Dr NELSON (Minister for Education, Science and Training) (11:10 AM) —I thank the members who have spoken on the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2005 and note the sincerity with which remarks have been made by members from both sides of the House. Firstly, I point out to the member for Chifley that the reason we have very few, if any, school based apprentices in New South Wales and Western Australia is that the industrial laws and agreements in those states specifically proscribe the inclusion of school based apprentices in awards. The Prime Minister will be raising that and similar matters with the state premiers when he meets them tomorrow. As the Assistant Treasurer has pointed out, Queensland actually leads the way in this regard and for that at least should be commended.

The Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Amendment Bill 2005 amends the act to increase the appropriations for 2006, 2007 and 2008 to provide additional funding for intensive tuition for Indigenous students from remote schools and to transfer funding to the Skilling Australia’s Workforce Bill 2005. The $7.2 million in new funding appropriated by this bill will provide Indigenous students from remote communities with tutorial support in their first year of schooling when they move from their remote school to continue their education. These students will receive up to four hours tuition per week for up to 32 weeks in their first year away from home. Between 2006 and 2008 this additional tutorial assistance will help an estimated 2,040 students undertake and complete their schooling.

This measure will complement a suite of measures under the $179 million Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme, ITAS, that provides strategically targeted tutorial assistance for Indigenous students at key points in their education, including $105.5 million in class tuition targeted at those students not meeting the years 3,5 and 7 minimum literacy and numeracy benchmarks. It is estimated that more than 45,000 Indigenous students will benefit over 2005 to 2008. There is $41.9 million targeted at years 10, 11 and 12 Indigenous students, and it is estimated that some 11,600 students will benefit over the quadrennium. There is $31½ million targeted at Indigenous tertiary students, and approximately 4,000 students will benefit directly from that.

The member for Chifley and some speakers throughout the debate made the point about the need to set and achieve specific targets. I point out to the member for Chifley and others who have expressed that view that they are absolutely right. In fact, one of the requirements in the funding agreement for Indigenous specific education which has been put to the states and territories—and at this stage have only been agreed to by Queensland and the Northern Territory—is that the states that own, operate and administer public schools which educate Indigenous students will for the first time actually set targets. They will be required to report annually on progress against those targets, and that is one of the reasons we are getting resistance from some of the states to actually signing up to the agreements. In addition, this particular bill transfers $10.9 million—I emphasise: transfers $10.9 million—to the appropriations under the Skilling Australia’s Workforce Bill 2005.

There is no reduction in funding at all. In fact, over the quadrennium the amount of money available for Indigenous specific education from the Australian government will increase by $381 million. The further point needs to be made that this Indigenous-specific funding is in addition to money which is available to every Australian child, whether they be Indigenous or non-Indigenous.

One of the criticisms that has been put to the government—and the criticism has been made of me in relation to some of the reforms that have been introduced—relates to targeting in-school tuition for students who fail national benchmark tests in year 3, year 5 and then in year 7. The argument is put that students should be targeted much earlier in their education. I have allowed, if you like, a degree of flexibility at the school level for principals to decide how they might best allocate the resources which are attracted for in-school tuition to the students within the school, so long as they are confident that it will assist the achievement of reasonable literacy and numeracy benchmarks amongst the students who are being targeted.

But the point needs to be constantly made that the primary responsibility for the education of Australian students rests with the state and territory governments who actually run, operate and primarily fund the schools. This is additional funding. If we were to say, for example, that the Indigenous-specific funding be targeted at students who are not meeting minimum standards of education, for argument’s sake, in preschool or year 1—and it may well be argued that they should be targeted even earlier than that—then who picks up those that fall through the cracks? By any standard, as we all know, Indigenous students are performing the least well in relation to the national benchmark targets. So this funding is in addition to funding that is otherwise available for every student and it is unashamedly targeting the students who are not meeting national benchmarks.

There are three things that the government are trying to achieve overall. In fact, I had considered much more radical reforms, but there are three things that we are trying to do. Firstly, we are trying to shift and concentrate the resources on the Indigenous students who by any standard have needs that are greater than those of others. All Indigenous students in this country—I do not care where they are born or where they live—face more difficult challenges in life than those children who are not Indigenous. The reality is that if you live in a city such as Sydney or Melbourne you have sealed roads, you can turn on a tap and clean water comes out of it, there is a doctor’s surgery or a clinic around the corner, there is a hospital down the road and there is a school across the road. The further you go from the Opera House or the Melbourne Entertainment Centre into the regional and then into the remote parts of the country, the more the disadvantages are compounded and multiplied. So what the government are ultimately trying to do in a relatively modest but determined way is to shift the resourcing to where it is most needed.

The second priority is to target the resourcing into things that we know actually work. We know that in-school tuition works, for example, so we are putting increased resourcing into it. We know that the Scaffolding Literacy Program works, so we are putting $11 million of this money specifically into Indigenous education in the Northern Territory outside of Alice Springs and Darwin.

The third thing that we are endeavouring to do is to bring the states and territories to account. I do not care what the political flavour or colour of the state and territory governments is—the fact is that there is a sad history of underperformance in this country by state and territory governments in actually setting and then achieving against benchmarks for education, as the member for Chifley said. In the past—and I am convinced it is still going on today, which is one of the reasons why we are putting these requirements into the Indigenous education agreements with the states and territories—the Australian government have put this considerable sum of money into supporting Indigenous education and, in varying ways, the states and territories have found some way of shifting their bit out to put it somewhere else. We are not prepared to tolerate that any longer.

The funding represents the equivalent of the transitional project assistance, TPA, which has been provided to the four independent Indigenous VET providers since 1997, when per capita supplementary recurrent assistance was introduced to replace project funding. This $10.9 million we are referring to in the bill will be used to establish a Commonwealth-state joint funding pool to improve VET outcomes for Indigenous Australians, particularly in regional and remote locations. The states and territories will, as I said, be required to match that funding.

Coming back to the third of the three priorities, it is about leveraging the state and territory money. Instead of the Commonwealth simply providing the money for vocational education and training for Indigenous students the way we have been doing it, we want to put it into the training area and require the states to match it. So, for the $10.9 million that is being provided here, we expect the states to put up almost another $11 million themselves. Again, we are leveraging the money from the states and territories to support the programs that will be funded in VET for Indigenous people.

The initiative will provide funding certainty for the life of the agreement to providers that are achieving good outcomes. Again, we want to support things that work. We do not want to support things that we are emotionally attached to but which we find are not having very good outcomes at all. So the providers that are achieving good outcomes for Indigenous students will be allowed to establish sustainable services. It will tie ongoing funding to performance and outcomes for Indigenous clients. Access to the pool will be on a competitive basis, and my department will be working with the states and territories to develop the rules for access to the competitive funding pool. The four IVET providers currently in receipt of the transitional project assistance will be able to seek funding from the pool.

A couple of other points were made by the member for Jagajaga, who—I will put it politely—expressed concern about the rate of 39 per cent retention to year 12. I share the concern that the year 12 retention is still only half of that for non-Indigenous Australians, and in many cases the standard of that year 12 is barely that of a year 9 or 10 student in another part of Australia. Could I point out that in 1996 it was 29 per cent, so it is certainly moving in the right direction, although it has a lot further to go.

There were also some quite cheap remarks made about the attendance at a MCEETYA meeting. The state and territory ministers unilaterally set a date to discuss Indigenous education on a sitting day here in the parliament, and there was a cabinet meeting on. I told them I was happy to meet on a Saturday or a Sunday or that I would finish here at six and meet until midnight—whatever you like—but they unilaterally put a meeting on a sitting day and then criticised me for not attending. I guess that is the nature of it. I should not be surprised by any of that sort of thing, but I think it behoves some of the opposition people to apply a little bit of intellectual thought to some of this before these arguments are made.

A lot of criticism has been made in the debate on the Indigenous education legislation about changes to the ASSPA committees—the Aboriginal Student Support and Parental Awareness committees. When I came to the education portfolio, I found that the government were funding 3,800 of these committees—at about $16½ million a year. I discovered that there was a long tail of money going out to schools in suburban settings, which have very small enrolments of Indigenous students. I am privileged to represent the electorate of Bradfield on Sydney’s upper North Shore. I had to ask myself: ‘Why are schools on the northern beaches of Sydney getting $250 and $300 to support ASSPA programs for Indigenous participation? Surely that money should be in the Northern Territory, the Pilbara, the Kimberley and Cape York. It needs to be in the western part of New South Wales. Why are we doing it?’

I discovered that 1,200 of the committees were supporting schools that had fewer than 10 Indigenous students enrolled. Further to that, when I asked one principal of a predominantly Indigenous school in western New South Wales about the ASSPA committees, he answered, ‘I basically just write the program and get one of the parents to sign up for it.’ What has happened is that the money has simply gone out to the schools on a per capita basis, in many cases for very good activities but in some cases just to support barbecues and a couple of meetings a year or things which have been driven by the non-Indigenous principal of the school.

To the acclamation and support of the Indigenous education advisory body in New South Wales, for example, we have said, ‘What we want you’—that is, the schools—‘to do is to sit down with your Indigenous parents and think about what you are trying to achieve and how your proposal is going to improve the educational outcomes for your children.’ So they have to think about: ‘What are we trying to achieve? What do we want funded? Why do we want it funded? And what do we as parents and then the school do to support this?’ Basically, they have to come up with a proposal. We then have a look at it, and they move through to a specific grant application.

It has not been without its problems, and I have said to the department at different times: ‘What on earth is going on? Why have we got a brilliant breakfast program or some other thing which is being held up?’ There have been teething problems with it, and I share the concern of some others who have been frustrated about the transitional process. Already the 400 agreements which I have signed off—and money which can now flow in Queensland and the Northern Territory and to a lot of Catholic schools around the country because they have signed the agreements—will mean, firstly, money is going not to small schools in built-up suburban settings but specifically to where it is most needed; and, secondly, it is going to focus on things that parents have genuinely signed up for, which we know are going to improve educational outcomes for their children.

I realise it is the nature of politics for the opposition, whatever their political flavour, to criticise the government if there is a problem with something in the community—I fully respect and understand that—but it is best not to lose sight of what we are doing and why we are doing it. Contrary to some of the concerns expressed, we are not removing a dollar from Indigenous funding—as I said, funding is $381 million additional over the quadrennium—but we are shifting it around.

Principals of schools in built-up suburban settings have expressed their anger to me that the Indigenous money that they are receiving at the moment is either being cut or frozen. I am unapologetic about it. I have said to them, ‘We are doing it because we are putting it into communities where kids come from dysfunctional families, where a tap, let alone a sealed road or anything like that, is a foreign concept.’ I will be as receptive as I possibly can to reasonable administrative arguments or to ways we can improve this, but let not any of us lose sight of the objectives here. It is important we realise that all human beings have needs—Indigenous people in particular, but particularly those who do not live in cities. And that is what this legislation is about.

Question put: