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

I move:

That this House notes that:

(1) on Saturday 15 October 2016 significant monuments and landmarks will be lit red across Australia as part of Light it Red for Dyslexia; and

(2) Light it Red for Dyslexia:

(a) is an initiative to increase dyslexia awareness;

(b) coincides with international World Dyslexia Day; and

(c) is a prelaunch of Dyslexia Empowerment Week in Australia, running from 16 to 22 October 2016.

I would think that this motion has bipartisan appeal and bipartisan support, and I look forward to the House considering it. Australian Dyslexia Empowerment Week, which is now in its fourth year, is a national event created to increase awareness around dyslexia and support the approximately 10 to 20 per cent of people in our community who have dyslexia. It is a profoundly serious condition in many ways. I know for myself that reading and writing are one of the great joys I have, and I am sure they are a great joy for many in this parliament. But, if you have dyslexia, that joy initially is denied to you, unless there is a lot of support and a lot of help.

The launch of Light it Red for Dyslexia on 15 October is a way of creating dyslexia awareness in the community by lighting significant monuments and landmarks across Australia in red. In my home state of South Australia, we were very pleased to see the following places lit red: the Adelaide Town Hall balcony; City of Playford signs and monuments; City of Salisbury signs and monuments; the Gawler Town Hall and Institute building; the 'Gustav and his dog' monument in Eudunda—and I have not been to Eudunda in some years; I did play the coldest game of footy out there once, but it is worth going to see Gustav and his dog—Jetty Road and King Street Bridge in Glenelg; Parliament House; the Tonsley campus of Flinders University, at Clovelly Park; and the War Memorial at Mallala, which is a big landmark in Mallala. So we had a number of monuments lit red, and we want to see more in future years.

As I said before, dyslexia is a profoundly debilitating condition in the first instance, but you can conquer it with the right degree of support and awareness. In my electorate, Dr Sandra Marshall, who is a Town of Gawler organiser, is a very passionate person in this area. She is doing a lot to educate not just the community but the education department as well about dyslexia and how we can better help people, including students and young people, with dyslexia. I have also got to thank Ms Sandra Tidswell, Ms Jeni Ferris, Ms Leanne James, Ms Belinda Pringle, Ms Kay Bosworth, Dr Bartek Rajkowski, Mr Bill Hansberry, who I went to high school with, who is now an educator of some renown in South Australia, and Mr Robert Klose, who works in my office and who is very passionate about this condition.

The important thing about the Light it Red for Dyslexia initiative is that it has been brought about to coincide with the international World Dyslexia Day and be a prelude to Dyslexia Empowerment Week in Australia, which runs from 16 to 22 October. I have spoken in this chamber before about the nature of the condition and how it is often hidden, often passed over. Many of the sufferers endure it and work and live very productive lives in the community, but they often have trouble admitting they have this condition and they often do not get the support that they need in the community.

One of the things I would really like to see, as we launch ourselves into a new world where education becomes increasingly important and many of the entry-level jobs that allowed people with this condition to be productive members of the community in decades gone, is raising awareness, increasing acceptance and improving the avenues of help for those who suffer. I would like for all of us, I think, to be more supportive and aware of the nature of this condition and to better support those in the community who have this condition.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wakefield for his most valuable contribution to the House. Is the motion seconded?

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion and I am happy to support the member for Wakefield. I thank the member for Wakefield for bringing this motion to the House. As we were discussing before, it is certainly an issue that is well supported across the chamber on both sides.

I think it is important to reflect that dyslexia in Australia affects roughly 10 per cent of the population and that holds globally as well. So 10 per cent of the people out there in the community whether, as the member for Wakefield said, they recognise it or not, have some form of dyslexia. As we get to know more about dyslexia and understand it better, we can start to treat it and put support services around it.

Dyslexia over the years has not been well identified or managed. It has been, according to the Australian Dyslexia Association, resistant to traditional teaching and regular learning methods, so it is important to ensure that we find new ways of teaching and supporting people who have been identified as having dyslexia.

That is the importance of the Light it Red for Dyslexia initiative. In Brisbane we had the Story Bridge lit up on Saturday in recognition of dyslexia as well as the Q1 SkyPoint Observation Deck on the Gold Coast. The Light it Red for Dyslexia campaign, importantly, is a volunteer initiative to increase dyslexia awareness and, as the member for Wakefield, said, it is a prelaunch to Dyslexia Empowerment Week.

Of that 10 per cent of the population with dyslexia, about half—or five per cent—of those students are known to have a developmental learning disability. Of these students with a learning disability, four out of five have a reading disorder as well as a maths disorder. So it is not just reading; it can also be maths.

The importance of Dyslexia Empowerment Week is that children are encouraged to write a red letter about dyslexia to a politician, a school principal, a teacher, the media or a person they feel has influence in creating change for people with dyslexia. I am looking forward to getting some of those letters—I have not received any yet and I am not sure if anyone else here has. Hopefully, over the next week or so, we will start to see some of those letters come into our offices. It will be interesting to see what those people have to say about their experiences with dyslexia and how we can possibly work with them and help them by passing their thoughts and concerns onto our senior colleagues.

As a government, we recognise that we need to place a high priority on education and providing educational opportunities for students, including those with dyslexia. In that vein, the government is funding some $342,000 in 2016 to enable AUSPELD, the Australian Federation of Specific Learning Difficulties, to produce a resource entitled Understanding learning difficulties: a practical guidethat will be made freely available online to all teachers across the country.

We need to recognise the importance of teachers being properly trained in teaching students with dyslexia. As I have said before, traditional teaching methods do not necessarily work. I was reading a statistic earlier that, in the three years of a Bachelor of Education—training for a teacher—only about five per cent of that time is actually spent on how to teach students with dyslexia, so it is important that we build the skills and training capacity of our teachers to be able to work with those students. That is, in part, what AUSPELD, as a national body, is providing—those additional services for people with dyslexia and other learning difficulties through, importantly, evidence based interventions.

The AUSPELD guide has been designed by experts to provide principals and teachers with a greater awareness and understanding of the significant impact that learning difficulties such as dyslexia can have on children. I think it is a great piece of work, and the government is committed to continuing to support students with those difficulties. I am pleased that the member has brought the motion to the House.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a real honour to speak in this debate, and I particularly want to commend the member for Wakefield for putting it on the agenda of this place. I also want to acknowledge the excellent contribution by the member for Forde—some very insightful comments there as well.

It is clear to all of us that one of the most important benchmarks for success in our modern economy and society is successful years at school. We have that debate in many ways in that place, so I think it is unsurprising that we should be concerned that there are a group of students who have a condition that is going to be a serious barrier to them doing well at school, which is so heavily reliant on literacy skills—and that is those with dyslexia. As the member for Forde said, given that even so much of our science and maths subjects are based around language skill and capacity, it flows through subject areas.

It has not been well understood or well treated for a long time. I am sure all of us know adults now who struggled as best they could through life and perhaps did not, until quite late in life, get a diagnosis of dyslexia, an understanding of what that meant for them and good quality treatment that assists them. This is a great initiative, and I was really pleased to participate locally, on Saturday evening, with Labor's candidate for the Wollongong by-election, Paul Scully, who has direct personal experience with adults that he knows who have exactly that problem. He was very keen to support the campaign. We went along to the lighting red of the Wollongong lighthouse. It was the first time that a local group have participated in this campaign. As the member for Wakefield said, it has been going for four years now. There were a local group of mums who have formed a dyslexia support group who were very keen to participate. We had a beautiful Wollongong evening. A pod of whales were playing and frolicking in the water just beside us, waving their tales in support for Light it Red for Dyslexia. The lighthouse was lit up red and looked fabulous, and there were a great group of people there to support the campaign.

Only in September, local mum, Sharlene Poljasevic, contacted me on Facebook and said: 'We want to do this. We want to participate in this campaign this year.' There is a bit of a cost associated—as the member for Forde said, they are all volunteer groups—so she set up a GoFundMe fundraising campaign. I felt very happy to support that and to encourage others to support it. They were successfully able to get the funding they needed to light the lighthouse up red. On Saturday, Sharlene posted on her Facebook page: 'A big thank you to the Wollongong Dyslexia Support Girls, to all the people who donated to make this happen, to all the people who turned up to see the lighting of the lighthouse, to all our friends and family who have shared our photos, and to our wonderful children, who give us the reason to build this awareness and who make us smile every day.' I thought that was a beautiful thing which captured the sentiment.

The group have also organised a showing of a film, Outside the Square Film 2 - Targeted Teaching for children with Dyslexia, for the very issues that both the member for Wakefield and the member for Forde talked about in terms of empowering teachers to be able to deal effectively with this. I met with some of the local parents there: Sharlene and her family, John, Brooke and Karla; and Jenny, Simon and Jaryn O'Connor.

It was also great to catch up with Gabby Martinez, who spoke to the Illawarra Mercury in a great article by journalist Lisa Wachsmuth about Gabby and her daughter, Emilia. Gabby made exactly the point that the member for Wakefield made as would I am sure the member for Moreton—being a great reader as well—that even though Gabby is a great lover of books and literature, she had a daughter who was struggling to read. It was really getting the diagnosis and being able to find support services that made such a difference. And that story is repeated across families in each and every one of our electorates. So the campaign, both the week of awareness and the commencement of it by the Light it Red for Dyslexia campaign, is really important. I really want to commend parents, families and supporters all across our communities, like my own dyslexia support group, who participated in this campaign. I continue to commit my support to the efforts that we can deliver through this place in support of that campaign.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for the opportunity to rise on this occasion to speak to the motion of the member for Wakefield. I begin by congratulating the member for Wakefield for moving the motion and also previous speakers because it is with pride that we stand here in a bipartisan fashion to talk about Light it Red for Dyslexia and the importance of the initiative. I would also like to congratulate those organisations that have come together to create this initiative and to support it, particularly Dyslexia Support Australia, the New South Wales dyslexia support group, the Victorian support group, Western Australia and Perth dyslexia support group, Dyslexia SA, the Queensland Gold Coast group, Dyslexia Information for the Canberra Region as well as the New South Wales Clarence and Northern Rivers organisation. All of them have an important role to play in raising the profile, awareness and visibility of the issue and in making sure that people with dyslexia feel that they are supported not just by those people they interact with on a daily basis but also that there is a broader community concern which is achieved by motions such as those moved today.

Being here from the government benches, the government places a very high priority on making sure there is visibility, awareness and education by providing equal opportunities for all Australian students and that goes to people with a disability, particularly those with dyslexia. That is why the government is proud to fund $342,000 this year towards the Australian federation of specific learning difficulties' resource entitled Understanding Learning Difficulties—A Practical Guide that is made freely available to all teachers online across the country to enable them to support those people who need assistance.

The guide has been designed by experts to provide principals and teachers with greater awareness and understanding of the significant impact of a learning disability such as dyslexia can have on students. It also provides advice on a wide range of strategies for use in the classroom to more effectively support and meet the needs of students with learning difficulties. Teachers can access this resource through their education authority's professional development portal and is freely available to everybody, which is one of the key ways that we can not just raise awareness of the issues faced by people with disability but make sure that we support the people who support others. I am proud to be part of the government that is investing a record level of school funding that is growing from $16 billion this year to more than $20 billion in 2020. This means a total funding of $73.6 billion will be provided to government and non-government schools over the period of 2016-17 to 2019-20.

Of course we also need to acknowledge on these important days not just the role of organisations and educational institutions that provide professional support and assistance to people with dyslexia but also to acknowledge the commitment of those people who are carers. They are often family members and parents in particular who give support unconditional love and support to people with dyslexia, who face great challenges in their lives. There are many of these families in the electorate of Goldstein, who, every day, sacrifice to provide support and assistance to people in their lives out of a position of love and compassion because they are acutely aware of the need to make sure that everybody has an equal opportunity in life, particularly school aged children. By doing so, they create an environment in which everybody feels that they have an opportunity in society, and they also hold communities together. One of the things I have always strongly supported is that you build a country from the individual up, coming together to form family, community and, ultimately, country. On days like this, we acknowledge the very important role of carers and families because of the sacrifice they make and because of the contribution they not only have made in the past but will make in the future.

Finally, I acknowledge that there are many locations around this country where there is support of the Light it Red campaign. While there are many such sites across the country, I am particularly happy to say that the Kingston clock face in Moorabbin—which is just outside my electorate—will be lit up red to raise awareness and understanding in my community and to make sure that every Australian feels that there is an awareness and understanding of dyslexia, particularly for the support groups who do so much to support the people in these communities to make sure that everybody can have, and live, a free life.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

During Dyslexia Empowerment Week in Australia, I am proud to rise to speak on the motion put forward by my good friend the member for Wakefield. It is an opportunity to raise awareness about dyslexia and to dispel some of the myths about this learning disorder that may affect as many as one in 10 Australians—hence the rise of the Light it Red for Dyslexia campaign. I am doing my bit by wearing a red tie. Words and literature have been an important part of my life. I have an honours degree in English literature, and I taught English for 11 years, so I strongly value the ability to learn. As a lawyer and as a politician, I value precise words and the power that they hold. I can only imagine how difficult it must be when words—the building blocks of our language—are almost unrecognisable, and so meaning is lost. I will endeavour to debunk the three most common misconceptions about dyslexia and then talk about the role teachers and parents can play in helping children with dyslexia.

The first misconception is that people with dyslexia see words back to front. Dyslexia is a reading based learning disability that is neurological in origin. People with dyslexia have difficulty accurately and fluently recognising and decoding words. Imagine for a moment that you are in a classroom in China, but you speak only English. In the classroom, all the writing on the blackboard, on the posters around the room and in the textbooks on the desks is in Mandarin. Imagine how frustrated and confused you would be and, even more importantly, how little you would be able to learn. That is the experience that children with dyslexia have in some classrooms every day. They cannot decipher the writing on the blackboard, on the whiteboard, on the posters and in the textbooks. They may painstakingly decode a couple of words of a sentence on the blackboard, only to have the teacher rub them out and move to the next topic.

The second misconception is that dyslexia is a vision problem. Many children with dyslexia have, at times, used visual aids to assist their reading, including coloured overlays and even reading glasses, but there is no evidence that dyslexia is caused by visual stress.

The third misconception is that children with dyslexia are not intelligent. In fact, most children who suffer from dyslexia have average to above average intelligence. This can compound the problem for children in a classroom setting. A teacher has described it this way: 'Because these children are very intelligent, they know what they don't know.' Imagine yourself in that Mandarin classroom. The majority of children with dyslexia are very aware that they cannot keep up with the rest of the class. They are aware that they cannot decipher the language like most of their peers. This is often the most dangerous aspect of dyslexia. These children can quickly lose their self-esteem. You do not need your peers to call you dumb if you are going to label yourself that way. If not handled well by teachers and parents in the early years, these children can slip into a downward spiral of low self-esteem and educational failure that may eventually lead to unemployment and, sometimes, even transgressions of the law.

What are the best ways teachers and parents can help children with dyslexia? Children with dyslexia need intensive language education which is long term. Unfortunately, there are no educational shortcuts. It is a long, slow process, but the rewards for the children cannot be overstated. I urge people to be wary of the quick fix educational snake-oil salesman saying, 'Buy this product, and you'll be sorted.' It is a long-term remediation process.

The early identification of children with dyslexia is vital. The Acacia Ridge AEDC Response Group is based in my electorate of Moreton. They formed in 2011 in response to the Australian Early Development Census. On Saturday I had the pleasure of opening their 'Play, Learn, Create for 0 to 8s'. This program showcased a variety of educational services in the Acacia Ridge area to inform parents about the services available to help their children. For dyslexic children, their learning needs require an intensive and long-term approach. Early play-based programs such as the Acacia Ridge program are a solid foundation on which to build successful future learning. Dyslexia is a hurdle but it does not have to be a barrier for children participating in school. We as teachers and parents are much better equipped to educate our children than we once were, but there is more to do to ensure that no child with dyslexia falls into the spiral of low self-esteem and underachievement.

I finish by especially acknowledging the wonderful teachers and parents in my electorate of Moreton who put in countless hours of patient effort to ensure that children with dyslexia are given every educational opportunity. I commend the member for Wakefield and all those members speaking in support of this motion. I commend it to the House.

Scott Buchholz (Wright, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I call the member for Swan.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker—I am glad you recognised me! I thank the member for Wakefield for bringing this motion to the House. I gladly support his motion. At the same time, I congratulate the member for Wright for his elevation to the Speaker's panel: it is good to see you in the chair. I acknowledge the other members who have supported this motion, the member for Moreton and, in particular, the member for Wakefield—who are both very vocal members of the chamber! They are from the class of '07 as well, so it is great to see three members from the class of '07 supporting this motion.

I would like to start by talking about a very important and special group in my electorate. It is the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation of Western Australia situated in South Perth, which is in the heart of my electorate of Swan. This group has provided vital support to children and adults with learning disabilities in Western Australia for more than 40 years. This group is extremely committed to improving the level of support provided to children and adults with learning disabilities, as well as to educating the community about learning disabilities and, in particular, dyslexia.

This motion today acknowledges the important role of Dyslexia Empowerment Week and the role that organisations like the foundation in my electorate play in our community. It also acknowledges the many monuments around Australia which were lit up in red on 15 October as a pre-launch for Dyslexia Empowerment Week. The week aims to raise awareness of this very important developmental learning disability. Dyslexia affects four out of five students who have a developmental learning disability, and it primarily affects their skills in accurate and fluent word reading and spelling. As part of this week, I am supporting the red letter campaign and have asked schoolchildren in Swan to write a red letter about how dyslexia impacts them or their friends or family members, and what they think we as a government can do to help.

The Australian government places our priority on education and on providing equal educational opportunities to all Australian students. This includes students with learning disabilities such as dyslexia. The government is committed to ensuring that all our teachers, who work tirelessly, have the skills and tools, including an understanding of dyslexia, to best help our students. I recognise the member for Cunningham, who is an ex-teacher, and the contribution she made to this particular discussion. The government has funded a new Australian Federation of SPELD Associations resource titled Understanding Learning Difficulties: A practical guide so that it can be made freely available online to all teachers across the country. This guide was designed by experts to provide teachers with a greater awareness and understanding of the significant impact that learning disabilities such as dyslexia can have on students. It provides advice on a wide range of strategies for use in the classroom, to more effectively support and meet the needs of students with learning difficulties. Most importantly, it is easily accessible through the educational authorities' professional development portals. It is also available for purchase from the Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation of Western Australia in South Perth.

This government is committed to continuing to improve support for students with disability and learning difficulties like dyslexia. There are an extensive range of government initiatives and activities that support students with disability and learning difficulties. For example, the Disability Standards for Education 2005 were put in place to ensure that students with disability could access education on the same basis as other students. The standards explain the obligations of the education providers towards students with a disability. The government has funded the development of an exemplars of practice resource, with individual case studies based on the experiences of students, educators and parents. These provide examples of how students with disability have been supported to achieve positive outcomes, helping to demonstrate how the standards can be put into practice in a range of education settings. Another example is the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability. This is a joint initiative of all Australian governments and all state and territory government and non-government education authorities. National data is collected annually to identify the number of school students with disability and the level of reasonable education adjustment provided for them. This will help ensure we have the data available so that we can best help students with learning disabilities. As such, this government has delivered on its commitment to provide funding, informed by the Nationally Consistent Collection of Data on School Students with Disability from 2016.

In the 2016-17 budget, the government announced additional funding of $118.2 million in 2016-17 for schools to support students with a disability. This funding is on top of the increases in funding that the government is providing to all sectors across all states and territories through the existing loading. More than $5 billion has been notionally attributed to the loading for students with disability from 2014 to 2017, including over $1.3 billion in 2016 and almost $1.5 billion in 2017.

Again I commend the member for Wakefield for bringing this motion to the House and again I congratulate the local group in my electorate, Dyslexia-SPELD Foundation of WA, which is situated in South Perth and which is doing such a great job.

Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this debate has expired. The debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.