Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Prior to question time, I think I was indicating Labor was prepared to support this legislation.

Claire Moore (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You were, Senator.

Penny Wong (SA, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Corporate Governance and Responsibility) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you. I was making the point that, as to Indigenous enrolment in vocational education and training, although there were around 62½ thousand Indigenous students enrolled in vocational education and training in 2005, the completion rates for those students remain low. We particularly want to note that education department data indicate that the numbers of Indigenous students starting higher education are continuing to fall. The 2004 commencements of 3,865 Indigenous students represent a nine per cent decline since 2002, and these trends are compounded by continuing concerns over Indigenous students’ completion rates.

The March 2006 report of the Indigenous Higher Education Advisory Council indicated that the success rate—that is, the progression of students through qualifications—is lower for Indigenous students. The council also reported that the course completion rate for Indigenous students, which is around 42 per cent, is only two-thirds of the completion rate for other students, which is around 65 per cent. In other words, Indigenous graduates are declining as a proportion of total Australian graduates.

These are unacceptable figures. We on this side understand the need for a more strategic approach to Indigenous students’ success and completion, and Labor’s white paper for higher education has foreshadowed that a Labor government will support Indigenous students to participate successfully in higher education. Amongst the policies which have been outlined, we have foreshadowed the provision of incentive payments to universities for Indigenous student enrolments in the second, third and fourth years of a degree course in order to improve Indigenous graduation rates. It is critical, if we are serious about improving the position of Indigenous Australians in this country, that we attend to increased educational outcomes at primary and secondary school and also at the higher education level.

The bill before us includes some urgently needed assistance but it does not consider some of the fundamental issues underlying education and training policies for Indigenous Australians. As I indicated at the outset, Labor will support this bill. I commend the second reading amendment that I moved earlier.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens believe that governments should be investing in Indigenous education. We need a large amount of money invested across the board but what we see proposed in this bill are some small ad hoc funding pots, which Indigenous education needs less of rather than more. This bill shows the government’s lack of commitment to delivering social justice across the board for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders. It delivers initiatives announced during the budget: extending tutorial assistance to year 9 Indigenous students; extending tutorial assistance to Indigenous vocational education training students; funding school based sporting academies; funding the Indigenous youth festival component of the Community Festivals for Health Promotion program; and funding an educational component for a substance abuse initiative aimed at discouraging petrol sniffing in remote communities.

Given that these proposals increase funding for Indigenous education, the Greens welcome them but, as the Greens pointed out at budget time, they are set in a context of poor funding directions from this government from whom we have seen a cut to Abstudy by $15 million and a failure to deliver a much-needed increase in core funding for Indigenous and public education across the board. Despite implementing promising programs, the states have also failed to give sufficient priority to public school investment in Indigenous education. The extension of the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme to year 9 students is of course welcome but, at the same time, it is worrying because it is in part a recognition that the education policies of both state and federal governments are still failing our Indigenous students.

The Greens continue to point out that over 90 per cent of Indigenous students are educated in the public school system and that, under the Howard government, federal funding to public schools has dropped from around 45 per cent of total Commonwealth schools funding to less than 26 per cent today. Had the Commonwealth taken the opportunity to invest in the infrastructure, the staffing and the resourcing of our public schools at this time of unprecedented prosperity in Australia then the statistics that show that Indigenous students continue to lag behind their non-Indigenous schoolmates would not be as bad as they are today.

The core message that the Greens bring to this debate is: we need to invest to improve educational outcomes for Indigenous students, and the best thing we can do to achieve this is to have a massive reinvestment into our public school system. More specifically, the Greens policy includes an annual investment of $380 million of federal funding for a disadvantaged schools program, a significant proportion of which would target Indigenous communities. We also call for the Commonwealth to negotiate a nation building agreement between it and the states to address the ongoing inequity of educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians combined with the poverty, health and work challenges that so many Indigenous communities face.

Any Indigenous education agreement between the states and the Commonwealth must include funding to deliver mandatory preservice teacher education in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander culture, and educational needs and professional development for all existing teachers. It must also include funding to deliver a capital investment in new schools and facilities; increased numbers of Aboriginal education assistants in public schools; the exploration of modes of public education that integrate preschool, primary, secondary and TAFE as well as the complete range of public health and welfare services and community development; and increased numbers of teachers in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander literacy and numeracy programs. It is only with this kind of approach that the goals from the national strategy for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education agreed by the state and Commonwealth ministers through the Ministerial Council for Employment, Education, Training and Youth Affairs, or MCEETYA, can be achieved, and with this kind of investment, and they are a long way from being achieved at the moment.

In May last year, MCEETYA agreed that improving outcomes for Indigenous students is the top priority for the 2005-08 quadrennium. But in the budget following this announcement the federal government cut funding under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act to Abstudy and the Questacon Indigenous outreach program. How can the positive objectives agreed to in the ministerial council directions paper for Indigenous education 2005-08 be achieved when, in the first budget after that, the government cuts funding for Indigenous education?

Amongst the many recommendations the ministers agreed to was to provide all Indigenous children with access to two years of high-quality early childhood education prior to participation in the first year of formal schooling. That is a recommendation the Greens support. We would like to see it delivered through the public system. Where is the bill to assist with this vital objective? Another objective that all the ministers from around the country agreed to was that supplementary measures supporting Indigenous students through pathways into training, employment and higher education are pivotal to improving post-school transitions and breaking intergenerational cycles of poverty and disadvantage. How does this sit with the cuts to Abstudy we saw in the budget just after state and federal ministers had agreed to these objectives?

The sad reality is that whilst the government agrees to these excellent objectives outlined by the ministerial council document it continually fails to come up with an investment of the size and depth that is needed to make a real difference in outcomes for Indigenous education. It is appalling and shameful that so many Aboriginal students are being left behind by this lack of commitment. The Aboriginal population is a young one—40 per cent of Indigenous Australians are under the age of 15. This cohort is growing faster than any other part of the Australian population. It could, then, be argued that there is no better area than Indigenous education in which to spend an extra education dollar. But still the federal government in particular continues to drag its feet in this area. What a tragedy this is when so many great programs being pioneered in public schools around Australia are desperately in need of more support from federal and state governments.

Recently, I travelled around New South Wales as education spokesperson for the Greens. I visited a number of public schools that are running fantastic programs in Aboriginal education. Each of the schools were struggling with the maze of funding programs they had to navigate their way through to get funding to support the students in their school. All of them urgently needed simpler, more reliable and more generous funding streams to allow them to continue the work they were doing.

I want to tell you about some of the schools I visited. Evans River school in northern New South Wales caters for students from kindergarten all the way through to year 12. It has 560 students, 15 per cent of whom are Indigenous. There are Indigenous students from kindergarten all the way through to high school. A number of Indigenous staff are employed at that school, including an Aboriginal deputy principal. They explained to me a great program they run to increase young Aboriginal people’s attendance at school, which is called ‘Race to the top’. It involves an opportunity for students to be involved in making go-karts for some of the time they are at school, in order to attract them to school. It is designed to motivate Indigenous kids to improve their attendance. It has been a successful pilot program that was running in Sydney, and it is now going to be run at Evans Head in the north of New South Wales.

But it has not been easy. In order to secure the funding, the Aboriginal teaching assistant in particular, and a number of other staff, have had to spend a lot of time out of the classroom writing and rewriting funding applications in order to try and get money from the Commonwealth to run the program—funding which, incidentally, will run out after six months. They have taken a tremendous amount of time to write applications to get the funding. The program is funded by a grant from the federal Department of Education, Science and Training. The school went through with me the approximately 20 programs they run for Indigenous education. The programs are funded by the federal government from different pots. Each has a different application regime and each has a different reporting regime. This uses up a tremendous amount of staff time which, therefore, is not spent educating Indigenous children in these schools. They also described to me how some of the federal government funding models punish them for their success. If they improve the language and literacy skills of the Aboriginal students, they do not get the funding any more, so they are back to square one in terms of being able to ensure that the Aboriginal students get the support and tuition they need.

Another school I went to in that area was the Cabbage Tree Island Public School. It has a small transition class—a pre-primary class—and primary classes up to year 6. They cater for the Aboriginal community on Cabbage Tree Island, which struggles with low economic opportunity and the usual social stresses that come with that. The staff have done a tremendous job in improving the school and the quality of the education provided there. The staff are predominantly Aboriginal. They are incredibly committed and all work beyond the call of duty to build a future for the students there. I watched the year 6 students’ dance class prepare for a festival at which they were to perform. The pride on the faces of those students when they were doing those dances and the excitement about being in a festival—I think it was the Croc Festival—was fantastic. That school also has had problems with the interaction between all the different pots of money they need to get funding from—some state and some federal. When they receive funding from one level of government they lose the funding they were receiving from the other level of government—as a result of trying to balance those two programs.

At that school they spoke about how they no longer bother to apply for some of the federal funding because the government has made the application process so difficult; that it takes up too much of staff and the parent’s time to make the applications. Each of these schools was providing fantastic programs and doing incredible work. I saw students really enjoying what they were doing. But these programs were often pilot programs with no ongoing funding. A tremendous amount of a teacher’s time out of the classroom is required to fill in the different application forms for each of the different funding pots from which they hope to get funding, in order to run the great programs they are running.

Another school I visited was Broulee Primary School, which has around 300 students. This school has a fantastic Indigenous language program. It is a pilot program with limited funding available. They are doing it through Sydney university. They have two Indigenous staff who have set up a program where they teach their local language to the kids in that area—a language that has been a living part of that community for 10,000 years. The teachers did the work to get the language program to a point where it could be taught in all the classrooms. I sat through a year 6 class where all the students sang for me. They sang common songs that we have all heard, but they sang in the local Aboriginal language from that community. Some of the elders were there to hear their language living in the community.

This school has a reasonably small proportion of Indigenous students. A lot of the students are from coastal communities involved in surfing. They sang for me in their Aboriginal language. The year 1 kids sang for me as well. It was incredible how much the elders enjoyed being involved. They were talking with the Aboriginal teachers about the importance of the language from the area. The teachers spoke to me afterwards and said that some of the students who had not excelled in other areas or other parts of the curriculum really found they could excel in the Aboriginal language. It created great opportunities for them to feel pride in the work they were doing at the school.

The program at that school will only run for 18 months because it is a pilot program. But that is exactly the sort of program that should be available in all public schools across the country, if they wanted to run it. There should be funding models at a federal level that allow schools to develop educational programs for Indigenous students that meet the needs of the local community and the Indigenous students and that allow easy access to the funding so that staff resources are not tied up in writing applications. That would bring enormous benefits to schools and local communities.

There are great things being done in public schools across this country for Indigenous education, and they need to be supported because, at the moment, the thing that frustrates all of these teachers I spoke to who are running Aboriginal education programs is that they have to spend so much time outside the classroom writing different application forms for different grant programs. They have to juggle the different grants and try to find which they can get on, how long they will last, how short term particular grants are and how the funding model has changed so they can change the way they do their applications. They want to just get on and teach the kids. They want to continue doing the great work that they do in the schools and we need to see that great work continue. We need to see an investment to achieve the outcomes that the ministerial council on education talks about wanting to achieve for Indigenous education. We need the investment so that the money is available and able to be accessed in such a way that staff can spend their time teaching, rather than spending their time on administrative duties and scrabbling around in every little pot of money to see what they might be able to do.

These are precisely the sorts of programs that the government should be supporting, and it should be providing across-the-board access to funding. This bill has more small, ad hoc pots of funding for which people will be able to make applications, rather than increasing the overall investment in our public schools—where 90 per cent of Indigenous students are—and ensuring that there is across-the-board access to funding for people who want to run great programs.

So I think it is time for the minister to visit some of these great public schools that are running these programs and to talk with the staff and the teachers about how they can be improved, how the minister can support these great programs and how these programs can continue in schools. We urge the minister to visit these schools, talk with these teachers and find ways to have long-term, uncomplicated funding available to support Indigenous education. Rather than seeing it as a problem area, it should be seen as a core element of education in Australia.

When you walk into a school of 300 students at a coastal community on the south coast of New South Wales and they all sing to you in the local Aboriginal language that they have learned from the local teachers who are Aboriginal and from that area, it is incredibly impressive. It was great to walk into the school and see the little signs around the playground in the local Aboriginal language—on the canteen with a sign for food and under the trees in the playground with signs describing the different parts of the school. It was a wonderful feeling to walk into a school like that and see how much that learning is contributing to the atmosphere in the school and in the whole of the local community, and to see people from the Aboriginal community involved in the process.

That is what we need to see and that is where we would like to see the government investing. They need to make sure that these kinds of programs become a normal part of the curriculum and are available across the board to not only Indigenous students but also non-Indigenous students, so they can engage in this exciting, living part of our culture and so that everyone can contribute to it, learn from it, enjoy it and be proud of it. That is what we would like to see the federal government and the state governments doing—investing in making these opportunities available for all students in public schools across the country.

Jan McLucas (Queensland, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Aged Care, Disabilities and Carers) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Others will speak far more eloquently about the elements of this Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006, but I thought it was an opportunity to talk more broadly about Indigenous education, from my experience as a former teacher in some rural parts of Queensland. All teachers, all parents and education commentators will tell you that for people who are disadvantaged education is the key to achieving a level of equity in the community. A government not offering Indigenous people that opportunity is a government that is not taking up its responsibility properly.

I want to make a point about the mess that schools in regional Queensland found themselves in in 2004 with the changes to the Tutorial Assistance Scheme and, more broadly, Indigenous funding streams. As an early childhood teacher in the later part of my career, the thing I find most egregious about this legislation is that there is still no attempt to invest in tutorial assistance for children in preschool and years 1, 2 and 3. We have to wait, apparently, until those children fail in their literacy test in year 4 and then we will provide them with assistance. Any educator will tell you that if you invest early you will reap the rewards of that investment. I urge the government to reconsider their assistance for tutorial support in early childhood education.

Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006 is important because it is vital that we improve the educational outcomes of Indigenous Australians. It is a key to breaking the cycles of poverty and social dysfunction which affect so many Indigenous people. Indigenous children ought to have the same chances and choices in life as we expect for every other Australian. The bill we are debating today provides additional funds for Indigenous education and training in 2006-08. It has a number of measures which are worth remarking upon. The first is the extension of tutorial assistance programs to students in year 9, vocational education and TAFE, although I note that this largely just restores former provisions; the second is support for community festivals promoting health and anti substance abuse programs; and the third is support for school based sporting academies and other activities for Indigenous students.

One of the things that I saw as a positive out of the last budget was the extension of funding for those school based sporting academies. The Clontarf Academy in Perth has had tremendous success in developing opportunities for young Indigenous people. It is focused mainly on Australian Rules football but increasingly on a range of other areas. Of course, the programs extend to women as well. The Clontarf program run out of Western Australia has been a tremendous success and an example of what can be done. It is a tribute to all involved, particularly Gerard Neesham, the former Dockers coach, who is having more success, it seems, in running Clontarf than he ever had in coaching the Dockers. As a supporter I do not mean that in any disparaging sense.

I also have some criticisms of this bill which go to the failure to resolve some of the issues with parent-school partnerships, where there seems to be a drop-off in community involvement. That reflects my concern that the government’s interest is more in top-down approaches than approaches that seriously engage the community and give the community ownership.

Starting on one of the key points that Senator McLucas just made—and that is the question of early support in educational and family program measures—I see, and have done for many years, that this is the key to investment in children, particularly Indigenous children. Last week we saw the release of new research from Professor Fiona Stanley’s Telethon Institute for Child Health Research. Based on data from more than 5,000 WA children it found that, by the time they began year 1, 60 per cent of Aboriginal children were already significantly behind non-Aboriginal children. That is, by the time they got to school they were already at a serious disadvantage. It found that existing intervention programs were failing to cut through with Indigenous children as they were too little, too late. It highlighted the complex issues which need to be addressed to improve educational outcomes for many Indigenous kids, including providing assistance and support to parents who may be young and lacking in a positive educational background themselves, and dealing with housing, family, and financial strain and stress. One of the real issues in Indigenous education now is the fact that the parents of kids going to school have not had a positive education experience themselves and often have very poor literacy skills, so family support and reinforcement of the value of education is not there.

The Telethon institute report is further evidence that we need a comprehensive early intervention strategy which works with children and families in the very early years. It requires not only a developmental and educational focus but strategies to assist parents with parenting skills and support. It also points to the need to tackle issues including health, housing and family function. These are complex challenges and I do not believe we will make progress with headline-grabbing bandaid solutions that have been offered in recent times. Improving the socioeconomic indicators of Aboriginal peoples’ wellbeing is a complex challenge which requires broad national, long-term, evidence based approaches.

The attitude that we have seen from Minister Brough—a sort of ‘spot the issue’ attitude—that, if you focus purely on law and order, somehow everything will be fixed, is just naive in the extreme. These are complex, multifaceted problems and you have to have a holistic approach, because dealing with just one issue will not lead to success. We need to ensure that Indigenous kids and families are set up for educational success before the kids reach school. There are a number of very good programs around. I went to one at La Perouse the other day. It was a program for parents and youngsters. It works with families on an introduction to reading, familiarity with books and basic exercises that help the parents and help the kids be ready for school. We have to do better, as I said, in the education effort that we apply to Indigenous kids.

Recently there has been a lot of focus on truancy. Clearly, one way to improve the educational outcomes for children is to make sure that they are going to school. I think that is a point on which everyone would agree. It is not a Left or Right issue. Kids cannot get a decent education if they are not at school. In the first half of this year, the government carried out a truancy trial in Halls Creek in the Kimberley. The trial was a voluntary scheme linking parental employment activity and kids’ school attendance to the payment of welfare benefits.

The Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations recently released an evaluation of the trials, which concluded that they had failed in their intention. The report presented some important evidence about Indigenous school attendance. It concluded that there is a high degree of autonomy among Indigenous kids in Halls Creek and that, as a result, targeting their parents was not the most effective way to improve school attendance. The report underlined the importance of positive school culture and high-quality teaching. The report found that overcrowding and a lack of employment opportunities for parents constrained the families’ engagement in functional community life.

These are important and not counterintuitive findings. And they can be useful in developing strategies for getting kids into school. But discussing the report on Perth radio Minister Andrews suggested that he was considering revisiting the trial in compulsory form. He wanted to keep beating the drum that somehow family payments and educational outcomes were linked. He said:

... the voluntary nature of this trial hasn’t worked and therefore, I think we have to ask questions about whether or not we should make a program like this compulsory, rather than voluntary.

I have read the report. I do not know where he is coming from. Is it ideology or is it evidence based? It seems to me it is ideology. Where does the trial evaluation suggest making the scheme compulsory? It does not. The evaluation recommends ‘that the Halls Creek Engaging Families trial, as it has been implemented, not be extended for another period’. Rather than suggest extending the trial or making it compulsory, it said:

... in an environment where children make up their minds each day as to whether to go to school or not, the significance of the parent as a “method of engagement” for the children declines and the role of the school—particularly in terms of teacher quality and school culture—increases.

The report also said quite clearly:

The type of ‘method of engagement’ used in the trial is very expensive and resource intensive, but can work in a voluntary context where there are no sanctions for not turning up for activities. It is too expensive to be considered for replication elsewhere and certainly should not be rolled out nationally.

That is what the government’s evaluation says. I thought the report did provide some valuable pointers: the importance of teacher quality, providing a social worker, improving employer awareness of the advantages of Indigenous employment and providing more access to jobs and to houses. But if Minister Andrews is looking to make the scheme compulsory, and is looking to the report for support, it is just not there.

Our approach in all Indigenous policy, including education, needs to be evidence based. We need to read what the report says. This report presents evidence of steps which can help, but it seems the government is intent on going down a path that it has already outlined, without regard for the evidence. It is a trend that worries me in a whole range of areas. Rather than focusing on which version of history is taught to kids, or lecturing people on the decline in civility, we ought to focus on the key issues.

The recently tabled National Report to Parliament on Indigenous Education and Training 2004 from the Department of Education, Science and Training showed a decrease in Indigenous higher education commencements of 3.2 per cent in 2003 and a further six per cent in 2004. The decline in Indigenous higher education commencements has been linked to the government’s Abstudy cuts by a separate DEST report. It showed that the higher-education retention rate of Indigenous students has remained around 20 per cent below that of non-Indigenous students since 1997. The gap has remained unchanged over eight years. The report showed that the proportion of Indigenous preschool children assessed as being ready for primary school in terms of their literacy and numeracy actually declined in the 2001 to 2004 period. This is not a success.

Despite this, in a February interview with Southern Cross Radio the Prime Minister said retention rates for Aboriginal school children had increased by 55 per cent in the last 10 years and hailed it as marking the success of practical reconciliation. This claim was highly misleading, as the 55 per cent increase largely reflects the growth in the school-age Aboriginal population. Attendance and retention rates in schools have been variable—some getting worse, most staying the same and some marginal improvements in the Northern Territory, South Australia and Victoria. In 2005 there was a 37 per cent gap in the retention rates at year 12 level between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. The fact is that this government, and previous governments, do not have a great record to point to. It is time to put aside the cultural agenda, focus on the basics and implement evidence based approaches.

I think we do need national leadership in all this. I am concerned that we are not getting it. I am also concerned that the government has admitted it has frozen Indigenous Education Strategic Initiatives program funding for urban children, claiming that remote education is the priority. This highlights my concern with the government’s obsession with mainstreaming. Mainstreaming for the government is more than just making mainstream departments provide services; it seems now to be about asserting that you do not need to offer separate and additional programs for Indigenous children because of their disadvantage. Labor believes special measures are still required because Indigenous kids, and Indigenous people more generally, do not access services at the same level.

On a similar theme, Labor fully supports offering assistance to regional and a few remote Indigenous children to attend urban boarding schools, and we see the many benefits of those sorts of scholarships for Indigenous kids. However, we do need to ensure that we are providing support for choices and opportunities for Indigenous children, not forcing people away from their communities and culture due to a failure to provide appropriate services in rural, regional and remote areas. At the end of the day, only a small number of kids will benefit from the scholarships. We have to have an education system that serves all children’s needs.

I am also concerned about funding stability for successful Indigenous education providers. Some of the organisations funded under this bill, such as Tranby College, the Institute for Aboriginal Development, Redfern Dance Theatre et cetera, have lost their recurrent funding under the new arrangements introduced in 2005 and are now required to compete through open tenders on an annual basis. This sounds like it is more efficient, but of course it does remove the stability and certainty for those organisations and for the students. It does prevent strategic planning, and I do not think it is helpful.

We have seen a number of reports that have highlighted the problems with this type of funding, where people have to keep reapplying to provide ongoing services. The government’s own review into Indigenous VET providers, conducted during 2003, examined the role of the four organisations affected by this bill and identified insecurity about long-term funding which directly limits opportunities for systemic goal setting.

We have debated before the concerns about some of the changes to Abstudy. The 2006 budget contained measures to tighten eligibility for this assistance, in part to link it to school attendance. I can understand the logic behind that. Increasing school attendance is obviously a worthy goal but it is interesting to note that the government does not seem to expect that to happen. The budget papers as much as admit that the measure will not actually improve school attendance, because they forecast savings of $1.8 million. It seems to me that the focus is at the wrong point. The focus is not on the serious endeavour of increasing attendance but more on some sort of revenue-saving measure.

As I said, we have to address all the issues that impact on people’s attendance at school to try and lift Indigenous participation in education in this country. We need to provide more national leadership and we need to work more closely with Indigenous communities. We need to have an evidence based approach. We do not need to adopt the latest fad. Education outcomes will not be achieved by sending out volunteers to communities on an ad hoc basis. There is no substitute for a serious national plan that tries to tackle the root causes of Indigenous educational disadvantage.

The Halls Creek report pointed to the need for improved housing if we are to get kids succeeding at school. You cannot learn if you do not get to sleep and you cannot get to sleep if you live in a house with 17 other people and there is no room where you can sleep peacefully, particularly if the household has some other aspects of dysfunction. We have to deal with the issues of housing and health if we are going to improve Indigenous education outcomes.

It is not fair to say to teachers that it is all their responsibility when the kids get to school. The reality is that the whole system has to support the educational opportunities for these kids. If we do not tackle some of the health, housing and early intervention issues then you cannot expect underresourced teachers to succeed in educating kids who start well behind when they front up at school.

As I said, it is not a question of focusing on one issue. We have to treat this in a holistic manner and we have to try and address the deep-seated problems that are working against Indigenous kids getting a proper education in this country. One of the things we need to do as part of that is to involve Indigenous people in the decision-making process, in setting priorities and policy design. That is a fundamental prerequisite for success.

The Howard government seems increasingly focused on top-down solutions. Without Indigenous participation we will not make serious progress. One of the issues I wish to highlight is the question of grants. I think we need triennial recurrent funding to try and make sure these institutions have a strong basis on which to proceed.

We cannot underestimate the power of good teachers, and teaching workforce issues are a priority. In making sure that teachers can attend at more remote and regional schools, dealing with questions of teacher housing is an important part of the process. You cannot expect teachers to stay in remote communities doing difficult, if rewarding, work if their housing is so poor as to make the option unviable for them.

There are success stories; I try not to focus always on the problems. We have seen Dr Chris Sarra at Cherbourg State School in Queensland dramatically increase school attendance and performance through quality teaching, strong leadership and a positive school culture. When he introduced the strategy, nearly half of the teaching staff left the school, many of them because they did not believe it was possible to achieve equal outcomes for Indigenous students. I think that is a key point. We have to overcome the culture that says, ‘We accept defeat; we accept lower outcomes.’ We have to have a culture that says, ‘We don’t accept failure and we don’t accept Indigenous kids not achieving at the same level.’

Dr Sarra proved that by fostering an expectation of pride and success Cherbourg has produced some tremendous results. And there are lots of success stories around the country that prove that we can do much better than we are doing. But I want to stress that the Telethon Institute for Child Health Research’s most recent report reinforces once again the need for early intervention and investment in the early years. We know from brain development research that investing in kids at the age of five or six, if we have not invested in them and provided support earlier, is often too late, particularly for kids from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Indigenous communities are marked by issues of poverty. We need to invest in those kids in a way that means that when they do get to school they get an equal chance at success. We will not improve outcomes unless we start earlier. We have to look at those issues. (Time expired)

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this afternoon to provide a contribution to the second reading debate on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006. As the explanatory memorandum states, the purpose of this bill is to amend the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2006 to appropriate additional funding to facilitate the provision of improved opportunities for Indigenous students in the school and training sectors, through additional tutorial assistance, support for community festivals, health promotion activities addressing substance abuse by Indigenous youth in remote regions, and delivery of school based sporting academies and related activities for Indigenous students.

The bill plans to do this through an appropriation of $25.7 million for additional tutorial assistance between 2006 and 2008 for Indigenous school students and Indigenous VET students; $19.1 million for school based sports academies; $7.3 million for Indigenous youth festivals, a component of the community festivals for the health promotion program; and $1.5 million for activities to discourage petrol sniffing and substance abuse in remote regions.

Of course, the Labor Party is not going to stand in the way of this bill. Why would we? Any money that can be appropriated to assist Indigenous education is a good thing. But, like my colleagues, I wish to make a number of comments about Indigenous education—and people in this place who know me would know that I would not miss an opportunity to do so. I will provide a few comments about the elements of this bill. The bill extends the tutorial assistance to another year level in high school, to students in year 9 and in vocational training. The extension is certainly most welcome, but I would note that it simply restores the support that was previously available under ATAS, the Aboriginal Tutorial Assistance Scheme, which was not available under the current guidelines. So do not be under any misapprehension that this is a move by this government to provide some new whiz-bang initiative when it comes to support for Indigenous students. This measure simply puts back what was previously there.

The additional money, though, is offset by a tightening of the eligibility requirements for Abstudy allowance for Indigenous students under 16 years of age. The Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme, ITAS, funding guidelines restrict access for students in urban centres. They have to attend a school with an enrolment of at least 20 students. That of course means that many students will be refused assistance to meet their needs. There may well be many schools that do not have 20 Indigenous students and, therefore, some kids will miss out. This measure looks pretty good when you read the second reading speech or the explanatory memorandum but, when you get to the fine print, you notice that there are some problems.

As I said, I have spoken quite frequently in this place about Indigenous education. In the Northern Territory, we have more remote Indigenous constituents than any other constituency represented in this place. In fact, 33 per cent of the Northern Territory’s population is made up of Indigenous people—and that percentage is growing at a fast pace. Like my colleague Mr Snowdon, I regularly spend my time visiting many of these Indigenous communities and I always ensure that I visit the schools when I am in those communities. So I can certainly stand in this chamber and pride myself on knowing what is going on out there and what the Indigenous views are about education.

Only last week or the week before, Minister Bishop made her first and only visit to date to the Northern Territory. No doubt she would have seen, as I have seen, many people in the Territory who are doing a fantastic job in Indigenous education—but usually under very difficult conditions. Some schools and classes are getting excellent results and outcomes in literacy and numeracy but some places have a fair way to go. The overall state of Indigenous education in this country is only too well known. In fact, I do not think a week goes by where I do not see a newspaper, journal article or research document that talks about the failure of this country with respect to Indigenous education. This government may claim—and rightly so in a few areas—that Indigenous education outcomes have improved over the years, but what this government will not tell you is that there is still an enormous gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous outcomes. In fact, as Indigenous outcomes improve, so do non-Indigenous outcomes improve—and the gap is not getting any smaller.

Some weeks ago, this government tabled their annual report into Indigenous education. I think it was the fourth annual report. It was an initiative that I actually welcomed when it was introduced five years ago, but that report is 12 months overdue. The report is normally tabled in this parliament in October or November each year. This year, we got the 2004 report. I have yet to be able to ask questions in estimates as to why that is the case. Unfortunately, Indigenous education again got squashed into the last half-hour in Senate estimates this year, and asking such questions at 10.30 at night is probably not a good way to go when you consider that Indigenous education is in such a massive crisis in this country. I guess one of these days we might put Indigenous education up front and centre in estimates and give it the time that it needs. So we do not have any answer yet from this government as to why that report was tabled so late. But, with all due respect, I suppose they have not actually been given the opportunity to answer those questions.

The massive changes that have been undertaken in Indigenous education funding in the last two years have seen an enormous turnaround in the way that additional funding is allocated to schools. The Indigenous education act appropriates the IESIP money—previously the Aboriginal Education Program money. It is not mainstream school funding; it is money that is appropriated over and above the amount that is given to primary and secondary schools and VET colleges. It is a recognition that Indigenous students are disadvantaged and an additional bucket of money is needed to cater for their needs. Labor have been a supporter of the IESIP and the AEP money.

While Labor do support this bill—as it does give additional resources to the area of Indigenous education—I have to say that I have been increasingly concerned at this government’s approach not only to Indigenous education but also to Indigenous affairs for a long time. With little or no evidence to support them, the government, under the former Minister for Education, Science and Training, Dr Nelson, pushed through changes to Indigenous education funding which saw the old ASSPA, the Aboriginal Student Support and Parent Awareness program, abolished. It was a program that Indigenous parents liked. It was an incentive for them to participate in their child’s education. But, when the funding of that program changed, parents withdrew from their involvement in schools.

So we say to ourselves, ‘We’re not seeing any change here in Aboriginal attendance at schools; it has not been getting any better over recent years.’ But I do not believe that this government made a link between the involvement of Indigenous parents through ASSPA and their encouragement to get kids to go to school. One would think that after two years of this program being changed and refocused somebody in DEST might say: ‘Maybe the way we gave funds directly to the parents encouraged them to get involved in the school. Maybe that was the link to having good educational outcomes and good attendance.’ But no-one has quite seen that link—or this government is not prepared to see the link.

As we know, the government conducted a survey of the 3,800 committees in this country and got a response back from fewer than 70. On that basis they decided to make massive changes. People will be only too familiar with the fact that back then, when this chamber was able to do so some constructive inquiries that actually went in an intuitive nature to what this government were doing, we initiated the Indigenous education funding inquiry through the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education References Committee. That was an inquiry that specifically looked at the impact of the changes to the ASSPA program and now the new parent schools participation program, the PSPI. I will not reiterate all the speeches and comments I have made in relation to the refunding of that program, but I want to say a few things about it.

We are still waiting for the government to respond to the report on Indigenous education funding, which was tabled in June last year. The report made a couple of recommendations, one of which was that the Australian National Audit Office have a damned good look at what DEST is doing in relation to its IESIP funding and the way in which the PSPI programs are being funded. We recommended that the Auditor-General be requested to conduct an efficiency audit on current arrangements for the application and processing of funding for PSPI programs. No doubt this government will not do that; it will refuse to do it. As a senator for the Northern Territory, I have drafted a letter which I intend to send this week in which I request that the ANAO go into DEST and have a really long hard look at the way in which this program is now being applied for and processed by schools. It is highly bureaucratic, full of red tape and now requires principals to apply for this funding twice a year—at least that is an improvement. It does not now require them to put in a concept plan—that is also an improvement. But, boy, it took a lot of damned hard work to get the government to move on that. I know I made positive comments about the department making those changes, but, my God, they have a long way to go to make it easier for schools to get hold of the funds. No-one has asked the real, critical question on the changes to this education funding: why is it that we are now seeing fewer and fewer Indigenous parents involved in their children’s education out bush? No-one is asking that question.

The report also suggested that Tom Calma, as the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Social Justice Commissioner, pick up the changes to this Indigenous education funding arrangement and comment on the implications of the changed funding of the PSPI program in his annual report. I think it has now been at least three years that this program has been in place and it is time that someone asked the social justice commissioner to have a look at what this means.

The ASSPA funding was changed from an automatic amount per head to the competitive submission based PSPI, which has seen many small remote schools lose their funding. Where funding has not been lost many smaller remote schools report getting funds through cluster arrangements very late in term 2, which makes it almost impossible for them to plan a year’s curriculum and program. Some successful programs, such as cultural activities and sporting trips, have been cut or severely reduced. These programs had in fact proved successful in encouraging Indigenous attendance as well as in raising self-esteem.

We know that in-class tuition funding was changed—from principals and teachers in a school nominating kids who needed that assessment to being tied to a formula whereby only kids in years 3, 5 and 7 who fail to reach the benchmark are counted as part of the formula to provide the extra tutorial assistance. I have used an example many times, thanks to a brilliant principal called Reg, who is working at Amanbidgi on the border of Queensland and the Northern Territory. I have used it again and again and I will keep using it. He says to me, ‘Trish, you know I’ve had 15 kids sit the year 3 test, and 13 of them passed, thanks to the tutorial assistance they had in the past.’ But under this formula the school now sends in only two kids who generate the formula that actually comes from the federal government. At the end of the day, it means that he can offer whatever money he can get to all the kids at the school. But essentially what is happening is that there is no incentive for schools to keep tutoring and providing additional assistance. It is almost as though, once the benchmark has been reached, ‘That’s it; we’ll wipe our hands of it and our job’s done.’ There is no commitment to ensure that these kids get ongoing assistance and training.

What I find with this government is that there is a lack of imagination when it comes to dealing with the problems of Aboriginal education. I clearly remember that in 1989 and 1990 the Aboriginal Education Program was first initiated and performance indicators were set by each state and territory. After about six or seven years of that program there was a national review of the AEP. At the time it was headed by Mandawuy Yunupingu, who had just completed a course—his Bachelor of Education. But this government has been in power now for 10 long years—incredibly hard years, I have to say, for those of us who are sitting in opposition and for those of you in my electorate who are Indigenous—and we have not seen an attempt to have a national review of Indigenous education in those years. I know that there is an Indigenous education conference occurring this week in Brisbane—which I would love to be at but I which I cannot be at—but it has not been initiated by this government; it has been initiated by people out there who want to continue to swap and exchange ideas on what is happening.

This government has failed to look at Indigenous education at the national level. It has failed to set up a peak advisory committee on Indigenous education. There is one for higher education, so why doesn’t the government go the full yards and have one for primary and secondary education in the schools sector? This government has failed to look at some of the initiatives that could be undertaken in Indigenous education. We know that it funds states and territories based on the enrolment in schools. I know that states and territories only then fund schools based on the attendance at schools. So let us take a community in the Northern Territory which might have the capacity for 300 kids go to school. If only 30 kids are attending that school it is only funded based on the 30 kids that attend, not the number who could potentially be enrolled in that school. Why doesn’t the Commonwealth government be a little bit creative about this and decide, even on a trial basis, to give some of those funds to communities based on the ABS statistics of the actual number of kids in that community who may be able to go to a primary or secondary school? You might say that would create an excess number of teachers in that community. What would they do? Perhaps they might set up as a liaison between parents and the community. Perhaps their job might be, until more kids come to the school, to be out on the streets and in the communities first thing in the morning talking to people about the benefits of education.

You do not see anything creative coming from this federal government on Indigenous education. What do you see? You see Minister Bishop going to the Northern Territory. She had fewer than three days there and then she headed off to the Tiwi Islands. What did she say to that community? She said, ‘Unless you give up your land for 99 years, we are not going to build you the $10 million boarding school we promised you.’ That is not what was said to the people of the Mutitjulu and Yulara region when their boarding school was built. That was not the condition put on the people at Woolanging when their boarding school was built, and I notice that Minister Bishop went to Woolanging. There was no condition put on those Indigenous communities that they had to give up their land for 99 years—in other words, forever. Let us face it, if you give up your land for 99 years, five generations later you will never get it handed back to you.

Why are Indigenous people being forced by this government to give up their land in order to have a boarding school in their community? It is an outrageous proposition. It is certainly something that would never happen in Canberra. It would not happen in Fremantle, Brunswick or any areas I can think of in Sydney. No-one would be asked to give up their private property, and that is what this land is in these communities. The Indigenous people have the title to that land; they own that land. Nobody else in this country is being backed into a corner whereby they are being forced to give up their land in order to get $10 million out of this government to build a boarding school.

I notice that Minister Bishop and Minister Brough suggested that, if the Northern Territory government was not happy with those conditions, it ought to build the school. I just want to remind them that the CLP was in power for 27 years in the Northern Territory and did absolutely nothing—zero—about providing higher education to Indigenous kids in their communities. At least under a Martin Labor government secondary education is now being provided at Galiwinku, Maningrida, Kalkaringi, Lajamanu and Ngukurr. So there has been a start out there. At least the Labor government in the Territory is starting to provide education where there the CLP and this government have failed to. They were in power for 27 years in the Territory and have been for 10 years federally and the best they can do is lambaste people into giving up their land in order to have a secondary school.

No doubt people in this place know I could go on for quite a long time on this, but I just want to finish by saying that this government stands condemned for being in power for 10 years and failing to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous education outcomes and for failing to have any kind of initiative or imagination when it comes to dealing with the problem.

Richard Colbeck (Tasmania, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In summing up the debate for the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2006 I take the opportunity to thank senators for their contributions. The bill amends the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 to increase the appropriations over the 2006-08 calendar years. This bill provides for intensive tuition for Indigenous students in year 9 and Indigenous students in vocational and technical education. These measures complement a suite of programs under the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme that targets assistance for Indigenous students at key points in their education. New funding for tutorial assistance appropriated under the bill is $14.5 million for Indigenous students in year 9 and $11.2 million for Indigenous students in vocational and technical education.

Additional funding will support community festivals for health promotion and activities addressing substance abuse by Indigenous youth in remote areas and it will deliver school based sporting academies and related activities for Indigenous students. Up to 18,000 young people annually will benefit from the Indigenous youth festivals initiative. These festivals will improve participation in education, promote healthy and positive lifestyles, increase vocational and career planning and reduce crime and drug abuse. The measures to address substance abuse and petrol sniffing in remote Indigenous communities further consolidate the whole-of-government regional approach that was announced in September 2005.

This bill will also provide young Indigenous boys and girls with increased opportunities to engage in education and sports activities. A measure to fund sporting academies and related strategies will be implemented in partnership with corporate and philanthropic organisations and will build on successful models that help young Indigenous people engage positively in education through sport and succeed later in life. Indigenous education is a major priority of the Australian government and it is committed to providing Indigenous Australians, wherever they live, with the same opportunities as other Australians.

In response to some comments that have been made by the opposition, I put on the record that this government will not allow state and territory government and non-government education providers to use this funding to reduce their mainstream effort on Indigenous outcomes, as has been indicated by some speakers. I think it is important that we put that on the record. This bill will appropriate an additional $43.6 million to accelerate further closure of the education divide between Indigenous and non-Indigen-ous students.

The measures contained in this bill reflect the Australian government’s commitment to accelerating Indigenous education outcomes. To achieve this, new investment is necessary in the areas of schooling, vocational and technical education and health related activities. The Australian government is committed to developing the capacities and talents of Indigenous people so that they have the necessary knowledge, skills and values for a productive and rewarding life. I commend the bill to the Senate.

Question negatived.

Original question agreed to.

Bill read a second time.