Michael Johnson (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak in the parliament today on the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. These are important bills that affect the constituents of Ryan. I am very pleased to speak on these bills because it gives me the chance to go into bat for all the independent schools around the country and in my Ryan electorate and the tens of thousands of children who go to independent, non-government schools in the Ryan electorate. Some $28 billion, of some $42 billion of Commonwealth funds, are involved in this legislation, so it is important that members speak to this legislation and give their thoughts on the government’s legislation.

I spoke on the Tax Laws Amendment (Medicare Levy Surcharge Thresholds) Bill (No. 2) 2008 the other day. The preceding speaker was the new member for Flynn. I was saying to him that when he comes into the parliament to defend government bills he should speak with a bit of passion, he should get up and make his case compelling. The way he carried on put doubts in my mind whether he believed what he was saying at all. Just listening to some of the previous speakers, particularly the backbenchers, I question whether they in fact again believe in these bills.

On the other hand, I know that some of the Labor frontbenchers have deep and solid views on these bills, and they will certainly speak with vigorous passion during the debate, particularly the Deputy Prime Minister, who has carriage of the education portfolio. Her views are longstanding—we all know where she stands on independent schools. If anybody thought that the last election signalled the beginning of a fiscally conservative Prime Minister and the end of ideology, I ask them to look at this proposed legislation. And I am delighted that the Minister for Resources and Energy is in the chamber. He certainly speaks with passion when it comes to his ideologies, which I think are not too consistent with the views of the majority of Australians.

The number of students enrolled in independent or non-government schools in the Ryan electorate in 2007 was 21,002. That is a lot of students and it also means that a lot of parents value and believe in the idea of choice. These are hardworking people who sacrifice so much to be able to send their children to the school of their choice. We should be giving them the opportunity to decide which school and which form of education they wish their children to be exposed to. These bills draw a very clear distinction between the Rudd Labor government and the federal opposition in terms of what each party believes in and stands for on the issue of choice and educational values. This really is an ideological and political assault on parental choice when it comes to schooling options for children.

I know that the constituents of Ryan, who send their children to such schools as Brigidine College at Indooroopilly, Brisbane Boys College at Toowong, Our Lady of the Rosary School, St Ignatius School, St Joseph’s Nudgee Junior College, St Peter Chanel Primary School at The Gap and St Peter’s Lutheran College, my old school, where I was a boarder—it was and remains a very fine school—will take a very deep interest in my thoughts and the thoughts of the coalition compared to the thoughts of the Labor Party now in government. These bills reminds us that, despite all the very clever and deceptive campaigning of Mr Rudd during the last election, where he painted himself as a fiscal conservative and a responsible economic manager, at its core the Labor Party has deep-rooted philosophical problems with the place of independent schools in the architecture of our education system.

I am very pleased that my colleague the member for Casey is in the House. We both entered parliament in 2001. He is the former shadow minister for education and I know he would share very strongly my view that the ideological assault on independent schools in this country should be of grave concern to those who believe in choice and to those of us on this side of the chamber.

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 succeeds in part the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004, which provided funding for both government and non-government schools for 2004 to 2008. The bill also provides funding for Indigenous students attending non-government schools. This funding was previously appropriated under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000. As I said earlier, the bill provides some $28 billion for non-government schools for the years 2009 to 2012. That is a very significant amount of money, nearly three per cent of Australia’s annual GDP, so we must focus on the methodology used to distribute it to the independent school sector. I am very interested in this bill because it marks a major departure in Commonwealth funding arrangements for schools. In fact, the bill represents a very significant change in how the Commonwealth will support and sustain independent schools into the future. Parents must understand the full ramifications of this bill, particularly section 24, which I will come to shortly.

Let me briefly explain the SES funding formula for parents in the Ryan electorate who send their children to independent schools. The SES approach measures the socioeconomic status of the parents whose children are enrolled in a school. Rather than asking parents intrusive and direct questions about their income and seeking very personal information, the SES model links student addresses with current ABS census data. An SES index is then applied to obtain an SES score for each school. Schools which draw students from areas of predominantly high SES status will receive lower levels of Commonwealth funding than schools which draw from areas of average or low SES status. A socioeconomic index can be made up of a number of variables representing various aspects of a person’s social position. The SES index used for non-government school funding includes only three dimensions: income, education and occupation. That is an important factor for people to understand.

This bill fulfils the government’s commitment to retain the current system of general recurrent funding for non-government schools under the SES system, but only for the next four years. Let me put that on the record, because I have a sneaking suspicion that in the years ahead the government will seek to amend this very drastically. The commitment is only for the next four years, and, in my opinion, the Rudd government’s promised review of the SES funding system in four years raises some very serious questions about the future of Commonwealth funding for non-government schools. That will be of grave concern to parents in Ryan who send their children to non-government schools—and who, I should add, make a significant contribution to education in this country, because what they are doing is freeing up places for thousands and thousands of other students to enter the public system. I mentioned earlier that some 21,000 students in the Ryan electorate go to independent schools. Let’s just think for a moment: 21,000 students in Ryan go to independent schools, so imagine for a moment those 21,000 students requiring places in the government sector. What a chaotic situation we would be in if, all of the sudden, those 21,000 students had to be found places in the state education system. So I take my hat off and pay tribute to those parents who do this country a great favour by sending their kids to non-government schools.

Let me also say for the record that, like my parents, so many of these parents are not born with silver spoons in their mouths. So many of these parents do not inherit massive wealth. So many of these parents are not the rich and mighty of this country. Many of these parents—in fact, I would suspect the overwhelming majority—who send their children to primary schools and high schools of an independent status are very hardworking people and they sacrifice so much to be able to give their children the opportunity of going to a non-government school. Maybe they own and operate a small business, like my parents, who did without holidays, fancy items and assets and put all their savings into their bank account to send me to an independent school. I want to pay tribute to the Australians the length and breadth of this great country who do that.

As I said, the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 is of deep concern to me because it introduces a number of very significant provisions. In fact, unprecedented requirements are placed on schools, and that is of grave concern. While a number of the conditions in the current act have been met, superseded or abandoned by the bill, it retains the broad thrust of the educational outcomes accountability framework of the current act.

I want to touch on the six conditions covering school performance where Commonwealth funding is linked. No. 1 is participation in national student assessments. No. 2 is participation in national reports on the outcomes of schooling. No. 3 is the provision of individual school performance reports to the minister. No. 4 is the provision of plain language student reports to parents to include an assessment of the student’s achievement against any available national standards and relative to the student’s peer group at the school. No. 5 is the provision of publicly available information about the school’s performance. And No. 6 is the implementation of a national curriculum. That is also of immense significance, but the financial accountability conditions for Commonwealth funding are really the provisions of deep concern to me.

This bill includes a new provision which empowers the minister to refuse or delay payments if a school’s audit raises questions about a school’s viability. Although non-government schools have always been required to complete a financial questionnaire, the bill contains a new requirement for schools to report funding sources. This is intended to provide the government with more flexibility as to what financial information it can collect from school authorities. The final decision about what schools will be required to report will be made after consultation with the non-government sector.

Previously, the financial information that was collected was treated as commercial-in-confidence and therefore individual schools’ financial information or profiles were not released. Now, under this piece of legislation, they are to be released; they can become public information. This is a disturbing change. This proposed section 24 in the legislation is of significant concern to schools. ‘Funding sources’, for example, is a new concept in this context and gives the minister substantial new powers to demand information about the internal financial affairs of a school community. The proposed section allows the minister to require schools to make public much greater detail or additional information about their sources of funding. Such information can include details of scholarship funds, bequests, other sources of funding such as profit-generating activities, and even community fundraising undertaken by parents and friends associations.

Let us take the example of bequests. Let us say, for example, that a bequest is made to a college and the request is that the information is confidential. Under this legislation, that request would have to be overridden. I think that is just an enormous intrusion into the funding models of certain schools. Maybe there are arrangements with businesses; maybe there are arrangements with parents. Maybe, as I said, in the case of someone who makes a bequest or, say, someone who donates funds for a scholarship would prefer to remain anonymous and be discreet about that. The school will now be compelled under this legislation to reveal benefactors and donors. I think, as I say, that must be of enormous concern to schools and colleges around the country.

Given previous statements by the Deputy Prime Minister and many of her colleagues, one can only draw the conclusion that this provision exists in order to lay the ground work to build up a case to deeply and radically alter the SES funding system in the future. I think that abolishing this funding formula will have a significant impact on future funding for the independent school sector.

Proposed section 24, which I have touched on, will require schools to publicly declare every source of funding. The former Howard government’s SES system was specifically designed to stop this kind of class warfare, which  is creeping back into public policy. It is a great shame, it is unnecessary, it does not do anything at all to value-add and enhance the status and quality of the independent school system and it is superfluous. Time and time again, we are really seeing the true colours of the Rudd government come to the fore. We are very unnecessarily seeing the politics of envy. We have seen that already via the budget, with means testing for solar panel rebates, the luxury car tax and the Medicare levy surcharge, which I spoke on earlier this week. This is a completely uncalled for intrusion into an area of public policy that is going well, that is performing, that is satisfying both the education provider and the students and delivering quality education, which must, at the end of the day, be our primary concern. This is a return to the politics of envy. A Latham hit list type of model is very regrettable indeed.

The Deputy Prime Minister and many of her colleagues have not hidden their preference for this kind of public policy. This is very much a philosophical debate about independent schools, and I think it is unnecessary that we are going down this path. It is ideological assault by stealth and very subtle language. I think it is important to let the parents who send their children to independent schools in the Ryan electorate know what the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education has actually said. I quote here from a speech that she delivered:

The last objection to the SES model is more philosophical, that the model makes no allowance for the amassed resources of any particular school. As we are all aware, over the years many prestige schools have amassed wealth—wealth in terms of buildings and facilities, wealth in terms of the equipment available, wealth in terms of alumni funding raising, trust funds, endowment funds and the like … it must follow as a matter of logic that the economic capacity of a school is affected by both its income generation potential—from the current class of parents whose kids are enrolled in the school—and the assets of the school. The SES funding system makes some attempt to measure the income generation potential of the parents of the kids in the school but absolutely no attempt to measure the latter, the assets of the school. This is a gaping flaw…

Again, the use of the words ‘class of parents’ I think is very regrettable. The Parliamentary Secretary for Defence Support in the Rudd government, the member for Eden-Monaro, said that the postcode system for funding schools is ‘totally crazy’. He said it was:

…a ridiculous approach to looking at the needs of schools, and we’ll move away from that and get down eventually to a proper needs-based approach.

If people recall, he was slapped down very quickly in the campaign by the then opposition leader because the member for Eden-Monaro was giving away the philosophical direction of this Labor government. I recall well the phone calls during the campaign when he made those comments that were aired, unfortunately very briefly, by the media. It very much exposed him. That is an indication of where this government is going, and I know it will be a big concern to the parents in the Ryan electorate who send their children to the likes of Brigidine College and Brisbane Boys College.

This morning, I had the opportunity of speaking to some significant education administrators at one of the independent schools in my electorate, and they certainly expressed great reservations but urged me not to mention who they were. They said, ‘We are happy to have a conversation with you, Michael, but please, when you’re giving your speech in the parliament today, do not disclose our names, don’t say which school we come from, because we are very anxious that this could have ramifications for our school and for our college community.’ In the 21st century—in 2008, 2009 and in the years ahead—I suspect we are going to see more of this regrettable policy development. I say to the government and I say to my colleagues: please let us not have any more class warfare when it comes to education; let us put the interests of our kids first. On this side of the parliament, let us be firm, resolute and vigilant against this kind of class warfare. That is a thing of the past. (Time expired)

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