Brendan O'Connor (Gorton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I thought it was important that I made some contribution to the debate on the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2006. On 9 November I asked the then minister for education a question about the particular funding that has been subject to much discussion during the debate on this bill. I asked the then minister for education to provide a breakdown to me of each electorate across Australia that received funding for government and non-government schools. The breakdown allowed the shadow minister and other members of the opposition to clearly see that there has been a distortion in funding towards and in favour of government electorates when compared with opposition electorates. This is a serious charge.

We are asserting that the government would manipulate the funding in order to provide more money for constituents in government held electorates as opposed to opposition held electorates. This comes off the back of the ‘regional rorts’ affair that was raging last year, quite rightly pointing to government misbehaviour and levels of corruption that occurred during the course of the funding applications to that department. I think the Labor Party made it very clear and confirmed the view that was held by the public that the government had indeed pork-barrelled Commonwealth money to provide electoral favour in the last election.

Whilst I am happy to concede that there has been money allocated to all constituents that made applications—and I am also happy to concede that there are some significant sums of money going to opposition held electorates—it is important to note that, when you look at the average amount of money under this program going to government seats compared to opposition seats, the government seats fare considerably better. It seems that the money allocated to coalition seats was almost double that for Labor and Independent seats. Of course, you have to take into account the fact that there are more coalition seats but, even once you factor that in, when comparing opposition to coalition seats it is clear that more funds have been provided to the government held seats. That is an issue that the shadow minister for education and Deputy Leader of the Opposition quite rightly raised in her contribution to this debate. It is a very important matter of ensuring that the government is accountable and that it makes its decisions on Commonwealth funding allocation based on merit and on requirements of school children across the country—not on the electoral needs of a political party that wants to sustain itself in government with spin and pork-barrelling. That is why it is important for me to make a contribution to this debate.

I also would like to talk about my electorate of Gorton. We were indeed successful in the applications made, but there were some question marks over another type of grant application. I have been in contact with the minister’s office and have asked the department why a decision was made not to provide a particular grant to Caroline Springs College regarding out of school hours care. It seems to me that the grounds for one of their applications were very strong indeed. The format of the application and the reasons for seeking the grant were stronger than other applications I have witnessed and, I am sure, far stronger than many other applications from outside of my electorate that were forthcoming as a result of this program.

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