Melina BATH (Eastern Victoria) (15:02): I am pleased to rise to make a contribution on the Education and Training Reform Amendment Bill 2026. As a former teacher – and I have now been in Parliament for 11-odd years – mobile phones were certainly on the rise when I was teaching. There was a level of frustration back in 2015, when I left, that students were not keeping them in the lockers as they were supposed to do but sneaking them in and having a chat or playing games or whatever. Some of these amendments through this bill are certainly wise, and we accept them wholeheartedly. I am sure, in the last decade, with the advancing technology and many, many extra things that can go on to a mobile phone or an electronic device, that it does impact educational opportunities. It can make it much more difficult for teachers and/or schools to do the very core work that they do, which is creating active minds, hopefully encouraging intelligent thought from inquiring minds and putting down a very strong framework for a lasting success in life. I am looking across at my colleagues here, and I know Mr Welch’s father was a principal at a state high school and another colleague Ann-Marie Hermans was in education as well – a very important area.
There are important and quite reasonable amendments in this bill, and we will not be opposing them. The general purposes will be to strengthen Aboriginal recognition and self-determination across the education system, and I will have more to say about that in a moment; to require all schools to implement policies restricting these personal devices – let us keep them where they need to be used, not as a distraction from the great education happening in our school systems; and to reform the teacher registration and regulatory processes through the Victorian Institute of Teaching (VIT).
I know when I started, again if we go back another 20 years before that, I was appalled that, after going to university and acquiring a degree and a diploma in education – so I was perfectly qualified – and after working for myself for 10 years, I could write to the VIT at the time, provide $66, and they would provide me with a licence to teach. I certainly always felt that that was too easy on me, but I also accepted the challenge and taught myself how to teach in school, with fantastic mentors and colleagues in my regional schools – and I am forever indebted to them. This amendment also looks to expand the Victorian teacher registration to support national data reforms, including the USI, the unique student identifier, and other amendments.
I do want to say that, as I have indicated, we are not opposing the bill. We do have an amendment which is consistent with our position. One of the things that I think is really important, having read the bill and seen the clauses that relate to the recognition of our Aboriginal people and embedding self-determination, is that recognition is important, respect is important and cultural understanding is important. Indeed I only yesterday had a meeting with Reconciliation Victoria and want to say a thankyou to, among others, Aunty Gina Bundle. She grew up in Orbost, which was a great place to be, and like me loves the Snowy River and had been down there only recently. There were many things that we had furious agreement on, and some of that furious agreement looked at ensuring that when there is recognition, when there is cultural understanding, they are actually really embedded through a process that all students can embrace, so that all students can have understanding.
I will give you an example of one such tremendous lady in my electorate, called Aunty Cheryl Drayton. I mentioned her to Gina, and she was aware, as Gina has done herself, of sitting down with students, young students in primary school everywhere, and having those really great educational experiences of what culture means to Aunty Cheryl Drayton, what it means within community but how there are connections and experiences that everyone can value. This is an area that I would like to see encouraged and facilitated in our system, and I am going to put a ‘however’. However, no amount of recognition, no amount of embedding something into a curriculum, is of any greater importance than actually making sure that all of our children, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and every single child in our education system, are able to read and write and count and complete school to the level that they want to attain.
What we have seen over the course of a decade under the Andrews–Allan and Carroll government now is that Closing the Gap has not worked. The other day when we were talking about the budget I asked the Treasurer specifically about this. I was asking about various elements within the budget, and she said, ‘Yes, we acknowledge it hasn’t worked for a decade, so we’re trying something new.’ You can go and check Hansard – these are very similar things to what the Treasurer has said. My concern is that there has not been that investment and that targeted approach in school readiness, in attendance, in literacy, in numeracy, in year 12 completion, and this is across all the years but indeed particularly for our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, in pathways to employment, training and university. This is not a great track record: ‘We haven’t made improvements, so we’re trying something else.’ Well, the Liberals and Nationals have a separate policy, a First Nations policy for First Nations Victoria, where the buck stops with the minister about channelling and poking holes through silos to actually try and achieve outcomes that align with Closing the Gap targets, because we all universally – people in this house, in the federal sphere – agree that these are important initiatives. But unless you actually make headway, they are just rhetoric, and that is not good enough for students in my Eastern Victoria electorate and right across the state. I put that to the government. We are trying something new. For 10 years it has not worked, and I believe there must be a better way to achieve these outcomes. There is nothing more liberating, in my humble opinion, that would stimulate self-determination than being able to excel at school, get a job and have a career that you want, whatever that career looks like. It is opportunity and options, and that is what not only our Aboriginal students but all Victorian students need. I put that on record as the shadow minister.
We also want to talk about rural and regional Victoria. I should not be up here if I did not talk about students in my electorate. We in 2022 had an inquiry into the education sphere. We moved it, and I thought it was really important to have that inquiry because there was significant pressure in our school system. We do see teachers that are leaving in frustration. We heard it. We went to Bairnsdale and heard about the pressures that are on teachers: the churn and the difficult nature of trying to attract new teachers to the regions and provide that face-to-face, very important, critical work that teachers do.
I was speaking last week when Jess Wilson was down in the Latrobe Valley. She came out to a function that Martin Cameron held, and there was a principal there from the region, an outstanding principal who has been in the system for over 20 years. I will not say his name, but he has written to me and provided some context, and he was happy for me to share the generalities of it. The system is not supporting not only our teachers but our principals. There are very important things like disability inclusion funding – the model is there, but educators are sharing with me that the funding model has significantly increased the administrative workload and schools are often expected to provide supports before funding decisions are finalised. That creates financial uncertainty.
The other day he was physically hurt – I will not say how – by a student. They are being asked to manage these severe and sometimes violent, in this case it was, behaviours of students in our classrooms. This is dangerous. This is the unfortunate thing. If you have been in the classroom, you will understand this. He says there are students who really, really need support but for a raft of reasons they are not getting that support. They end up sucking up over 90 per cent of the time and focus of the classroom teacher and/or the principal and/or our very valuable – we do appreciate them – classroom support educators. They take all that energy, and the resources are not there to support those principals and teachers.
The other thing he said that was quite alarming to me is that there is a system where students can turn up potentially one day a month and still their parents acquire and are able to receive all of the benefits. When a student can turn up one day a month to the education system, whether it is primary school or secondary college, and qualify for benefits and their family can get those benefits, what sort of education are we providing in this state? These kids and their parents know the system. That is unacceptable and needs to change. I am very thankful that we have some outstanding work being done by our shadow minister Brad Rowswell. I want to put on record my humble thanks to him and to recognise his work in the past. Indeed successful school starters is a policy that the Liberals and Nationals have put forward as a commitment to early intervention in our school system for our students. If they can get that assessment very early, if they can get that functionality in the programs around them, then their trajectory into success is far greater. This gentleman, this valued teacher, has said to me that there are great flaws in our current system.
We have a new Premier today – out we walk Jacinta Allan and in we walk former Minister for Education Ben Carroll. Well, let me say, in my Eastern Victoria Region under Ben Carroll we have got 19 schools listed as being in poor condition by the school condition report. Nineteen of them are poor in my electorate, and 26 of them are rated average. It would not take too long to wander around our schools and see the lack of that care and the lack of that quality. A school’s condition does matter. There is no doubt about it, it does matter. We talk about education, and we have heard from those opposite and the minister in the lower house about improving education. Here we have got a minister who oversaw the debacle – there is no other word for it – of our VCE examinations. For my sins I taught year 12 general maths and chemistry when I was in the system, and I know how hard not only students but families work to make sure that they are exam ready. And then lo and behold, here we have got a debacle of a minister, now at the helm of Victoria, who oversaw a department that was clearly dysfunctional. I put it to this house that we have had an exams debacle and we have got a pay debacle. Indeed speaking to the principal again, there was a high level of frustration in and around those learning support teachers in terms of this pay debacle. He has left our schools to fall apart. This is the minister, now Premier, who will lead us to, I know, the loss of this government and the return of sanity and the return of the Liberals and Nationals and the leadership of Jess Wilson and Danny O’Brien. I will allow, certainly, this bill to go through.