Mr GUNNER - 2016-04-21
Your early years plan, announced yesterday, has no new initiatives, funding or vision. It will not make a dent in the high number of Territory children classified as vulnerable in the five domains of the early childhood development census. A declining number of remote children are attending preschool and almost 10 000 child protection notifications are not triggering a support response from government.
Will you adopt Labor’s policy to make early childhood development the focus of government, with a dedicated children’s minister, by expanding the number of nurse visits to parents, making sure more women receive antenatal services, investing in NGOs to provide support services for vulnerable families identified in child protection, and making sure every child is school ready by day one, Term 1, Year 1?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I guarantee I will never do anything that Labor says it will do in education policy. We have seen the results. I will not take a Gunner-ball approach to education, which you want to take to everything. It sounds like an all-day sucker, doesn’t it, a Gunner-ball.
The earlier we can intervene in providing a solid platform for any child, whether they are in remote or urban schools – it is the best possible thing we can do. On top of having the best student-to-teacher ratios in the country, we invested heavily in the early years program. We are investing more in Families as First Teachers, which is showing tremendous …
Ms Walker: A great Labor program.
Mr CHANDLER: Whoa! Hang on a minute. You did not design that one; it was not the Northern Territory Labor Party’s policy. Let us get this right; it was not your policy or design, but it is something that works extremely well and we are investing heavily in. We know the earlier we can intervene the more solid the foundation we can provide.
Unlike the former Labor government, we had the courage to lift the rock and look under it to see how bad some of the conditions and results in remote communities were. We have reintroduced early childhood testing for health and other checks to ensure they are not missing out on vital information in their early years. We know that a healthy child has far more chance of succeeding in early education and that in the year leading up to preschool, children can grow as much as four to six years in development. In fact, the same amount of development they can get in an entire primary school education, experts tell us they can acquire in 12 to 18 months before they go into preschool.
We know how important it is, which is why the policy we have released will deal with many of the issues we see across the Northern Territory. We have re-based education in the Northern Territory. I guarantee you that in all negotiations I have had with the federal government it has had faith that in the Northern Territory we will not waste any money it might give us because we have a different, far better system today. Our results are improving and are far better than we ever got under 12 years of a Labor government in the Northern Territory; that is a fact.
Will you adopt Labor’s policy to make early childhood development the focus of government, with a dedicated children’s minister, by expanding the number of nurse visits to parents, making sure more women receive antenatal services, investing in NGOs to provide support services for vulnerable families identified in child protection, and making sure every child is school ready by day one, Term 1, Year 1?
ANSWER
Madam Speaker, I guarantee I will never do anything that Labor says it will do in education policy. We have seen the results. I will not take a Gunner-ball approach to education, which you want to take to everything. It sounds like an all-day sucker, doesn’t it, a Gunner-ball.
The earlier we can intervene in providing a solid platform for any child, whether they are in remote or urban schools – it is the best possible thing we can do. On top of having the best student-to-teacher ratios in the country, we invested heavily in the early years program. We are investing more in Families as First Teachers, which is showing tremendous …
Ms Walker: A great Labor program.
Mr CHANDLER: Whoa! Hang on a minute. You did not design that one; it was not the Northern Territory Labor Party’s policy. Let us get this right; it was not your policy or design, but it is something that works extremely well and we are investing heavily in. We know the earlier we can intervene the more solid the foundation we can provide.
Unlike the former Labor government, we had the courage to lift the rock and look under it to see how bad some of the conditions and results in remote communities were. We have reintroduced early childhood testing for health and other checks to ensure they are not missing out on vital information in their early years. We know that a healthy child has far more chance of succeeding in early education and that in the year leading up to preschool, children can grow as much as four to six years in development. In fact, the same amount of development they can get in an entire primary school education, experts tell us they can acquire in 12 to 18 months before they go into preschool.
We know how important it is, which is why the policy we have released will deal with many of the issues we see across the Northern Territory. We have re-based education in the Northern Territory. I guarantee you that in all negotiations I have had with the federal government it has had faith that in the Northern Territory we will not waste any money it might give us because we have a different, far better system today. Our results are improving and are far better than we ever got under 12 years of a Labor government in the Northern Territory; that is a fact.
Last updated: 09 Aug 2016