Bob Baldwin (Paterson, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science and Personnel) Share this | Hansard source

We repeatedly heard the Rudd government claim. Eleven months on, this promise has been replaced with a much watered down approach: a promise to provide every child from years 9 to 12 with access to the latest technology. In basic English he has already failed; ‘their own computer’ does not mean ‘access to’.

It is beyond me how the Rudd Labor government can be confident and assured in their approach to this matter and continually proclaim but not fulfil promises to the future leaders of our nation. Not only that but the schools and state governments have now been told that they will have to come up with their own ways of funding teacher training, new buildings, power points to house extra computers, insurance, electricity and broadband connections. Way to go, Prime Minister! You have effectively given a car to someone who has no licence and does not comprehend road rules. I reckon I would give you an ‘F’ on your report card for that attempt. My constituents in Paterson feel the same way. Kevin 07 has quickly become Mistake 08.

During our 11-year term, the Howard government worked hard to restore the status of technical and trade careers so that young Australians would see the trades as an avenue to rewarding and satisfying careers. As just one of the measures designed to lift the status of trades, the Howard coalition government established 28 Australian technical colleges around Australia. These colleges allow students to complete their final years of high school and at the same time start an apprenticeship in their chosen trade so that when they finish school they are well on their way to a successful career. In a blow to local secondary schools, the Rudd Labor government has also deflated the hopes of many school students in the Paterson electorate by breaking its electoral promise to open a trade centre in every Australian secondary school. In the limited examples where the Rudd Labor government has installed the so-called trade centres, all the government has effectively done is provide funding to rename the metalwork room the ‘Metalwork Centre’.

The Rudd Labor government needs to get more serious about the current trade shortage and tackle the problem head-on. As such, I want to see the Rudd Labor government provide proper trades funding as originally promised. The Paterson electorate needs dedicated, properly funded facilities like the Australian technical colleges, which have scale, local industry input and expert trade teachers. The Howard government spent an average of $24 million on each Australian technical college, while the Rudd Labor government is offering each school an average of just $900,000—and then over 10 years—to build a ‘centre’. It is becoming patently obvious that the priorities of the Rudd Labor government, whatever they may be, are definitely not with education in this country.

The alternative government believes that education is the fundamental, essential and enduring building block upon which to build opportunity for young Australians and prosperity and cohesion for Australia’s future. Parents and students must be assured that our education system is defined by choice, values and high standards. The alternative government demands that every child have access to high-quality education from a high-quality teacher in a high-quality school environment. The alternative government supports choice and believes that every parent, having paid their taxes, deserves some level of public assistance to support the education of their child.

The Rudd Labor government has, in an absurd and destructive move, scrapped the successful Investing in Our Schools Program. The IOSP will lapse on 31 December 2008, but this has not stopped a raft of Labor senators turning up to coalition held seats to claim credit for projects at their openings. If you want an example of an education revolution that was well thought out, implemented and budgeted, then the IOSP is a classic example. This program created by the former coalition government provided money directly to schools to spend on infrastructure that the school actually wanted. An example of how vital and effective the IOSP has been was when this year I had the pleasure of officially opening the new play equipment and shade sail areas at the Mount Kanwary Public School in the Paterson electorate. The school was fortunate to receive not one but two Investing in Our Schools grants under the Howard government. These enabled it to fund the works that the parent body was busy saving for.

Another terrific example of the IOSP in action was when in November of 2007 I had the pleasure of opening new and refurbished facilities worth $48,977 at Coolongolook Public School. I personally fought for $42,905 for the construction of covered walkways, play equipment and shade cover over play areas at the school. I also fought for $6,072 for the upgrade of the file server for the computer network in the school. The file server services 20 computers and two notebooks. In October of 2007 I had the honour of presenting Clarence Town Public School with a significant contribution of $73,792 from the Howard government’s Investing in Our Schools Program. This grant enabled staff and students at the school to purchase new library resources, ICT and computer equipment, and an outdoor learning area. The grant proved an invaluable asset to the educational opportunities of the school. The Howard government’s IOSP initiative was able to assist Stroud Road Public School with an $11,907 grant, so that staff and students at the school could purchase new ICT and computer equipment. These are but a few examples of how the IOSP was able to revolutionise the Australian education system. In 2007 alone, schools in my electorate received close to $2 million to fix everything from run-down toilets and classrooms to fund upgrades of playgrounds and IT equipment.

Since the Rudd Labor government came to power, school communities in the Paterson electorate have, disappointingly, had to continually make up for state government shortfalls, which is detracting from their ability to focus 100 per cent of their energies on providing superior education opportunities. The Rudd Labor government’s decision to axe this well-received and revolutionary program is a testament to the Rudd Labor government being out of touch with reality and out of tune with Australian educational necessities. I foresee four main areas where the non-government education sector will be impacted by the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. These areas include: changes to the grounds on which the minister can elect to refuse or delay payment, which makes it easier for the minister to do so, contained in section 15; the new requirement in school funding agreements to comply with the national curriculum by 2012 as specified in regulations, in section 22; alterations to the reporting requirements for schools, particularly new requirements relating to information about financial viability and funding sources, contained in section 24; and, the removal of the previous government’s new non-government schools establishment grants, in section 100.

I would like to express my concerns in relation to the new requirement that schools comply with the national curriculum. The Rudd Labor government has not outlined what the national maths, science, history and English curriculum will look like, yet this bill seeks to tie school funding to that curriculum’s acceptance. Some of the details surrounding the national curriculum’s development have been released, and I share the concerns of my colleague the shadow minister for education, Christopher Pyne, when I say that I am anxious about the prospect of the national curriculum being hijacked by ideologues. As I am sure many of you are aware, in September former member of the communist party Stuart Macintyre was appointed to write the national history curriculum. I share the shadow minister’s concerns when I say that we can only hope that the required reading for our Year 12 students will not include Professor Macintyre’s own works on the history of the Australian Communist Party or the history of Marxism in early 20th century Britain. However, my concerns do not end there. It also caused me great unease to hear that the English curriculum is being drafted by Professor Peter Freebody of Sydney University.

Professor Freebody has been publicly documented as saying:

Literacy education is not about skill development, not about deep competence. It is about the institutional shaping of social practices and cultural resources, about inducting successive generations into particular cultural, normative ways of handling texts, and about access to technologies and artifacts (e.g., writing, the Internet) and to the social institutions where these tools and artifacts are used …

I would hope that I am not alone in my reasonable views that, although these principles that Professor Freebody speaks of may be of use and relevance to our school students, learning should always relate back to the cornerstone of education—which is, of course, skills development.

I would now like to address how additional reporting requirements for schools, particularly in relation to funding services, will potentially impact on the non-government education sector. Section 24 of the bill refers to funding agreements and reports on programs and financial operations. Departmental briefs reported that this clause simply followed the form set out in the previous legislation. However, this is not true. Funding sources, for example, is a new concept in this context, and could give the minister substantial new powers to demand information about internal financial affairs of a school community. Effectively, this will mean that non-governmental schools in the Paterson electorate will have to report publicly and in much greater detail about their sources of funding. Under the new plans, for example, if an active P&F in the Paterson electorate showed great initiative and raised $30,000 for new play equipment at their school then they would have to provide a transparent account of events that allowed them to accumulate such funds. Although this notion on its own is not absurd or unjust, one can only draw the conclusion that this clause exists in order to lay the groundwork to build a case to radically alter the SES funding system in the next funding period.

Unfortunately, it would appear that those schools who are the beneficiaries of acts of philanthropy by parents may be penalised through reduced or abolished Commonwealth support. If this were to become the normalised state of play—that is, to reduce government funding to schools that show initiative and are proactive in their approach to enhance their school environment through fundraising activities—then I would be very disenchanted to support this clause. It would appear that this is a foreshadowing of the ‘Latham schools hit lists’ which are yet to come.

I now move to speak on the removal of the new non-government schools establishment grants. The Howard coalition government always believed in choice and recognised that non-government schools save taxpayers money, and proudly encouraged the development of Catholic and independent schools. The Howard coalition government saw the merit in increasing the viability of the non-government school sector and encouraging new schools where the community demanded it. I know of no better example in my electorate of this grant benefiting the community than the Medowie Christian School.

Medowie is a growing town in the Port Stephens local government area but, until the development of the Medowie Christian School, it had no high school. Hundreds of children are bussed daily to Raymond Terrace public high schools or to Catholic, independent and selective high schools in Newcastle some 60 kilometres away. Thanks to the vision of the community behind the Medowie Christian School, the town has its first high school, providing an option for parents who do not want to risk their children’s lives travelling twice a day on overcrowded buses with no seatbelts.

The removal of this grant would make it increasingly difficult for new non-government schools, such as Medowie Christian School, to be set up. As I mentioned before, the Rudd Labor government has noted the key priorities which they think are critical to the future performance of our education system. Their priorities include improving the quality of teaching, raising outcomes in disadvantaged school communities and delivering a new era of transparency to guide parents, teachers and policymakers to make the best possible decisions.

It is the Rudd Labor government’s belief that this bill will provide for five activities that are essential to achieve transparency in education: national testing, national outcome reporting, the provision and publication of individual school information and reporting to parents. The Rudd Labor government has said that the non-government schools will be obliged to participate in these activities in a way that is consistent with the wider transparency framework applied to all sectors. However, I ask the Rudd Labor government: have they even bothered to listen to what the key stakeholders have had to say about this overhaul? The Independent Education Union of Australia agrees unequivocally that schools should be more accountable and transparent. However, representatives from the Independent Education Union are up in arms about the government’s plans to source data about schools’ performance as they fear that this will lead to simplistic league-table reporting. Such reporting styles, they believe—and I agree—will lead to media manipulation of the necessarily complex data collected into a single figure so that schools can be ranked. These sorts of ranking systems will provide no genuine information that parents and teachers can constructively use, are devoid of any real purpose and will only work to bring about greater competition between schools and teacher sackings where schools are not performing as well. The voices of the Independent Education Union of Australia and the Teachers Federation should be given more validity in negotiations between the federal, state and territory governments if we are to create a more holistic and encompassing education system within Australia.

As a parent of three children myself, I wholeheartedly agree that parents should have access to timely and meaningful information about their children’s progress and school community. The idea of an open, transparent and accountable education system is ideal and achievable. However, such a system must be the result of open dialogue between teachers, teachers unions, parents, and state and federal governments. If the Rudd Labor government creates an education system that is ill informed from its outset and does not reflect the views of current education providers then creating such a bill will only work against creating an ‘education revolution’. The education of our children is perhaps the most critical issue that we face as a nation. Therefore, it is time the Prime Minister appointed a full-time education minister and a full-time workplace relations minister; the Deputy Prime Minister should not be responsible for both. Today I have listed but a few of the Rudd Labor government’s downfalls, including their inability to listen to what key stakeholders really want, but the list continues.

Finally, perhaps the Rudd Labor government should, instead of referring to their plans as an ‘education revolution’, admit their defeats and announce what has ultimately been an ‘education dissolution’. The future of our children’s education is at stake, and I will not rest until the Rudd Labor government plays the fair and accountable game. The aim of the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 may be to implement the government’s commitment to providing stability in Commonwealth funding for nongovernment schools for 2009-12, but, as we have heard today, this commitment needs a serious shake-up.

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