Ms ROXON (9:54 AM) —I have to rise in this consideration in detail stage to ask that the Minister for Education, Science and Training try to address the questions that have been raised by the opposition during this debate and that he bother to get the detail right if he wants to contribute to the debate. It is an absolute disgrace that the government would use as an argument to change the Sex Discrimination Act the fact that the Western Australian government did not seek an exemption. It shows that the minister has no idea that state governments are not bound by the Commonwealth Sex Discrimination Act. It is a basic `Sex Discrimination 101' issue and it raises the complete lack of attention to detail that this government has brought to this entire issue.

If the government wants to change the Sex Discrimination Act to deliver an outcome, it should at least bother to find out what the act covers, what is already included in the act, who is bound by it and who is not. Do not, minister, stand up here and say that the reason that the Western Australian government did not seek an exemption is that no-one complained about it. The reason is that they are not covered by the act. The minister is quite wrong. This highlights the lack of detailed attention that the government has given to this issue.

A statement from the WA department of education clearly says that they do not offer teaching scholarships exclusively for males. Of course, some of the people who are going to receive scholarships under these six categories will be men and some will not. Some will be both male teachers and Indonesian teachers. Some will be technology teachers and male teachers. Some will be females who fit into the other categories. It is wrong to pretend that this system is aimed exclusively at males. I seek leave to table that document.

Leave granted.

Ms ROXON —It would be useful if the minister read that document before replying on this issue to see that it is the department, not the politicians who are entering this debate, which is explaining that it does not offer exclusively male scholarships. It highlights a point that the minister has made that we are in serious agreement on—this is a complex issue and there are a range of measures that could be taken. The government will have the opposition's support for measures that are actually going to deliver some benefit.

The minister said in his reply that he has been studying this issue for four years and he has been committed to it for a long time. He would know—perhaps I will have to table this too—that his own report, Boys: getting it right, has 24 recommendations in it, none of which suggest that the Sex Discrimination Act should be amended or that that would even deliver any benefit. The Sex Discrimination Act is discussed in this report. It is not as if the committee did not deal with the issue. It dealt with it and made a decision that it was not going to recommend changing the act.

Perhaps the minister might explain why the government would start with this measure when there are a whole lot of other recruitment strategies and a whole lot of other things that could be done without us changing the Sex Discrimination Act. Surely we should have some resistance to changing it as a first measure rather than a last measure. Surely we should seek to do things that are within our existing laws if we possibly can and if they are going to be effective, especially when we have not even been asked to change it by anybody. As we now find out, the only person that has asked is the minister, perhaps from a well-motivated interest in trying to get more men into schools, which we have encouraged him in. He has even acknowledged the Leader of the Opposition's interest in this.

To rush to change the Sex Discrimination Act as one of the first things you would do is completely absurd. The government and the minister must give us a reason why this would deliver any outcome. As the minister says, it might encourage some men to go into teaching instead of into other courses. This report goes into great detail about the problem being retaining men in classrooms. So what is going to happen with these young men who are attracted to teaching if no other measures are put in place to keep them there? We know that men are more quickly being appointed as principals and therefore being moved out of the classroom.

Why won't the minister for education withdraw this bill? I hope that he will answer this in his next response. Why won't he talk with us about initiatives that would really make a difference to meet an objective that we all agree is an important one? Let us get serious about what we can do. Let us look at the sorts of detailed recommendations and initiatives that are in this report that the minister knows would make much more difference. Let us forget about posturing and changing or narrowing the Sex Discrimination Act when it is not going to deliver the outcome that the government seeks. (Time expired)