Push for bilingual education

BILINGUAL indigenous language education should be introduced to all schools with Aboriginal students, says a parliamentary report.

BILINGUAL indigenous language education should be introduced to all schools with Aboriginal students, and indigenous languages included as an official Closing the Gap measure, according to a parliamentary report to be released today.

The report calls for an emergency response to save the disappearing languages.

A Labor-dominated committee has spent 12 months investigating what needs to happen to save the languages and will call for dramatic changes and a major boost in commonwealth funding today.

Queensland Labor MP Shayne Neumann, the committee chairman, told The Australian the committee would back the controversial use of bilingual education and criticise its abolition in the Northern Territory by the previous Territory Labor government. He said education should be conducted in both languages to deliver the best outcomes. He said that in communities across the nation where English was not the first language, indigenous students had the right to learn in their own language.

The committee will also call for a national indigenous interpreting service to be established, an idea first raised 20 years ago but never realised.

The MP said interpreters were inadequate and ad hoc across the states and territories.

The House of Representatives standing committee on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander affairs will make 30 recommendations to turn around the situation.

Mr Neumann said the situation for indigenous languages was "dire and tragic" and needed a major government response.

"There were 250 languages at the time of white settlement with only 18 now spoken by significant numbers of indigenous people," he said.

The Australian understands the committee will call for increased funding for indigenous language support programs, inclusion of language learning in the Closing the Gap program, acknowledgment of the benefits to indigenous and non-indigenous Australians of indigenous language, and for dual naming of places.

It also wants to make it easier for indigenous speakers to become teachers.

"We recommend better pathways to teacher training in indigenous language, including accreditation and specific limited teacher qualifications in the area (like in WA)," Mr Neumann said.

He said the National Assessment Program -- Literacy and Numeracy was inadequate at assessing children whose dominant language was an Aboriginal one and an alternative culturally appropriate test must be established.

Mr Neumann said the NSW and Queensland education departments were the best in Australia with programs in indigenous language learning.

He said while "Mabo did away with the fiction of terra nullius" it was time we did away with the fiction that Australia was and is a "monolingual nation".

"We should be proud of our land and our languages and recognise their mutual importance to indigenous and non-indigenous Australians," he said.