Mr ENTSCH: I rise today to highlight the substandard education and wellbeing of our young students in the Torres Strait region. Tagai secondary college on Thursday Island is currently in a deplorable condition. I personally attended the school during an unannounced, impromptu visit on 9 April. Without exaggeration, I can say I’ve seen Third World prisons in better conditions. It’s truly shameful that the school has been left to fall into such an appalling state of disrepair. The classrooms are not only outdated; they are quite literally falling apart. Portions of the ceiling are collapsing, the roofs are leaking like sieves, and the black mould is so prevalent that it made my eyes burn after just a few minutes. The toilet facilities are atrocious. Several of the cubicles are screwed shut so that the kids can’t even access them, and the others are without locks altogether. I understand that the Northern Peninsula Area State College in Bamaga is in an even worse condition, and I intend to visit them next time I’m in the area, to make a similar assessment.
After my visit to Tagai I wrote to the Minister for Indigenous Australians and the Minister for Education, raising significant concerns and inviting them to the school, and asking them to intervene and to support the school. Unfortunately, to date I haven’t even received a response to those letters. Since then a 14-year-old student from Tagai secondary college, Catherine Paton, took the initiative to write to state and federal ministers raising similar concerns and advocating for her school. She even provided her own photos to the ministers.
The situation is not acceptable. It is deeply shameful. Neither the students nor the teachers should be subjected to such disgraceful conditions. We need immediate action across all levels of government to get it fixed without delay. This would never be allowed to happen anywhere else in Australia. There would be total outrage. So why is it acceptable for the only two high schools in the Torres Strait region?
There is so much rhetoric about closing the gap, so why don’t we start with a critical area like safe and appropriate education facilities that will actually drive tangible outcomes? The government was so intent on pushing the Voice to Parliament, but, quite frankly, what is needed is to listen to Catherine Paton’s voice. Visit the school and tell me it is in an acceptable condition for Australian students. This is about action, not slogans. Students should not have to fight for basic education standards taken for granted elsewhere in our country. I hope that the government will listen to Catherine and that her voice will become a catalyst for some meaningful change and action in that area.