DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION AND TRAINING DYSLEXIC STUDENTS DISCRIMINATION
Reverend the Hon. Dr GORDON MOYES: A Killarney Vale man, Mr Jim Bond, has fought the Department of Education and Training over its treatment of dyslexic students for nine years. Mr Bond is in the public gallery—I apologise that he has had to wait 12 hours for this moment. Recently, he had his cause taken up by the Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Jim Bond, who hid his own troubles with reading for 20 years, is representing a year 12 student who claims he was discriminated against on account of his learning disability. The basis of the claim is that, although State and Federal anti-discrimination laws consider dyslexia a disability, the Department of Education and Training categorises it as a learning difficulty. Mr Bond said that children with varying degrees of dyslexia and their schools were being denied funding and access to specialised computer software that had achieved positive results in America and Europe.
Those with dyslexia are often ignored as the department fails to recognise dyslexia as a disability. My personal experience as a primary student was that I was dyslexic before anybody was able to diagnose the problem. For years my mother took me to the Royal Children’s Hospital in Carlton, Melbourne. There I was given speech therapy for years, and in my memory I was never given an eye examination. However, I did practise saying 5,000 times, “Thora thrust thick thistles through the thinning hedge.” I am glad that that has been read into Hansard for all history. The turnaround in my life came when a State primary school teacher in the fourth grade persisted with me, telling students not to laugh at my reading because one day I would be the best reader in the whole school. What captured my imagination was that she said I would be the best reader not in the whole class but in the whole school! I have overcompensated over the years because of that.
I needed to build a special library to house my personal library of 30,000 books. I do not believe I have cured dyslexia by constant reading throughout my life. I still mirror read and am still inclined to call God “dog”—which is a problem for a minister of religion! For 44 years I have been a radio broadcaster and for 45 years I have hosted a weekly television program on the national Nine network. Interestingly, my wife recognises a recidivistic dyslexia when listening to me. She tells me I need a day off. She can hear in my speech the old problems reoccurring. When the mind is tired, dyslexia returns. The effect of dyslexia in society includes unemployment, poverty, alcoholism, drug abuse and dependency, and even family breakdowns. Children with dyslexia often have high IQs but poor reading and writing skills. They are sent to the back of the class or out of the room. This House wishes Mr Bond well in his cause. I call upon the education department to recognise dyslexia as a disability and to provide support for such students. 02 June 2004.
