Chris Hayes (Werriwa, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

One of the most significant institutions in our local communities is our schools. Let me make it clear from the outset of my contribution on the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2006 that I am—and, I would imagine, every other member in this place would be—a supporter of our education system. I genuinely believe that my electorate has some of the best schools and certainly the best school administrators and educators in the country.

In making these comments about local schools, I would like to take the opportunity to welcome the new Campbelltown School Education Director, Mr Hedley Mooney, to our region. Prior to taking up this appointment, Mr Mooney was a teacher at Miller High School. He will now have the opportunity to work at both ends of my electorate. I would also like to take this opportunity early in my contribution on the bill to record my thanks for the exceptional work done over many years by Mr Greg Whitby, the former Chief Executive Officer of the Catholic Education Office, Diocese of Wollongong. Mr Whitby’s area of responsibility, apart from the South Coast, covered Macarthur—a large slab of my electorate. I know that he is a very well respected and well regarded educator and education administrator. I was very disappointed to hear that Greg had decided to move on to the Diocese of Parramatta later this year. I am sure that he will continue his excellent work there for the benefit of the local schools and the students now under his charge.

I will not be opposing this bill, but I will be strongly supporting Labor’s second reading amendment, which points to some serious maladministration in the Investing in Our Schools program. The Investing in Our Schools program has become the smaller, school based version of the regional rorts scheme. It has become yet another manifestation of the government’s decade-long addiction to heaping largesse on places where they believe it is needed as opposed to assisting those who need it most.

When the minister says how important this program is to the government, there is no doubt in my mind that she is referring not to an overwhelming desire to improve schools as a matter of good public policy but rather to the government’s desire to use schools funding to pick up where other pork-barrelling efforts have left off. I can only presume that, when the government came up with the program, they thought that the members of the opposition would be a little too scared to criticise it, because it is dealing with federal grants to schools. When it comes to schools funding, I am not going to be slow in getting off the mark to make a criticism, particularly when I see so many schools in my electorate where this criticism is well deserved.

I refer to the funding information that has recently come to light following answers to questions on notice received by the member for Gorton. The extent to which this government is willing to go when it comes to pork-barrelling quite frankly knows no bounds. A decade of this addiction to garnering support through pork-barrelling has now extended, as I said earlier, to our local schools. This is the same government whose Prime Minister warned in the party room on Tuesday to avoid giving a sense of arrogance or hubris. You could just see the Prime Minister saying, ‘If the Australian people get a whiff of the fact that we have tickets on ourselves, we’re dead.’ With respect, a whiff of tickets is going to be a little hard to smell under the wads of cash that this government has been splashing around the place.

I return to the detail of the answers that were given to the member for Gorton. I would like to go through some details of their key elements. In round 1 of the Investing in Our Schools program some $69 million of the total $105 million was spent in coalition seats. Despite having less than 60 per cent of seats in this chamber, the electorates of government members received 66 per cent of the funding under round 1. Of itself, this is not a particularly damning statistic, but there is more. As always, you tend to find when dealing with this government that the devil is in the detail. There are a few more facts about the round 1 grants that are worthy of noting in this debate: 19 of the 20 electorates receiving the highest funding were coalition seats. The average fund per Nationals electorate was more than $1.3 million, the average fund per Liberal electorate was more than $700,000, the average fund per coalition electorate was more than $790,000 and the average grant per coalition marginal seat was more than $830,000. There was only one Labor held electorate in the list of the top 10 electorates when ranked by the average grant per school. But the most interesting thing is that the average Labor electorate received a mere $549,303.

When it comes to the same statistics in New South Wales, which is probably a little closer to my focal point in this debate, the story does not change all that much. On average, Nationals electorates received more than $1.2 million each, Liberal electorates received more than $661,000 each and coalition electorates received more than $780,000 each, while the average Labor held electorate received a little over $489,000. Quite frankly, the statistics are at least revealing.

In addition to the financial rorting of the program, it is interesting that in the lead-up to the announcement of the successful applications, successful schools were in some instances informed prior to any official announcement. Naturally, that sort of stuff occurring in electorates is of concern and, as a consequence, I had cause to investigate what was going on and why I was hearing that some schools had been receiving calls saying that their applications were going to be successful while others were not hearing anything. I found out that, in the true fashion of this government, the reason why some government members were able to inform the schools in their electorates earlier than anyone else was that some of them were going away at the time that the official announcement would be made. I cannot help but think that this approach was designed by the same people who came up with the idea that schools who were receiving money for flagpoles had to invite members of the government to be at the official raising of the flag.

I am not going to deny that my electorate benefited from the scheme—obviously not to the same extent as coalition electorates, but it did receive $624,522 in funding grants. Some 22 schools in the electorate submitted applications for 17 projects, and the applications of 14 schools were approved. It was not the 100 per cent success rate that some other electorates experienced, but the average amount granted in my electorate was $44,000. Local schools in the electorate were awarded funds for a range of projects including airconditioning of classrooms, computer upgrades, shade structures and sporting and fitness equipment upgrades. These will be welcome additions to local schools when the government finally gets around to handing over the cheque.

The problem and the most disappointing thing about this program is that, despite the obvious bias in the awarding of funds to particular electorates, the government does not yet have its house in order when it comes to actually handing over the cash. The government knew all this was coming. The government promised all these schools would receive additional funding for capital works during the last election campaign. Yet schools in my electorate are still waiting for their cheques, and they are schools which have already been told that they are successful. They have applied and been informed, but they are going to be sitting by the mailbox waiting to see when the money comes through so they can plan the commencement of this new work.

There is no reasonable excuse that the government can come up with for not being prepared to handle the number of applications they received. It is simply not good enough to use the excuse that they were overwhelmed. It comes as no surprise that there was always going to be a rush of applications. All schools were promised the money during the last election campaign. Everybody knows that every school has a list of work that is waiting to be commenced should money become available. So why would it come as any surprise that the schools which were asking for funds, quite frankly, were not in need of those things and were not in need of having this work commenced as quickly as possible?

Unlike other programs that hand out grants, schools need a lead time to manage any capital works project. Not only is there a need to consider the time needed to complete the work but also any disruption that such work might cause to the day-to-day management of a school also has to be taken into account. I know that when some schools have experienced delays in the past, they have had to delay the commencement of projects for up to a year, as the works to be undertaken may have been considered to be unsafe while the school was still in session. As everyone knows, the longest period that schools have available to them to complete projects, particularly physical projects, is in the Christmas break. These schools need their money and they need it now.

The bill before us today will grant the minister the ability to move funds around within a funding quadrennium. I have to say that, on the face of it, this is seen as a reasonable measure that will, hopefully, allow for better management of the administration of the program in the future. Hopefully, granting the minister greater flexibility will not result in a repeat of schools waiting for their money. Hopefully, it will result on this occasion in the Department of Education, Science and Training being more adept at processing applications in a more timely fashion and also assisting schools in their endeavour to complete the tasks which are subject to the grant.

As I said, I broadly support these measures, but I must express a certain reservation. I do not know whether it is just me—sadly, it probably is not—but it is a bit rough to simply say, ‘You can trust this government when it comes to handing out money.’ It is for this reason I am somewhat reservedly supporting the granting of increased flexibility to the minister, as I am fearful that the flexibility will simply be used as a means by which the minister can manipulate this program for purely political purposes. I hope I am shown to be wrong on that. If I am not shown to be incorrect and the minister manipulates the program for political purposes, the program will be further discredited—and the statistics for round 1 of the grants have proved this to be the case.

The government has set about casting itself as the saviour of schools by splashing out $1 billion on capital works. It hopes to make itself look better than its state counterparts by contrasting their willingness to spend on school infrastructure. With the difficulty that state governments sometimes encounter, they certainly do have to manage within their budgets, particularly when they seem to be starved continually of federal government funds. No doubt if the New South Wales government received all of its GST collected in New South Wales, it would be spending more money on schools. Sadly, under the twisted arrangements—which this place has been steeped in for a little time—the New South Wales government receives only $10 billion in GST revenue, whilst at the same time it collects, on behalf of the Commonwealth, $13 billion from its residents in New South Wales.

However, instead of becoming the great saviour of school communities, the government has created an administrative nightmare for itself and one, it has been shown, it is now struggling to control. School communities, parents, teachers and, in many instances, students have come together in good faith to apply for grants under the Investing in Our Schools program. They have all worked together for the benefit of their local schools to determine priorities for work and to complete their respective applications. It is about time this government stopped dithering and completed round 1 of this program in New South Wales, while ensuring that the cheques are in the hands of the schools and not sitting on someone’s desk waiting to be put under the minister’s nose for signature.

Hot on the heels of that, I would like to see the announcement of a round 2 grant for New South Wales that many schools, particularly in my area, are currently waiting on. I can only think that the delay in announcing these grants, despite the public spin, is because the government has been caught out pork-barrelling again and it wants to—at least this time—make sure that it has the balance right. I will continue to encourage schools in my area to apply for grants under the next round of Investing in Our Schools program, which I expect will be open in New South Wales in a matter of days. I will continue to tell local principals, parents and citizens organisations and anyone who has a direct interest in the wellbeing of schools in my area that, quite frankly, they should get an application in so that the schools can actually benefit from this program.

Given the increased flexibility afforded by this bill, I hope the government will improve the administration of the program. I hope that the increased flexibility will not be used to further manipulate or exacerbate the maladministration that has come to characterise this program. I hope it does not result in an absolute politicisation of an already highly politically motivated program. We have a new minister overseeing the program now, and I can only hope that she brings with her a new approach to the management of this important program.

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