Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I usually gave them good reason. But the fact of life is that, on simple arithmetic, if I take four from 8.9, I have a real term growth of 4.9—let us say five per cent—and I do not think we have hit four per cent in CPI growth as yet. But, more importantly, are these capital grants programs? Under the capital grants program, an estimated $1.7 billion is being provided over 2005-08 to assist the building maintenance and updating of schools throughout Australia. Government schools will receive an estimated $1.2 billion over 2005-08 from the Australian government under the capital grants program. Specific responsibility for establishing and maintaining government schools rests with the states and territories, with the Australian government providing supplementary funding.

You cannot have it three times. If you are getting 50 per cent of all your expenditures from the Australian taxpayer, you should not try to make comparisons with private non-government schooling, arguably whose only resource of government assistance comes from the Australian government. But it is wrong to compare the funding that states get through the specific grants with those specific grants available to Catholic and other non-government schools, which of course are the only funding they have got.

Again, on capital works, I noted with great approval when recently attending the Christian school in Geraldton—600 kids attending; not a little school by any measure—that they were opening two or three new classrooms. Our contribution was a couple of hundred thousand dollars, as I recollect. I said, ‘Where did the rest of the money come from?’ ‘Oh, we got an interest-free loan from the state government’—they are not going to charge interest, but send the money back. In other words, load up the fees to your parents in a Catholic school—I am sorry, it was not Catholic; it was a Christian school. Those sitting in the audience did not look like the wealthy and the creme de la creme of Geraldton. They looked like pretty ordinary people wishing for a Christian education for their kids, with a delightful staff—young people—teaching.

I will also put on the record in this regard that I write about 2½ thousand letters to schoolkids every year. It is a labour of love, but they are the ones who have achieved at school. While I was at one of the schools for the Investing in Our Schools celebration, I met what I thought to be a fairly young school principal, a very enthusiastic young man. I said to the kids, who were all primary schoolkids, ‘How many of you kids have got a letter from me?’ and up went some hands, including that of the school principal. It tends to date me a bit, but I thought that was a lovely example. I have been doing it for a long time and, while I stay in this place, I will continue to do so. My favourite reply was from the kid who asked whether I could please reply to this letter so his mum and dad would freak out again. When you get those sorts of letters, it makes this job very worth while.

In closing, this is good legislation because it authorises very substantial and increasing expenditure in real terms. We did not have a summit to come to the conclusion, and I could have talked for the same period of time on my objection to the dumbing down of educational processes. I think the member for Rankin and I have some common ground, and it was somewhat interesting to hear the member for Prospect talk about charter schools.

I am a great believer in vouchers. I say: fund parents. This discontinues all the argument about what one school gets and what another school gets. I repeat: you give funding targeted on both economic and geographic grounds to parents by way of a piece of paper only cashable at a school. You then get people making some decisions about the education they want.

In another context in this place, I talked about the role of local government in managing schools. This is commonplace around the world and it gives a lot more ownership of a school to the local population. They have a lot more influence over their local government people than maybe they do over a minister in this parliament. I do not agree with summits. I certainly agree with telling people that if they do not run a decent education system they do not get the money. It is the only influence we have over state governments—we have the constitutional divide—and it is not right that an Australian government minister should spend money on outrageous programs like outcomes based education, which is virtually no education. I thank the House.

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