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

In making his comments, the member for Moreton said that there was some doubt amongst Liberals about their support for the Social Security and Veterans’ Entitlements Legislation Amendment (Schooling Requirements) Bill 2008. It is my clear understanding that we not only support the legislation; we support its principle. But, on the other hand, had the member for Moreton read the explanatory memorandum, as I have, and had he searched for evidence that there is some obligation on the state entities, private entities or religious entities running schools to make the reports to Centrelink, which are fundamental to the issuance of notices on parents, he would have found that it is not there. I am not sure if constitutionally it could be there. All I can find in the explanatory memorandum is the following:

... a person responsible for the operation of the school gives the Secretary—

that is, Centrelink—

written notice that the child is failing to comply with the school attendance requirements to the satisfaction of the person responsible for the operation of the school and the person is failing to take reasonable steps to ensure that the child attends school to the responsible person’s satisfaction.

That is all very easy for some hardworking single mother to understand, I am sure. It goes on in that regard. But it is voluntary.

Let me draw the member for Moreton’s attention to the beginnings of this idea. Privately, without any legislative backing, without anything, a school principal in either Halls Creek or Fitzroy Crossing in the northern area of my state, in the electorate of Kalgoorlie, did a deal with the local Centrelink bloke that if the kids were not coming to school Centrelink would take some action. It worked, virtually overnight. Large numbers of kids who were not there before started attending school. The figures, in fact, were a matter of public record. But what was the result of that? There was a hell of a fuss from the state Labor education minister about the fact that this rotten principal had actually acted to get kids to school—to the extent, as I recollect, that the principal eventually resigned his position as a teacher. He is no longer available to teach kids, and he was one who had obviously volunteered to go into that area. That is what happened.

This is what we get and why we are cynical. We accepted that, when we were the Liberal government, state Labor governments were not going to do anything to help Aboriginals for which we might get the credit. That is how stupid the political system is. But the reality is that the Liberal government, in proposing to implement these arrangements, got no cooperation from the state governments at all. The member for Moreton mentions the blame game. Let me tell him that his Prime Minister has been absolutely successful in playing the blame game. He no longer blames the states and they no longer blame him. The sorts of wars that used to exist between Labor premiers and the Liberal government—and, I might add, in the days of past premiers in WA such as Sir Charles Court, between Liberal state governments and Liberal federal governments—have ceased to exist. But in the cancellation of those wars, the community no longer has any idea what you are up to.

I would have thought that this legislation would have had substance, that there would be something in it. I have read the second reading speech. I think there could have been some obligation for the minister to make a statement to this House, under the discipline of not misleading it, about the fact that the arrangements were already in place with COAG and that he had written commitments from state education ministers that they would conform with the requirements of this legislation. That would have given meaning to an otherwise excellent measure.

But the reality is that, wherever we turn, and particularly in education, it is all about ‘gonna’. The Deputy Prime Minister is up every day measuring her success, her excellence, by expenditure. She has spent the money or she has transferred it somewhere—and, I understand, primarily to state government agencies. She ought to read Paul Keating’s comments on that after we introduced the GST and made it a grant for unspecified use. He told us we were stupid. There are many examples of similar quotes about the fact that we are sending so many millions to state education agencies and expecting that the money will actually materialise at a school.

The member for Moreton talked about a school having some association with the Liberal Party and getting some computers. A lot of schools in my electorate got their computers before the election because the Howard government introduced the Investing in Our Schools Program, or IOSP, as we got to know it. That gave every school in Australia—the smallest numbering 10 pupils in some cases in my electorate—the opportunity to spend, with appropriate approval, $150,000 on upgrading the infrastructure or the equipment of their school. To my recollection, a lot purchased computers. They used the money for that purpose. It is magnificent to go into some of those schools.

I might add a comment about one school for disadvantaged kids—and I mean disadvantaged kids, one of whom had practically no motor skills. If you really want to get a lump in your throat, go and see those kids actually using a computer when they can virtually not move any part of their body. There are computers they can use, and they get the benefit. Those computers came out of IOSP, not from the claims of the Deputy Prime Minister. From what she said yesterday, one would think that there are kids today using sophisticated tools and equipment in schools because she has allocated the money. I am happy to go with her—as I said at the doorstop this morning—to some of those schools when the computers are actually in operation. I would like to run the book on that.

This is the same thing. The government would have credibility for a great initiative if they demonstrated to us that they had any arrangements in place to require that person, as the explanatory memorandum says, to send those notices whenever truancy came to their notice. Of course, it would not be a bad idea if other methods were used in terms of knowing where these people are. Yes, privacy is a right, but not when you are denying your kids an education or a future. That is an outrage, and there can be no privacy associated with that failing.

It is a fact of life that 50 per cent of the cost of running every government school in Australia is funded from the budget of this parliament. That is constantly overlooked. We have these silly campaigns by the school teachers union identifying specific grants. I hope one day the revenge that is taken upon them in that regard is that this parliament shifts to parental vouchers, where there can be no question mark whatsoever. We have all this fooling with numbers, where one takes the specific grants but ignores, for instance, the GST revenue that flows to a state government. They run those silly specific grant comparisons when no GST revenue goes to non-government schools.

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