Mr CHARLES(9.28 p.m.) —I have to say at the outset of this debate about the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 1996 that the speech by the member for Jagajaga (Ms Macklin) would have to be the most vitriolic read speech that I have heard in this place for a long time. I do not know who wrote the member for Jagajaga's speech, but it was absolutely disgusting and despicable. It did not relate to the issues whatsoever. I will address some of the things that she said later in my comments tonight.

I want to address three issues associated with this bill: firstly, literacy and numeracy, which I think I have some platform to speak from; secondly, the new schools policy; and, thirdly, increased funding for the study of Asian languages and culture. If we have a major problem in our education system today, it is the failing literacy and numeracy standards of our school children. You, Mr Deputy Speaker Quick, who joined me on the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training for three years, from 1993 to 1996, are well aware of the problems that we have surveyed in our schools around this nation.

In 1991 our standing committee brought down a report on literacy needs in the workplace. I remind the House that during the currency of that inquiry I took the opportunity of asking every respondent to the inquiry—whether they came before a committee hearing in Canberra, whether we talked to them as we went from workplace to workplace throughout Australia or whether we interviewed respondents to the inquiry in various states—whether the problems we were experiencing in poor literacy, numeracy, spelling and grammar with adults in the workplaces in Australia were associated with a decline in standards in school or if schools were still feeding the problem. I say to the member for Jagajaga that the answer from the teachers unions was inevitably no, no, no. The answer from the state bureaucracies was no. But the answer from many private individuals, private educators, teachers and university professors was uniformly yes, they were.

As part of that inquiry in 1991 I brought down a dissent to the report which related to testing. In that dissent I recommended that we undergo a national testing system to find out where we were with literacy standards in this country. I remind honourable members that the last time this nation really knew where we stood in comparison with the rest of the world was in 1975 when we carried out a national survey of literacy standards of primary school students around the country. We attempted such a survey again in 1980 but it was flawed because the teachers unions in Victoria refused to participate and the results then were not accountable. In that dissenting report I said:

One of our members—

that was me—

asked witness after witness; "given that we accept that we have an unacceptably high level of people in society with poor literacy skills are we still growing the problem in our schools?"

In 1992-93 the same House of Representatives Standing Committee on Employment, Education and Training undertook an inquiry into early childhood literacy development around this nation. That report, entitled The literacy challenge , formally tabled in this place in May 1993, has become the bible for the debate that currently rages around our nation on whether or not our young people have adequate literacy standards to carry them into adulthood and to enable them to get meaningful jobs and to live meaningful lives in modern Australia.

The literacy challenge report was scathing. It said that we not only had a problem but that we did not know the extent of the problem. I say to this House that all the members of the Labor Party—including the member for Jagajaga, who stood at the dispatch box a few minutes ago and tried to slam this government and the Kennett government in Victoria for poor standards—refuse to back national testing to find out where we are. For some reason it is an ideological hang-up associated with the teachers unions that say, `You can't possibly test the little dears to find out where we are because somebody might find out that the teachers aren't doing their job.'

One of the things the member for Jagajaga said was that the ALP is committed to caring for teachers and that those opposite obviously do not care about such teachers. What a lot of rubbish that is. I grew up in a household of teachers. I greatly respect teachers and the magnificent job that they do for our children. I think that the majority of teachers are dedicated individuals who do the very best job they can. I am not convinced that the teachers unions have done the best job for the teachers, for our children or, indeed, for our nation. I have some very good reasons for believing that.

The diatribe I have just heard absolutely works me up to comment on this point. The teachers unions have, if anything, denigrated their own profession by convincing Australians that teachers are more interested in their own welfare than they are in the outcomes of their students. When we talk about literacy and numeracy, we are talking about outcomes for students. There is no more important outcome than that every child in Australia has the opportunity to exit school with numeracy and literacy standards that meet our expectations so that they are able to live full lives in both a social and workplace sense in our country. They need to be able to read and write competently in English and to be able to spell. It would also be nice if they understood basic grammar. These are very important basic concepts. I support anything that we can do down this path.

This bill commits another $45 million—in excess of the $150 million a year—to literacy and numeracy strategies. This is a Commonwealth government. We do not run schools; the states run schools. But we are so concerned about this national problem that we believe it needs additional funding to try to ensure that every child has a chance. Through this program we are going to reduce the number of targeted programs. That is not bad. When there is a wide proliferation nobody knows for sure exactly what it is. You have to be really in the know to know when you can get money. By reducing the targeted program, we can make them more applicable to try to achieve positive results.

I have to say to that point that one of the things that the Minister for Schools, Vocational Education and Training (Dr Kemp), who is at the table, has been about is outcomes, and he has demonstrated that time and time again both in this place and in this legislation. Rather than being concerned about inputs and those problems that might affect the industry, he is concerned about achieving better outcomes.

The member for Sydney (Mr Peter Baldwin) talked about a $3 million national literacy survey that the ALP put forward in the last parliament. That is terrific. The problem is they never did the survey. Where is it? It is not here because it was never done. Why? Because the teachers unions vetoed it time and time again. We are undertaking the national survey. We are going to get results. I do not know if we can compare them to 1975. I wish we could, but that is probably difficult.

There are no justifiable reasons for not finding out where we stand and where our schools stand. All the reasons that are put up by teachers and others amount largely to such issues as the fact that tests measure inappropriate outcomes, that there are differences in test results which are influenced by curriculum differences, that test results are often misused or misunderstood, that tests do not adequately measure higher order skills and that testing leads to teaching to the tests. These are all arguments which are not against testing; they are against the inappropriate use of testing.

I maintain, as I always have, that we need to know where we are in order to improve the curriculum, to give more time to literacy training in early years of primary school and to use the right methodology. I remind the House that in the early 1970s we changed our teaching methodology on how to read and how to write. We went from a system which was based very solidly on phonics, on sound shape coordination, to a system called whole word, where we encompass the enjoyment of reading and we learn to look at phrases or groups of words and try to make meaning out of the word. If you did not understand what a word was then you tried to make meaning out of it in the context in which it appeared in the sentence. If you did not understand the sentence, you were lost.

That is fine for 70 per cent of the kids. I accept that. Seventy per cent of the children probably are going to learn to read no matter what we do, as long as we give them, I suppose, a reason for learning how to read. If we are a bit enthusiastic about it, they will learn how to read. I am concerned about the bottom 30 per cent. The bottom 30 per cent has been shown, over and over again, in this country, in the United States and throughout Europe to have great difficulties if we do not teach them decoding skills—how to decode what is on the piece of paper. It is not something that you learn from birth because writing is not a natural phenomenon.

Speaking is pretty natural, isn't it? We make sounds naturally and we copy other people's sounds. But we do not copy language because language is an artificial mechanism to transfer sounds to a piece of paper or a visual image transferred back to sound again. Kids need to be taught how to do it, and I make that point strongly. The national survey will help us find out where we are and, as it is repeated over and over again, we will put more pressure on the states to do a better job of imparting good literacy skills to their primary school students.

About three weeks ago, I ran into the prep teacher who taught my three children in prep. She is now retired. We were chatting about this issue. She is a fantastic lady; she was a really good teacher. She said to me, `Bob, it is almost as much a problem with methodology. We have crowded out the curriculum with so many other things in the early years of primary school that we have forgotten the basics. Children don't get concentrated time from their teachers.'

She said, `It doesn't matter whether I had 30 children in the class or I had 10 children in the class. If I've got only 30 minutes to teach reading then I have only 30 minutes. If I take the whole morning to teach reading, writing and math, then I've got the basics. Leave the rest of the curriculum, the other stuff that the social do-gooders want to do, to the afternoon when the children are sleepy and tired and they can't take it in. But make sure that, in the morning, we teach them how to read, how to write and how to spell—that is important too—and what grammar is all about.' I recommend that to our states. The Commonwealth does not control this issue but I recommend it to state ministers.

In our study into violence in schools—I think it was in 1994-95—one of the things that we learned is that those children who tend to violence, who tend to have problems in school, also wound up having problems in society. They might become the homeless children, kids on the streets or children with problems with the justice system. Almost universally, any social worker will tell you that those children have problems with literacy.

I am not here to tell you that poor literacy causes those kinds of social problems. All I am saying is that the two are associated over and over again. If we made sure that every child could read and write competently, perhaps we would reduce the number who present problems later on and cause us to spend money on remediation. Trying to make sure that we do not have a problem in the first place is heaps better than trying to fix a problem after it occurs.

I commend the government on its approach to literacy. The former government mouthed a lot of pretty words and did absolutely nothing. It is now being done. The member for Jagajaga is just wrong.

The new schools policy—the second point I want to make—is a very positive new policy because it says that private schools ought to be able to exist in our country and that we should be able to have some kind of free competition in this thing called education. There is no reason why, in my view, the state has any particular licence to totally control education. Whoever said that governments are better at educating people than private individuals? I think it is a nonsense.

We have decided that government funding, public funding, is necessary to guarantee every child a right to an education. But whoever said that only governments can do it properly, that only government teachers can teach children properly? That concept is a nonsense. In this legislation, we have allowed new schools to open up. If new people believe that they offer an opportunity for children and parents are willing to come along to the schools and pay their money to have that education, why shouldn't the state support that as well? Of course they should.

I could tell you that the new schools policy includes a five per cent increase in total funding for school systems. Last Saturday I participated, with the state Minister for Education in Victoria, the Hon. Phil Gude, in opening the Hallam Valley Primary School, a magnificent new school in my electorate—almost equal funding between the Commonwealth and the state for this new facility. It is a terrific facility with from 430 kids to a maximum of 450, probably within the next calendar year, offering the children in that high growth area an opportunity they did not have before, yet coming from a little one-room weatherboard school 90 years ago, still called Hallam Valley Primary School. It was delightful to see some of the old students who had graduated from that school come along and talk about their fantastic teachers and how much they had meant to them, and just putting to rest a bit of the rubbish from the member for Jagajaga.

The last thing I want to address briefly is the increase in funding to $56.7 million for study of Asian languages and culture. There are two important messages. One is that all of us in Australia have realised that we, in this part of the world, have got to deal with and trade in Asia. It is important that, if we are going to be a trading nation in this burgeoning new part of the world, we need to understand the culture and language of the people we deal with. Sure, Australia has developed as largely a nation of Europeans transposed to Australia on top of our Aboriginal native citizens and yes, after World War II we started to add people from all over the world. But during the 1900s Australia developed its modern economy based on European traditions.

It is well past time that we integrated ourselves into the Asian region, that we taught our children more about Asian culture and more Asian languages, so that they can really be a part of this new Australia, understanding where we live in the world—in the South Pacific—who we are and who we deal with. I applaud the minister for the increase in spending in this area. It will add to the children's education and I am certain that it adds to the debate which is currently raging around the community about racial attitudes and about our place and our connection with Asia. I applaud the minister because it is important that young people have this important new opportunity. (Time expired)