Legislative Council Fifty-Fifth Parliament, First Session (55-1) 55 1 Parliament of South Australia Legislative Council published Question Time Autism Lead Teachers Autism Lead Teachers The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK Legislative Council Autism Lead Teachers The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK (14:45): I seek leave to make a brief explanation before directing a question to the parliamentary secretary regarding autism. Leave granted. The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK Legislative Council The Hon. J.M.A. LENSINK: In 2022-23, the state budget included some $28.8 million over the forward estimates to appoint an autism lead teacher in every government primary school. My question to the parliamentary secretary is: is the government's funding for specific autism programs in education in addition to the funding signed up to already as a result of the Gonski agreement, or is the government taking this funding out of the general disability funding under Gonski? The Hon. E.S. BOURKE Legislative Council The Hon. E.S. BOURKE (14:46): I thank the honourable member for her question. We did commit $17 million when we took this to the state election, and when we got into government it was one of those programs that the education department at the time thought and agreed was a fantastic initiative that we were taking to the people. They said that they had similar programs they wanted to support, and that this would be a really fantastic opportunity to achieve that outcome. Additional funding was made available to increase it to $28 million, and that has enabled us to increase the amount of time that is given to students in the classroom. We know across our classrooms if we do not have the knowledge about what autism is—we can continue to talk about the word autism, and that makes no change at all. By investing in this, and bringing this knowledge into our schools, we can create that change. At the moment there are students being excluded from school—autistic students make up a high proportion of kids that are excluded from schools—and we need to do something about that. Increasing this funding will enable us to hopefully reduce the exclusion in our schools because that is one of our main aims here; it is to keep kids in schools, so that they can get the education that they deserve. We are really proud that we are investing in that.