Welfare cuts for school-skipping kids
In the foggy early Monday morning in the West Arnhem community of Gunbalanya, two boys have escaped from school before it's even started.
The school bus catches up with the brothers at the gate to their home, guilty expressions on their still-sleepy faces.
"Go back to school! You should be in school!" a School Attendance Officer (SAO) shouts before berating them in Kunwinjku.
"They're innovative. They're bright," federal Indigenous Affairs Minister Nigel Scullion says almost admiringly of the boys.
But he watches as they're escorted back to school, where he collects a school shirt and takes it out to another young boy spotted without a uniform at the local arts centre to help his grandmother for the day.
The reluctant boy drags his feet to the bus looking disconsolate.
Since the beginning of the year, Senator Scullion has been doggedly rolling out a program of truancy officers in communities across the country that employs locals to help encourage parents to get their children to school.
From Monday, the Anangu Pitjantjatjara Yankunytjatjara Lands in Central Australia will be the site of a three-month trial program to dock the welfare payments of parents who don't oversee their kids' attendance.
Senator Scullion says the program will eventually roll out across the country.
"If you've been encouraged to get your kids to school for eight months and you haven't this far, then I think you need a rocket, and the sooner the better, I reckon," he said.
He calls indigenous communities "the forgotten people" who have been permitted by passive racism to be lax in managing their children's education because they aren't compelled to send their children to school by law, as non-indigenous parents are.
He says the fining system needs to be refined to ensure people aren't being pushed further into debt "but it needs to be something that will grab their attention".
"All indications are that if there's a real threat of you losing your welfare cheque, you'll get your kids to school," he told AAP.
Similar programs are already in place in other Northern Territory communities, but the minister says the fines are just a method to find out what obstacles to school attendance families are facing so they can be supported with the appropriate services.
There are about 15 SAOs in Gunbalanya who have been getting kids to school since the beginning of the year, and attendance has improved by about 17 per cent, Senator Scullion says.
"When we first came here it was the wet season and there was a lot of enthusiasm, but as the dry season starts and your connectedness goes, people's responsibility to attend either sorry business, funerals, footy and family business has been problematic."
He said the government now had a better understanding of those issues, and commended NT Education Minister Peter Chandler for his consultation of the community to consider changing school term dates to reflect the increased movement of indigenous people in the NT during the mid-year dry months.
But the movement isn't restricted to schoolchildren and their families: of Gunbalanya's 15 SAOs, a number are currently attending a funeral at another community, while others are at a ceremony on the coast at Maningrida.
The minister could not say what the SAOs' own attendance rates were, but said the government was working with them to help balance their cultural and work obligations.
"The program has been very effective. Without it most of the kids you see coming to school would not be here at all," he said.
