EDUCATION PORTFOLIO — REGIONS

Motion

Resumed from 14 March on the following motion moved by Hon Jacqui Boydell —

That this house calls on the McGowan Labor government to honour its November 2016 policy position that commits to providing “a quality education to Western Australian children and young people regardless of where they live” by —

(1)  reversing the decisions to —

(a)  shut down six camp schools;

(b)  close Moora Residential College;

(c)  take 20 per cent from the agricultural education farms provision trust;

(d)  cut the number of frontline regional education professionals;

(e)  increase fees for VacSwim; and

(f)  reduce the boarding away from home allowance; and

(2)  recognising the stress, uncertainty, and mistrust created by making rushed decisions in the regional education portfolio.

[Speeches and comments from various members]

HON ALISON XAMON (North Metropolitan) [1.56 pm]: I rise on this motion as the education spokesperson for the Greens. From the outset I want to say that ordinarily the Greens, as a matter of process, would not support a change in the order of business on the motions. This is a precedent, and we are not particularly keen to go down that path. However, in this one instance we agreed that it was important because of the timeliness of this matter and how urgently people are feeling this. We thought it important that we brought this on for urgent debate. I think it has been particularly aggravated by the timing of the announcement of the cuts, the meaning of which we are discussing today, having occurred only the week after we rose from our final sitting of the year in 2017. It meant that we were looking at a very long period before we had an opportunity to talk about cuts that have had the effect of distressing an enormous number of people within the community. I want to say how disappointed I am to be standing here, pretty much about 10 months since the last time we had a major problem with the education portfolio, yet again talking about decisions I think could have been avoided if there had been appropriate consultation. I do not think that it is a good reflection of sound decision-making.

I think there is a particular concern around what is happening with the lack of appropriate levels of consultation before decisions are being finalised—before decisions are being made and announced. We are seeing what are proving to be dramatic changes to what is happening with people’s lives and children’s access to education around the state. Frankly, we will have to start to see a completely different approach to how these big-picture decisions are being made because untold levels of distress are being caused to families. I am also very concerned about what long-term, amazing, hard-fought-for educational services will be lost because of the government’s decision to proceed with these funding cuts. I am glad that some of those cuts were reversed. Some of the cuts to services such as Schools of the Air were highly problematic and particularly ill thought out. I urge this government to look also at some of the cuts that are continuing because I think they will be highly detrimental.

We know the education portfolio has taken quite a hammering since this government took office. As I have said over and again, I am the first to acknowledge that the state is in a financial crisis, and that is also one of the reasons the Greens are consistently prepared to support revenue-raising measures. As I said last week when we talked about education, education seems to be receiving a disproportionate brunt of financial cuts. We know that 3 000 public service positions have been cut across government in a range of areas and that is particularly concerning for education, which is core government business or, at least, should always be considered to be core government business.

I want to talk about some funding cuts that are also impacting on the regions that are not included in this motion. But I note that we have been talking about cuts broadly, regardless of where people live, so I will chuck in some additional cuts that I think are highly problematic. I want to talk about cuts to the number of Aboriginal education officers. I think some of these cuts are some of the most ill-thought-out and short-sighted decisions made under this budget. I am particularly concerned about the decision to cut Aboriginal education staff numbers from regional offices. We know that the gap in educational achievement between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students is already appalling and is not getting any smaller. We know that there is a strong link between improved learning outcomes for Aboriginal students, who are supported and mentored by Aboriginal teachers and other Aboriginal staff. At the same time, we know that all government departments are seeking to improve the number of Aboriginal people they employ. Frankly, it does not make any sense to me for the minister to decide that the Pilbara, the mid west, the wheatbelt, the goldfields and the south west regional offices should no longer have any Aboriginal education staff and for only one Aboriginal staff member to be located in the Kimberley district office. In December, the minister abolished the positions of 36 Aboriginal education regional consultants, managers and coordinators within Aboriginal education teams located at the regional offices. It is still spectacularly unclear why this decision was made. We know the connection to land, family and culture is fundamental to closing the gap between Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal students. Employing and retaining Aboriginal staff is one of the key ways services can genuinely ensure they include Aboriginal culture within education. Obviously, I welcome the undertaking by the minister to put 50 full-time Aboriginal and Islander education officers, the AIEOs—the vowels as we used to call them when I worked in education—into classrooms. This does not make up for abolishing more senior Aboriginal staff positions in regional offices. We know these positions are pretty critical to helping support Aboriginal children to attend and to succeed in school. The positions were important liaison points for schools and communities. Importantly, they helped keep kids off the streets and in schools and they helped to advise schools and acted as cultural brokers to improve relationships between schools and Aboriginal families.

I found out about these cuts being on the agenda because I was contacted by regional police officers I know who were very, very concerned about these cuts and said it would make their lives immeasurably harder. They wanted to see whether anything could be done because they were very, very concerned about the impact it would have on their workload, let alone what it would mean for the students. These are really important roles. Frankly, they will be effective only if the staff are located close to the schools and students. These are quite clearly positions the loss of which will be felt quite acutely on the ground. I know five of the 36 abolished positions will go to the Aboriginal education teaching and learning directorate in the central office, which was created in 2017 by the previous government. But these positions need to remain located in the regions because the type of work they were doing and the services they were providing simply cannot be provided out of a central office.

I spoke last week about some of the other areas that are missing from this motion that will also impact on regional students. I spoke about what I thought was the absolutely foolish decision to re-purpose Tuart College and to close access to Canning College for local students. That is significant also to regional students because these were centres that provided educational opportunities also for regional students who for whatever reason could not succeed in year 12 as well as they had hoped, and it meant they could come to Perth and get another opportunity to undertake that education. These changes will disadvantage students who need alternative pathways to university. For decades, these colleges have played a critical role in helping young people attain year 12, and they provide students with quite diverse curriculum pathways to university. As I said last week, they also provide opportunities for students who may not even want to go to university but just want to complete year 12. I do not intend to go into all the reasons this was a foolish decision, because I have already canvassed it in this place. But I want to say that I really hope the government completely reconsiders why it has decided to close Canning College. The argument that universities are providing alternative pathways does not cut the mustard. As I have said over and again, TAFE is not equipped to pick up the slack. We know that TAFE has its own financial problems and will not be able to provide the same level of schooling. It is problematic, and the decision to close Canning College to only international students, I suspect—this has certainly been reinforced—will completely undermine a critical part of the marketing model; namely, it is available for opportunities to learn along with domestic students.

I will also make some comments about Landsdale Farm School. Again, this is an important matter that is missing from the motion. The farm school began in 1979 as an annex of Burbridge school and became autonomous in 1987. The purpose of Landsdale Farm School, according to its annual report, was to provide and I quote —

A rich and extensive learning environment for all students with an emphasis on students with disabilities ...

It serves a range of purposes but has maintained its original primary purpose as “a special education facility for students with disabilities”. Members may know that apart from being the spokesperson for the education portfolio, I also have the disability portfolio. I have been contacted by families of young people with disability who are extremely disappointed with this decision because the school has had a special place in the hearts of many people. It is not surprising when we find out how many people visit and use the farm school every year. The number has been steadily increasing from just over 9 000 people in 2000 to over 58 000 last year. We know that last year the school was visited by 3 420 ed support students and 2 319 other students, including 99 TAFE students. In addition, thousands of teaching and support staff visited the school last year. It was also used by a number of teachers who used it for professional development. I have been told that many students with complex needs often have very positive experiences at Landsdale Farm School. They respond to the animals and the environment and these experiences enhance their lives on a therapeutic level. The school can also provide learning opportunities for students that far surpass what they would gain in an ordinary classroom. It also provides a fantastic environment for high school students who are studying vocational education and training courses such as horticulture. There is no question that the staff and the volunteers who run this facility provide an invaluable service to not only schools and teachers and students, but also the broader community.

We often talk about the importance of breaking down silos, particularly between different departments and between government and the community. In many ways, by creating large departments, the machinery-of-government changes are a response to this recognition, but models such as Landsdale Farm School, Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre and Canning River Eco Education Centre are excellent examples of communities working together in partnership with local and state governments to provide fantastic educational support services. Therefore, the last thing we should be doing is defunding any of these services. It will basically take it back to a silo mentality. When the minister chose to withdraw support from Landsdale Farm School, Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre and Canning River Eco Education Centre, she said that it was because these services are not schools and not core Department of Education business. However, that fails to acknowledge that these amazing places are delivering not only excellent education services to students in schools, but also education and community facilities to the broader community. These are examples of resources that are breaking down silos and are valued by the whole community. Defunding these services sends entirely the wrong message that we do not value these sorts of models. That needs to be revisited urgently.

I want to say a bit more about Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre. Hon Donna Faragher previously said that she thought it would be something the Greens would be particularly concerned about, and Hon Donna Faragher was correct. As I mentioned, the minister’s decision to remove funding from areas that are not considered core business of the department might help marginally with the department’s bottom line, but I do not think it benefits the community more broadly. Cuts announced in December included the reduction in or ceasing of some grants that were previously provided to external organisations. It has been difficult to get a list of all these grants, but we know that the savings the government will make from defunding the Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre and the Canning River Eco Education Centre are relatively small. We are talking about $165 000 for Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre. It is not millions of dollars. The centre has been run by the Western Australian Gould League, with an extraordinary number of volunteers, since 1982. The funding covers one teacher and one administrative support person, with all the other operating funding raised by the fee-for-service from visiting schools. Next year, the Gould League is supposed to celebrate its eightieth anniversary, yet it has a dire future, having lost this money.

Hon Donna Faragher: It is likely to close.

Hon ALISON XAMON: It very possibly will close. Since 2002, the WA Gould League has had over 111 000 students participate in school-based programs, with an average of 6 500 students participating every year. Its programs are curriculum based and comprise both environmental education units and Aboriginal education services. The programs have been described as innovative and inspiring, and that is the core business of education and what education should be about. The Gould League has had many achievements and the partnership between the WA Gould League and the Department of Education has been long. I think it is such a false economy to look at defunding what has been, until now, a really important and useful partnership. Particularly with the focus on science, technology, engineering and mathematics and the government’s recent significant investment in this area, it seems really short-sighted and utterly counterproductive to remove support from this amazing science education resource.

Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre is the key venue for the delivery of the Australian Sustainable Schools Initiative and it is also a vital resource for teaching children who live in the metropolitan area about biodiversity and the wonders of the state’s unique environment. The abandonment of Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre by the department is an example of the government’s failure to prioritise Aboriginal education. The Indigenous education program at Herdsman Lake Wildlife Centre was initiated in 2002 and provides a key specialist service to the Department of Education. The minister should reconsider the decision to withdraw funding from the wildlife centre so that the WA Gould League can continue to use the centre to continue to deliver high-quality education programs. It has been running on a shoestring budget forever and what a waste of volunteer energy!

I will turn to some of the specifics of the motion. The closure of the Moora Residential College has been specifically noted. In the tranche of cuts announced in December was the closure of both Moora and Northam Residential Colleges. I am pleased the government has reversed the decision to close Northam Residential College and that was much to the relief of the communities involved. However, we know that the government still intends to close Moora Residential College. The college provides accommodation to students who go to Central Midlands Senior High School and live too far away to commute by bus every day and have no other appropriate senior high school close to where they live.

The decision to close Moora is not a good decision. The way that it has occurred has quite clearly caused an extremely large amount of distress within the Moora community. I was present at that rally, along with my colleague Hon Diane Evers, and the level of distress and anger of the people present was absolutely palpable. According to the lobbying that I have received on the issue—there has been a lot—Central Midlands is the only public senior high school between the Perth metro area and Geraldton. Therefore, the college is considered to be vitally important for not only Moora, but also regional students and families and the surrounding districts. I suggest that the options the government is advocating are unrealistic for many families. It will make many families’ lives much more difficult. For example, we know that Yanchep District High School, which is in my electorate, is too far away for many students. It does not have boarding facilities. No bus route is in place and one has neither been costed nor offered by the government. It also means forcing students to travel over one and a half hours each way twice a day on what has been cited as the most dangerous stretch of road in Australia. It is not surprising that people are distressed about this decision.

In addition to the direct impacts on the college boarders and their families, the local community is understandably concerned about the ripple effects that will follow the closure of the college. The community is worried that the closure will lead to a fall in the number of students attending Central Midlands Senior High School and that this will lead to fewer teachers and fewer course offerings and will impact on the viability of the school to maintain its current status as a senior high school. It is worried about the economic impact on the town as the residential college contributes significantly to local businesses, including through things such as purchasing food locally for boarders. It is difficult to understand why the government would enact a policy that has such a significant risk of negatively impacting on the vibrancy, heart and economic situation of an important rural community.

I recognise that it is expensive to keep it open—but guess what? In a state as large as Western Australia, it is always going to be more expensive to provide educational services to people who live in our regions. That is not why we decide not to fund them. As members in this place, it is our responsibility to ensure, as the motion states, that every student in this state regardless of where they live has equal opportunities for education.

Now I want to make some comments about the camp schools. The minister’s decision to close six camp school sites is another example of bad decision-making because there was a lack of consultation prior to making that decision. There was a lack of consideration particularly of the impact of this decision on our rural communities. We know that we are looking at losing the camp schools at Point Peron, Pemberton, Bridgetown, in the goldfields, Geraldton and Dampier and that the camp in Broome will stay open for the time being. These camp schools are well used; my own kids have used them. They provide important opportunities for students to learn outdoor and team-building skills. Schools find that they are really important for the personal and social growth of students. They provide unique experiences. Not only do country students in the communities near where the camp sites are located benefit from these facilities, but also they are used by many city-based students who have the opportunity to visit and stay at these facilities. I understand that there is an assertion that the occupancy of camp schools has been declining, but I want to be clear that this assertion has already been disputed by many stakeholders. I think that many of us would be interested in interrogating the data that has informed that assertion. It is important for children to have an opportunity to experience Western Australia’s natural environment, and camp school experiences are a really important part of a well-rounded education. We need to ensure that these opportunities are available not only for those students whose parents are wealthy enough to send them off to private camps, but for every student.

Again, I will come back to the 3 000 public service positions that have been cut. We know that 3 000 jobs cannot be cut without making a significant impact on service delivery. I will remind members that the Langoulant inquiry—people love raising the Langoulant inquiry in this place, particularly government members—found a worrying level of under-resourcing in government departments, particularly in areas of public policy and project work. Instead of gutting it, the report recommended that we need to build capability and capacity. I will continue to argue that cutting positions from the public service is a false economy and Langoulant apparently agrees with me, particularly when this is done in a non-strategic way. I think it will ultimately cost us more in the longer term.

Other cuts that the Greens do not support that are outlined in this motion include the increase in fees for VacSwim across the board. The fees for a 10-day program will increase from $13.50 to $30, or $20 for families with a concession card. We should be encouraging families, particularly vulnerable families, to ensure that children know how to swim. In Australia, this is not an optional extra. It is one of the core things that we need in order to make sure that our children stay alive. The last thing that we should be doing is making it more difficult. I sometimes wonder whether I am one of the few people in this place who has raised a child on a sole-parent benefit, which is what my life was 20 years ago. I can tell members that these sorts of increases do impact people on the lowest possible level of income. At the very least, we should have been looking at keeping absolutely stable the level of fees that we are asking from people who have a Health Care Card.

I also want to make some comments about the decision to take 20 per cent from the agricultural education farm provisions trust and to reduce the boarding away from home allowance. The decision, which members keep talking about in this place, to remove the royalties for regions contribution from the boarding away from home allowance over the next few years has caused a number of rural families a great deal of distress. The funding is for families who do not have a choice. I am firmly of the view that the government has a responsibility to ensure that it provides every child with access to education, no matter where they live. It is similar to the decision to cut the royalties for regions funding to the community resource centres from 2019. I recognise that there were serious issues with the way that royalties for regions funding was distributed in some instances, but we also recognise that it did fund some really important things, and frankly this is one of them. When the original motion was drafted, it included a range of cuts that were subsequently reversed by the government, and I am glad the government did that. This is another area that I think the government needs to respond to strongly. These cuts have disappointed the community but, more than that, they have made many people very, very angry. People have been galvanised into action. I was at the Country Women’s Association’s march to Parliament House last month. This group does not otherwise get politically active, but it was such an important issue that its members were mobilised. We have seen countless letters to the editor and heard calls to talkback radio. I want to acknowledge the work of the Save Moora College group, the Save Our Schools of the Air group and the State School Teachers’ Union of WA, as well as the countless individuals and small groups that have contacted my office, and I know many members have been contacted as well. The fact that people are putting so much into this indicates just how acutely they feel about this issue.

The savings from many of the cuts are really quite minimal compared with the message that is being sent to the community. The way the community is hearing it is that this government does not care about rural kids and families, it does not care about environmental education, it does not care about community resources, and it does not care about Aboriginal education; the list goes on. Because the decision-making processes have been so poor, I think that people have a right to be angry. We know that the government has been forced into a cost-cutting exercise but the decisions that have been made demonstrate a serious lack of consultation and lack of transparency. I do not believe they have been significantly thought through. The groundwork has simply not been done. We are going to have to find a better way to proceed on this. If members want to talk about what we can look at and some of the cuts that could be made even just in the education budget, I suggest that for starters we do not proceed with the highly unpopular and completely unnecessary—especially now we are not going to redo City Beach— $21 million relocation of the International School of Western Australia to the Doubleview Primary School site. Right there, $21 million can be saved just within the education budget and without even looking at whether we think that education is perhaps bearing a disproportionate level of the cuts.

I keep carrying on about this but the importance of integrity in government and people trusting the government cannot be understated. Unfortunately, the decision-making behind these cuts has lacked transparency and accountability. I am really concerned that lessons do not seem to be heard. I have mentioned before the importance of establishing something like an independent schools commission. It is something that the Greens have been calling for. I acknowledge that it would not have addressed many of the poor decisions that have been made that we are discussing today but I think it would at least help to ensure more transparent and better decision-making about where cuts will be made.

I recognise that we need to find ways to make sure that we find the money to ensure that these sorts of cuts do not occur. We will need to reconsider people and how we look at raising revenue. It is always going to be expensive to provide education services but that is the core business of government. That is the sort of thing that we need to fund. We need to fund education, TAFE, mental health, suicide prevention, disability services, child protection, workers’ safety and integrity-of-government measures. That is the core business of government. That is what taxpayers’ money needs to go on. It is also why we need to look at raising revenue. I ask the minister to go back to the drawing board and come up with an evidence-based, consultative, transparent and accountable way to make savings from the education budget. I ask the government as a whole to look at leaving education alone.

[Speeches and comments from various members]

To insert after paragraph (1)(f) —

(g) close Landsdale Farm School; and

HON SUE ELLERY (South Metropolitan — Minister for Education and Training) [2.49 pm]: I want to make a quick comment because, although this debate has been useful in some ways, it has been quite frustrating in others. Not everybody who has wanted to make a contribution has been able to do so. We have done it in a different way from the way we have done it in the past, and I do not understand why that is. I just want to make some comments about Landsdale Farm School in particular. It is a great community resource. I do not have my notes in front of me, but more than 50 000 visitors attend Landsdale Farm School. The majority of those attend on the weekends and are not school students. Out of the 50 000 to 60 000 visitors, some 11 000 are school students and the rest are community members. It is a great facility for those community members but, clearly, it is being used by the broader community far more than it is being used by the Department of Education. If we are able to find an alternate provider who will continue to meet the needs of those students with a disability who use that facility, that would be a great outcome. But we need to ask in difficult times: is it the business of the Department of Education to provide a service that is primarily used on weekends and primarily for adult members of the community?

Amendment put and passed.

Motion, as Amended

[Speeches and comments from various members]

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Division

Question put and a division taken, the Deputy President (Hon Simon O’Brien) casting his vote with the ayes, with the following result —

Ayes (20)

Hon Martin Aldridge, Hon Jacqui Boydell, Hon Robin Chapple, Hon Jim Chown, Hon Tim Clifford, Hon Peter Collier, Hon Colin de Grussa, Hon Diane Evers, Hon Donna Faragher, Hon Nick Goiran , Hon Rick Mazza, Hon Michael Mischin, Hon Simon O’Brien Hon Robin Scott, Hon Tjorn Sibma ,Hon Charles Smith, Hon Dr Steve Thomas, Hon Colin Tincknell, Hon Alison Xamon, Hon Ken Baston (Teller)

Noes (12)

Hon Alanna Clohesy, Hon Stephen Dawson, Hon Sue Ellery, Hon Adele Farina, Hon Laurie Graham, Hon Kyle McGinn, Hon Samantha Rowe, Hon Matthew Swinbourn, Hon Dr Sally Talbot, Hon Darren West, Hon Pierre Yang, Hon Martin Pritchard (Teller)

Pair

Hon Colin Holt - Hon Alannah MacTiernan

Question thus passed.