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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 6 Hansard (24 May) . . Page.. 1682 ..

MR STEFANIAK (continuing):

programs: healthy indigenous young people, accommodation support for young indigenous people aged 14 to 16-very important for school-and intensive support for juvenile offenders. They are just three programs which will directly benefit, and are targeted towards, young indigenous people.

Every Australian person is entitled to a quality education and equality of access to reach their full potential that that brings with it. We need to do that. We need to put energy and resources into meaningful reporting. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen under Mr Berry's motion. I can see where Mr Berry is coming from. If it would do any good, I would be happy and the government would be happy to support his motion, but it will not; nor will turning the matter into a political football.

I foreshadow an amendment to delete quarterly reporting from paragraph (2).

Mr Berry: If you say six monthly, I will cop it.

MR STEFANIAK: I do not know whether you are going to get too much benefit from that, Mr Berry. We might have a talk about that. I will move my amendment.

Ms Tucker: Why don't you have a talk first, before you move the amendment?

MR STEFANIAK: Perhaps, before I move my amendment, I will conclude and just see whether anything meaningful can be done. I am mindful of the term of this Assembly. Annual reporting, as I said, is the most effective and sensible way to go. It is consistent with what the committee was told in terms of the Commonwealth government and my department. It is consistent with every other form of reporting that we do in education. Any teacher will tell you that that is the most effective way of truly assessing progress and taking proper steps to address areas where more needs to be done. That is something we have done in education, to my knowledge, for decades.

I am happy to talk to Mr Berry to see whether there is any possibility of meaningful six monthly reporting, but I foreshadow that I will be moving and amendment, and I will close my reply to his substantive motion at this point.

MR HARGREAVES (4.01): I will not speak for very long on this motion, but I want to make a couple of comments in relation to the first paragraph of Mr Berry's motion. In doing so, I want to acknowledge the work of Mr Chris Harris in the Indigenous Education Unit of the department of education. I have known Mr Harris for quite some time. He is a man of immense integrity and has a very clear devotion to fixing up problems with indigenous education wherever he can. He is a great example of how bureaucrats can achieve things.

The minister said that there are individual education plans for indigenous students. I take it that he means in mainstream schools. Mr Speaker, we need to understand that, as you would probably know from your own background, there are two types of indigenous students in our society. There are those who can function quite reasonably in mainstream schools with a bit of assistance. There are some kids, I must say, who can function in our schools without any assistance. But there are also some kids in our society who cannot function in mainstream schools and require a special education service.

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