Mr LEE (6:21 PM) —by leave—I move opposition amendments Nos 1 and 2:

The amendments which have been circulated in my name would ensure what the Labor Party consider to be the minimum level of accountability to the parliament and to the people of Australia for expenditure under this legislation. It is not an inconsiderable amount—$619 million over the four years from 2001 to 2004; an average of almost $155 million a year—and it is not a minor issue which is being dealt with. The issue being dealt with is the appalling educational outcomes of indigenous Australians compared with those in the general population. For example, year 12 retention rates for indigenous students have continued to grow, while those for non-indigenous students have declined. Nevertheless, they remain at a little more than half the level of the general population: 32.1 per cent for indigenous students as against 72.7 per cent for non-indigenous students in 1998. The most recent data available shows that only 13.6 per cent of indigenous people had a post-school qualification, compared with 34.4 per cent of the general population.

This bill is written as a skeletal structure from which the minister of the day could construct anything that he or she wished. I asked rhetorically during the second reading debate: where is the meat? We have got the skeleton but we do not have the meat. The bill provides no reporting mechanisms and no details of the requirements to be placed on providers receiving funding. We know from the correspondence of the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs to state and territory education ministers in June this year that those requirements are likely to be very comprehensive and that there is a punitive penalty system which, on its face, could punish providers who have expended funds and achieved improvements but have fallen short of the targets set in their agreements. That is why we have moved these amendments. We are pressing these amendments because we believe the minister should make publicly available, prior to the commencement of the agreement that he negotiates with education providers, the details for funding under the legislation, and we believe the minister should report to parliament at least annually on the distribution of funds by institution, state and sector. The minister should also report at least annually on all performance information requested and collected by state and sector, and report at least annually on the reasons for any decision to reduce funding for any provider. We believe this information needs to be available in order for the parliament and the Australian people to make a judgment about the effectiveness of the government's National Indigenous Literacy and Numeracy Strategy, launched with a great deal of fanfare and the centrepiece of this bill. If the government is not prepared to support these perfectly reasonable and legitimate amendments, we are entitled to ask the minister for education why.

In keeping with my practice of seeking to use the consideration in detail stage to breath life into this chamber, I would also like to put a couple of questions to the representative of the minister for education, the Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs, the member for Adelaide, who is in the chamber this evening. While we always appreciate the member for Adelaide representing the minister for education in considering legislation in this House, she knows that we would have preferred the minister for education to treat this House with a bit of respect by turning up and participating in the consideration in detail stage. He has done so twice, but he has squibbed on many other occasions. While we compliment the minister for having the courage to turn up twice, it would have been nice if he had had the courage to turn up this evening. The reason we would have liked the minister to turn up this evening is that there are a number of issues that have been canvassed in the second reading debate and that are covered by the amendments before the House now. In particular, the parliamentary secretary claimed that there was no need for the amendments that the Labor Party is proposing because all the funding detail is, to quote her words, `crystal clear'. The parliamentary secretary is not in a strong position to claim the position is crystal clear because the government had to have its attention drawn to a series of errors in the budget information—due to some excellent research on the part of the opposition. The minister has conceded in a letter to me that the government `stuffed up' the funding allocations under indigenous education for both the public and the private sector. So I ask the parliamentary secretary: if the funding position is crystal clear, why did the government get the indigenous education funding position completely wrong in its own budget papers? That is the first point to make. The second point to make is that the parliamentary secretary again claimed that there is `new money allocated for the National Indigenous Literacy and Numeracy Strategy'. That was the phrase that she used. (Extension of time granted)

I thank the House for the extension of time. Given the time I will not go for too much longer on this particular occasion. Given the fact that the Prime Minister at the launch of the National Indigenous Literacy and Numeracy Strategy created the impression that this was additional effort being funded by a new government program, many people were, I am sure, quite disappointed when they found out that this was simply funding that had already been allocated to indigenous education. The parliamentary secretary suggested in her contribution that the previous year's funding had run out—as happens with every government program—and that, simply because the government had changed the name of the bill and allocated the same funding index for an extra year, we should in some way consider this new money. It is quite clear that the Prime Minister misled people when he said, in launching the strategy:

He said it was a firm commitment of extra money, as well as better directing existing resources. But when we actually see the fine print, we find out that the Prime Minister misled not just the indigenous Australians who were at that launch but also this House when he repeated those statements when asked about them earlier this year. He misled all of us when he said that there was a firm commitment of resources, implying there was new money. We had hoped that the government would have been prepared to fess up to the fact that the Prime Minister had misled all of us in his statements on indigenous education, but unfortunately they are seeking to cover that up with word games.

On a more constructive note, I state for the record that the opposition agrees with the government that the Croc Eisteddfod movement does a lot of good work in encouraging the appreciation of indigenous culture, and not just in indigenous communities: I am sure it gives many non-indigenous Australians a better opportunity to understand the enthusiasm and love that many young indigenous people have in performing and in representing and including their culture in rock music performances. In many ways, the Croc Eisteddfod has built on the success of the Rock Eisteddfod in promoting very positive images to young people and giving young people opportunities to develop new skills as part of their activities. I conclude by asking the parliamentary secretary a few questions. She might take some advice and come back to us after the dinner break. I ask the parliamentary secretary: if she believes that there is sufficient transparency in the legislation, why has the government moved to remove the details of per capita funding amounts from the legislation? What will be the basis of negotiations with government and education providers in the development of the agreements? In other words, what funding amounts will be on the table at the start of the negotiations? If the amounts are similar to present funding amounts, why have they been removed from the legislation and from public scrutiny? Those questions would be good things for us to start on when we resume after the dinner break.

Sitting suspended from 6.30 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.