectively blocked, there will be no new relocation scholarships for students who need to move to study. In fact, there will be no new scholarships for students at all next year, excluding Indigenous scholarships.

As a result, the entire university sector has now lined up against the coalition, whether it is Ian Chubb, Vice-Chancellor of ANU, and the members of the GO8 or Ross Milbourne, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Technology Sydney and the Chair of the Australian Technology Network of Universities, or Paul Johnson, the Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University and member of the Innovative Research Universities Australia, or David Barrow, the head of the National Union of Students. They all say the same thing. The entire sector has now lined up against the coalition.

The Rudd government recognises the importance of ensuring that young people from rural Australia have access to the best possible education. We know that rural and regional students and their families have special educational needs and that there are particular barriers to their effective participation in education. The member for New England has made that clear in his contribution to this matter of public importance. This government’s record is one of investing in rural and regional education, and we are not going to let that be stopped by the coalition’s irresponsibility in the Senate.

Education is the key not just to a fair society but also to the future of our economy. Early learning projects and literacy and numeracy projects like QuickSmart, apprenticeship projects like Kickstart, environmental skills and work experience programs like the National Green Jobs Corps—which is currently being debated in this place—and the reform of youth allowance that is now in the Senate are all part of making sure young people get a good education and that more people from country Australia go to university. It is all part of Building the Education Revolution, because the education revolution is not just about building infrastructure but about building skills.

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

I also rise to strongly endorse this matter of public importance from the member for New England on improving educational pathways for country Australians. I will certainly be one of many members who, quick smart, will be getting to know more about the QuickSmart program. It does sound like it is doing some tremendous work in other areas around the mid-North Coast. If it is as good as the member for New England and the government say it is, then I as a local member will be chasing that program for my community.

I also want to endorse the comments of the Parliamentary Secretary for Employment, who has just spoken in this debate. The mid-North Coast of New South Wales is a priority area. The parliamentary secretary has visited the area with Bill Kelty and we now have a local employment coordinator and are in the process of putting together a local plan. That is assisting in some challenging times. But without doubt, in my view and in the view of many in our region, none of it really matters unless we tackle head-on the issue of the significantly lower than average education figures. Whether it is in relation to completions of year 12 and retention rates, or the frustratingly low tertiary education and university attendance, or just the general culture around the aspiration for education on the mid-North Coast, we have some huge challenges. Our lower than average wages, our higher than average unemployment, some of the lowest participation rates in the country: none of those are going to be cracked unless the meal ticket and the aspiration for education are grabbed by our region and supported by the government for our region. That is why this motion today is important.

I received just in the last couple of days a document from DEEWR about a whole range of issues, but they have put in a couple of paragraphs about the mid-North Coast of New South Wales. It is the first time I have seen in writing a summary from a government department about the issues in our area, so I am pleased to see it, as gloomy as it might be. Hopefully, it does send a message to everyone here, to those involved in government policy making who are listening and to those in the community who are listening that we do have some real and substantial challenges in the area of education, so I will quote what it says:

The Mid-North Coast has been one of the most persistently disadvantaged regions in Australia in recent decades and continues to experience high levels of disadvantage. Indeed, a high proportion of the region’s working age population is on income support, while the region’s participation rate of 49.2 per cent in September 2009 remains well below the comparable rate for Australia of 65.1 per cent.

The region’s reliance on at-risk industries, particularly retail trade when the impact of the cash payments begins to recede, and well below average levels of educational attainment suggest that not only is the region currently disadvantaged but may also deteriorate further as the impact of the GFC deepens.

I can report back to the House that at this stage that further deterioration is not happening. There is enormous resilience in the mid-North Coast market. But, given the comment about educational attainment, if in the long term we are going to creep out of being comparatively disadvantaged on all the relevant indicators then we do need the support of government in building the culture for education and opening up the pathways to allow that culture to develop. So the program that the member for New England talked about is an important one.

I want to talk about access to university from an area that, as I say, already has comparative disadvantage and does not have a bricks-and-mortar university campus. We are told that students can, if they want to, stay at home and do any course in Australia, with most universities now providing distance education options for most degrees. The reality is that the uptake is not happening as I think all of us would like. Bricks and mortar to some degree do matter. I spoke to one university last week, the University of Sydney, about the issues of access and pathways to try to get my head around why regional and rural students are not represented as well as they should be in the courses. It was an interesting and somewhat alarming discussion. One of the comments was that to get access to do a law degree this year it looks like the minimum cut-off will be 99.7. Unless you are wrapped in cotton wool in an aspirational family environment for education, where you have it drummed into you every day that you are going to go to university, that is out of the reach of most students, particularly those who are grappling with a whole lot of other issues in their lives. The Chair of the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training, who is in the House at the moment, has just delivered an excellent report on the issue of work and the impacts on students’ lives. That is very much a live issue in regional and rural areas, whether because of family structure or income levels. I defy anyone in this place to say that someone who is getting through year 12 in a difficult, sometimes abusive situation in a poor area of the mid-North Coast, for example, is a lesser person who deserves less opportunities than a person on the North Shore of Sydney who is wrapped in cotton wool and has a family making sure they study 24/7 to get the mark.

The opportunities for tertiary access need to be opened to all by the government. The very good targets that have already been announced by government—one is that by 2025, 40 per cent of I think over 25-year-olds will have a higher education qualification—are wonderful targets to aspire to. But we are not going to get anywhere near them unless there is a real loading for and a real focus on regional areas such as the mid-North Coast. Our rate of university attendance is one in six. We have a long way to go to get to that 40 per cent mark and to do our bit to contribute to that national target. It is a two-way street. The message today is very much for the homes of the mid-North Coast to be aspirational about education. The evidence is clear: the previous speaker mentioned the evidence about length of stay in education and the opportunities that creates. It is sometimes difficult to get that conversation going in households where there has not been a tradition of education. The comment is often, ‘I went to the university of life. I don’t need to go to university.’ Those are the sorts of challenges faced by a young student who may want to leave that home and go to university. They need to be supported by government if we are going to be serious about these targets.

The other target, of 20 per cent from low socioeconomic areas, relates directly to the mid-North Coast. At the moment, we are a long way short of attaining that target, based on the current settings. The one good thing that has come out of the youth allowance debate over the last 24 hours is the review. None of us likes reviews too much but it is the first sign that we are going to get serious about addressing the inequality in the challenges and access blocks for regional and rural students accessing tertiary education. I hope that review happens soon and not at the cut-off date, which is the middle of June 2012. I hope it happens sometime within the next 12 months, that it has eminence, that it has the resourcing to make it a cracking document and that any recommendations that come from it are taken seriously by the executive and acted upon as a next round of reform for education policy. Then we might actually achieve some of these lovely targets that we have had set and that we all want to attain. But at this stage I have to question whether we are going to achieve them on the current settings.

I hope at some point, whether it be through demand-based funding for universities on the near horizon or further government reform, that we can consider the individual who comes from an area of low socioeconomic background who gets a lower mark than someone who has come from an area of advantage and somehow allow that person to have access to university at an equivalent level. I think the issue of UAI thresholds being locked in stone as the only indicator for entry to university is a serious access block for those who might get 10 or 15 per cent less, but the challenges they have faced to get within 10 or 15 per cent are worth far more than 10 or 15 per cent in the overall equation. I endorse this MPI and I ask the government to really focus hard on rural and regional students as a group and to treat them as a group. (Time expired)

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a great pleasure to endorse this MPI put forward by the member for New England. The member for New England outlined a particularly fabulous initiative at the University of New England, the QuickSmart program. I was pleased to hear the Parliamentary Secretary for Employment indicate that the government will be looking very closely at that. He is spot on when he says that literacy and numeracy ability from preschool, not just school, is a critically important indicator of how well our young people will do throughout their education. For those who have the added burden to carry—although sometimes it can be a joy—of distance or remoteness or disability or language which means that they have a little bit less of a head start in life, it is important that we intervene with such programs. It is good to see our university sector doing more than its core business and actually getting out and being a driver for community and economic development in our regions.

On that point I want to give a bit of a pump to my own University of Wollongong and to inform the House that the University of Wollongong has a Graduate School of Medicine. This Graduate School of Medicine was established specifically to service regional, rural and remote Australian students. It is an attempt to address the shortage of doctors in rural and remote areas. It is a really good initiative by the University of Wollongong, which decided in setting up a medical school that they did not want it to be the classic sandstone university medical school. They wanted it to be one that would provide GPs to rural and regional Australia. It would take the students from rural and regional Australia, support them through university and have them linked to do their professional practice back with hospitals, GPs and primary health care providers in their regions. While they are studying they are engaged in their learning and practice back in the regions that we hope they will return to. One of the big challenges for rural and regional areas is getting those sorts of professionals who are so desperately important to communities to come back. Indeed the Illawarra region experiences this in areas like the Shoalhaven, which struggles with a similar sort of demographic to that which the member for Lyne was describing. Sometimes we get over the hump of getting those young people into the courses and then lose them to the city, which is not what we want. This Graduate School of Medicine has been set up specifically to assist young people to continue to network and engage with their home town or the region of their home town and to have a commitment to go back and work in it.

I was interested that the member for New England mentioned the National Broadband Network in passing as an important aspect of education. One of the things they have done is set up a very high-tech lecture theatre—which I toured with our minister for health—where every student is set up like us in this chamber: they all have microphones and they all have cameras on them. There is a classroom at the main base, at the Wollongong campus, and then there is another one at the Shoalhaven campus. So students from the Shoalhaven enrolled in the medical school do not have to travel every day up to the Wollongong campus; they can go and sit in this lecture room, watch the lecturer, watch the demonstrations. They can press a button when they want to talk and ask questions, and the lecturer actually turns to a part of the room where they are indicated. So it is completely interactive. It is quite amazing to see what technology can do in terms of getting that learning out of the centres to regional and more remote campuses. Perhaps I should invite the member for Lyne to come to Wollongong and talk to the University of Wollongong about setting up a satellite campus in his area and using some of this technology.

Of course, that technology does rely very heavily on having good-quality broadband rolled out across the nation. People say to me, ‘The Broadband Network—surely that’s just about surfing the net and game playing; it’s all a bit irrelevant to the realities of life.’ But it is not. It is going to be a critical factor in driving both economic and community development across Australia. Developing a national broadband network is as important as when we built the road and rail links to our rural and regional areas. And I think it is going to be particularly significant for educational opportunities.

The parliamentary secretary talked about visiting classrooms, as we all do. Some of the things we see now are those interactive whiteboards rolling out, young people with laptops—

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Chalk!

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Chalk and talk! The old style teacher joins me here in the person of the member for Braddon. I am sure if he was chalking and talking the students would be fascinated! Yes, a mark for three from the member for New England for that interjection. However, this generation will face a much more complex world, and those technologies are reinvigorating classrooms and re-engaging young people. I am very passionate about the fact that schools with top-class music programs and top-class multimedia subjects are actually engaging a lot of the formerly disengaged young people.

I too visited an old alma mater. I was invited to my old high school, Airds High School. It is in the member for Macarthur’s electorate. It was a tough school with a tough population to service but it had a tremendously dedicated staff. They have won many awards. They have a very high Maori population and they have engaged those young people through music. To me it seems like a really logical thing to do and it has significantly improved levels of engagement and retention. So I think a lot of the things that both the previous speakers identified are very important in terms of engaging with our young people.

I have spoken to a lot of rural and regional young people when travelling around with the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Training—which the member for Lyne is also on—and I know that a lot of them connect to the outer world through technology, through the web. They seek connections and form friendships and groups in that way. The National Broadband Network will be really important in that it will give them educational opportunities as well—and, more broadly, medical services and better delivery of government services. I am sure we are slowly getting there, with things like online claiming from government departments. It is a slow and painful process but something we need to be doing.

I just wanted to acknowledge the University of Wollongong’s role in that. I think that Wollongong and the University of New England being regional universities means they are really committed to expanding and to engaging those young people to create professionals—teachers, lawyers, doctors and nurses—who stay and work in our rural and regional areas.

In the few minutes left to me to speak I want to heartily endorse the member for New England’s endorsement of TAFE. I have no bias, being a former TAFE teacher! I think the Australian TAFE sector provides world-class education. Young people who graduate from TAFE and go overseas to work get snapped up, and other countries do not want to let them go. We have a tremendously successful TAFE sector across all states, despite the slight variations between them, and TAFE has a presence in just about every rural and regional community. It is a lot like the public school; the public TAFE is a very common presence and a really well regarded one. I heartily endorse the member for New England’s comments on the importance it plays as a pathway for young people in rural and regional areas.

I also want to acknowledge that the member for Lyne talked about the issue of aspiration. I think that is a really important contribution. I am the first person in my family to have gone to university. I come from a long line of coalminers and women who did not get an education or work. It was interesting in my early political activity to have a lot of people say to me, ‘We don’t want one of you university people representing us in a working-class type area.’ They said it less politely than that, but you get the general idea! And I always said to them, ‘The great aspiration of the working class was to get their children a university education and get them out of the coalmine or out of the steelworks or wherever it was,’ and to some extent I think my generation and I are a reflection of that. My mum left school and worked at a cake shop until she met Dad. She was an amazing woman who could have gone a long way in her life with the support of education. My dad went and did an apprenticeship and did very, very well, and I do not think he ever regretted it. But he is also someone who would have done extremely well with a university education. As I said, I was the first in my family to do that—and there was a culture of the working class aspiring to better education for their children.

I think you are right, Member for Lyne; to some extent we have lost that a bit. It is important to value all forms of education. We are all great advocates of that, whether it is vocational education or academic education. But the aspiration needs to be there. Let us not talk down schools. Let us not talk down education. Let us not talk down the teaching professions. (Time expired)

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the motion moved as a matter of public importance by the member for New England and I commend him for raising this issue. I also commend other members for their contributions to the debate so far. I think the maturity of the debate reflects very positively on the House. I note that also present in the chamber is one of the great champions of regional students in the member for Cowper, as well as the member for Braddon—I read his speech on the youth allowance issue very closely and I congratulate him on his contribution in that regard. I think what this debate today points out is that there are champions on both sides of the House when it comes to education, and I congratulate the Independents as well in that regard.

That is why I have been disappointed that in the last couple of months the debate over student income support in relation to youth allowance has descended somewhat into some fairly vitriolic attacks, which were typified a bit today by the minister for education’s approach. I think the chamber is above that in the sense that I believe there is a great deal of support on both sides of the House for measures to improve the opportunities of education for students, particularly those from rural and regional areas. I do not deny for a second that the previous government could have done more, but it is also ridiculous to suggest that any government would do nothing in relation to education. This is a shared responsibility between students, parents, teachers and the state and federal governments. So I think the motion put before the House today has provided an opportunity for some cooler heads to prevail, and I congratulate the member in that regard.

Quite clearly, in representing our regional electorates we are very much aware that parents, students and teachers are very keen for us to come here and advocate on behalf of our communities to get the best possible opportunity for our students and to do everything we can to make sure they get a fair go. We can point to a number of issues—the member for Lyne referred to a few in his electorate and certainly there are some in the Gippsland electorate. For example, the year 12 education retention rates are appalling. I am not going to stand here and blame state governments or previous governments or whatever else. It is a simple fact of life that we need to do better, and it should not be this hard to get a fair go for country students.

So I accept that part of the problem is the economic barrier. But as has also been touched on by other speakers, the aspirational barrier is a real concern for us in rural and regional areas. Like many other members, I speak to students in schools right across the electorate of Gippsland and I tell them that in terms of the economic barriers and student income support I will come to parliament and do my best for them in that regard. In terms of the aspirational barrier, they have got to be the ones who look within themselves and decide how they are going to achieve their absolute best in terms of their future achievements in life. I tell them that whether it be as bobcat driver, just be the best bobcat driver in Gippsland; whether it is going to be as a builder, then go along and do the apprenticeship and there is nothing wrong with that decision either; but if they want to aspire to go to university then it is up to us to try to help them with those economic barriers.

From a social justice perspective, it is a question of equity—and I think that we appreciate that on both sides of the House—and for those who are a bit more hard-nosed, the economic-minded ones perhaps in the House, there is also a question of productivity for us. Helping children from rural and regional areas achieve their full potential gives us the skills we need for future generations. There is no question that the skill base shortage that we face in rural and regional Australia is best addressed by bringing up our own children and giving them the opportunity to achieve their full potential and achieve their training in trades or whatever it might be, or in university qualifications.

I throw into the debate in the limited time I have available the point that I am not sure how much longer Australia can continue to import skilled professionals from overseas. I think the social licence, for example, in taking medical professionals from the less privileged countries than ours is just about worn out. Those doctors are actually needed in their home countries and I am not sure that Australia can continue to do that without doing everything in its power to train our own doctors and to provide our young people in rural areas with every opportunity to fill the huge gap in rural and regional health provision. I make those opening comments—and I am getting very close to making my closing comments—and I am sure that it is a topic that will come before the House in the very near future.

In the limited time that is available to me I refer to the student income support and the lecture we have been receiving in terms of what is a fair go for country students looking forward. There has been much made now of the amendments which were passed in the Senate, and I acknowledge that members of the Liberal and National parties, and the Greens, and I think Family First, supported those amendments. That would suggest to me that the minister must realise that there is actually a bit of a problem with the retrospective nature of the changes that she is proposing. That is why there is such frustration within parliament and in the broader community. I urge the minister to sit down with those who have their concerns and in a mature way see if we can work through this. Right now we have students finishing their VCE or HSC exams and they need certainty. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Gippsland’s speech was almost so agreeable I am tempted to yield my time on the floor to him. I do thank the member for New England for bringing this MPI to the chamber. As other members have remarked, his MPIs always lift the level of debate in this chamber away from partisan bickering towards bipartisan agreement, which is always a good thing. It does disturb me, however, that he has scorecards, so I hope I pass the test.

It is great to see a local member—and I got an eight!—from the country with an independent spirit bringing forward a program like QuickSmart for government attention. I think that it is terribly important, and I note particularly the remarks that the member for New England about self-esteem. Self-esteem and the way children feel about their education is almost as important as their inherent intelligence and their grades. If you read books like Emotional Intelligence by a person named Goldstein, there have been a number of tests run in the United States which basically prove that test scores dive once children’s self-esteem is shattered. So it is a terribly important debate that we have here and one that I think we all agree with and will find little partisan bickering to interfere with it.

In the short time I have I want to talk little bit about some of the government’s programs and the local approaches. I want to relate three government programs to three of the country towns in my electorate, including my old home town of Kapunda where I went to high school and from which I commuted to university as an 18-year-old. The programs are Computers in Schools, science and language centres, and the Drought Assistance for Schools program. I think that what these three towns prove is that the national program the government has put in place has a disproportionately positive effect in country towns, that it helps country towns far more than it would help the city even though the benefits are great in the city as well.

In terms of the first round for Computers in Schools, two country high schools—two out of six schools in the first round—Clare High School and Riverton High School, received computers. There were 110 computers to Clare High School and 73 to Riverton. In round 2, of the 13 schools six were from the country including my old high school of Kapunda—which was Sir Sidney Kidman’s old home—which received 93 computers. So you can see that that there is a disproportionate effect in country towns.

The same is true of science and language centres. My electorate received 13 science and language centres for high schools across the electorate. They include Clare, getting $1.8 million for a new science lab—and particularly important in Clare given it is one of the greatest wine producing regions in the country—and $1.2 million for Riverton high school. In Riverton they nearly did not put the application in. They were so surprised when they won it. They got $1.2 million for a language centre and it is the biggest thing that has happened to that high school in quite some time. Unfortunately, my old high school at Kapunda already had a new science lab provided by the Rann government and that is a good thing.

In terms of the Drought Assistance for Schools program, it is a particularly important program because drought does attack a community’s foundations—it rips the guts out of a community and tends to overshadow everything. We know it has an impact on school communities. Nothing would affect a child’s self-esteem like being excluded from a school excursion or not being able to get textbooks because the child’s family was in a business or on a farm that was affected by drought. So this is a particularly important program. We have allocated money for schools—$715 million—and we have given discretion to the schools to allow them to make decisions about whether they help individual families or whether they help the whole classroom.

Patrick Secker (Barker, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The time for debate has expired. The discussion has concluded.