Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have often talked about it. And you are welcome to come out there any time to see some of the wonderful schools, including independent non-government schools out there, and the magnificent job that they are doing, particularly under the funding models of the previous coalition government. But I do not want to reflect on you, Mr Deputy Speaker. We often have quite amicable discussions about your days out in the back of Maranoa and I know they are very happy memories for you.

I rise today to express some concerns I have with the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. While I certainly welcome the continued commitment to provide funding for non-government schools, this bill has introduced a number of changes which in the future may not be beneficial to the non-government education sector. I recognise that the Deputy Prime Minister and the Labor government are fulfilling their election commitment to continue funding for non-government schools. But it appears that commitment had a caveat to it which was not mentioned during the election campaign.

I also acknowledge that this bill will provide additional funding for non-government schools that have a significant number of Indigenous students. I particularly welcome the fact that maximum recurrent funding will automatically apply to non-government schools in remote and very remote areas that have Indigenous enrolments of 50 per cent or more. I guess I would ask why 50 per cent is a magical figure. I can think of a very small non-government school—a Catholic school—in a town which I am sure you, Mr Deputy Speaker, will be aware of: Quilpie. St Finbarr’s is out there in that very remote part of Queensland doing a magnificent job and providing a choice in education for the people of the Quilpie region. I also have a number of Indigenous communities in my electorate. I guess, providing that more than 50 per cent of students at those schools are Indigenous, they may benefit from the automatic application of funding.

However, I have a major concern with this bill, and that is the removal of the new non-government schools establishment grants. The former coalition government was a strong advocate for supporting the viability of the non-government sector and encouraging the establishment of new schools where the need was identified within the community. And just as a matter of interest, the 153 schools in my electorate are not all non-government; the majority would be public. A significant number—I think it is something like a third—of the schools in Maranoa are non-government schools, including some boarding schools.

The new non-government schools establishment grant initiative was an effective way under a coalition government to increase the educational opportunities for communities and towns. However, with a stroke of the pen, it seems that the Labor government has decided to axe this successful program, only making provision for those schools that have approval in this calendar year—2008—to receive grants for next year. It seems Labor wants to discourage the expansion of the non-government sector and deny those communities who are looking to widen the educational opportunities and, importantly, choice for their children’s education. In fact, the Labor government seems to discourage aspiration in all of its policies and all of the direction that it wants to take this economy.

This legislation will require schools to provide a great deal of information about their sources of funding. This might include details of a scholarship fund, bequests, donations and fundraising by the local P&C. One cannot help but be suspicious that, by forcing schools to provide the details of where these additional funds come from, these additional funding sources, this Labor government may use this information to penalise them by reducing the financial support coming from the Commonwealth just because they may have received donations from past students or have a very active and devoted P&C, who at the end of the day are, obviously, raising extra funds for the benefit of their children’s education. In fact, they might find that working hard through the P&C is actually a hindrance to receiving additional funds from the Commonwealth. They are discouraging aspiration. They will be discouraging that if this bill passes the upper house—obviously, we do not have the numbers in the lower house. I have real concerns about the direction that this government is taking non-government schools funding support.

It would be a tragedy if this were the case, particularly for the schools and the parents in my electorate of Maranoa. As I said earlier, there are 153 schools in Maranoa and a third of them are non-government. Many families in my electorate—as I said, the electorate covers 30 per cent of Queensland—send their children to boarding schools in the regional towns. They do this not out of choice but out of necessity. Many of these parents are facing the terrible drought and, of course, the impact of drought is not felt just by people on the land; it is felt by the businesses and the community as a whole. They save hard to send their children away to school. They send them away because it is the only option. Many of the schools, in both sectors, go to the high top of 10. Some of the schools in towns in my electorate only go to primary level. Those parents who have to send their children away to complete a secondary education—and many of them will be in remote communities—are council workers, police workers and small business people.

Just imagine how these parents must feel. They live in remote parts of Australia, they make a major contribution to our economy and they are an important part of our nation. They scrimp and save to send their children to a boarding school. Sometimes they send them away to flat with someone to gain access to and to complete a secondary education. And they, through this bill, may find themselves being punished, because the passage of this bill will mean that any additional money raised through bequests, donations or even the value of the assets of the school that may have been provided by past students or hard work of those fundraising efforts will penalise those schools.

So they will feel, ‘Why should former students, who have gone on to become successful in their endeavours and who feel proud of their education and proud of the school they attended, be discouraged from paying tribute to their education and, importantly, to their teachers? Why couldn’t they make a donation or a bequest to the school?’ Apparently, that donation is going to be considered part of the assets of the school and part of the sources of funding for non-government schools. This, surely, is the highest level of discouragement of aspiration, and it is certainly going to be a further blow to the dedicated members who work in P&Cs across the length and breadth of Australia. I have a lot of respect for the parents and friends associations and the parents and citizens associations of the schools because all of the parents who work in those schools are dedicated to supporting the schools because they have an interest in the schools and an interest in the educational outcomes of their children.

In my electorate it is not uncommon to see a street stall or a raffle being conducted on a Saturday morning. In fact, I know that when I go and buy the Saturday paper in my electorate it will cost me more than the price of the Weekend Australian and the Courier Mail; it will quite often cost me a whole book of raffle tickets. Why do the P&Cs raise money? They do it to support their schools. I support that effort; it really is to be admired. In some parts of my electorate, P&Cs conduct a rodeo. And in just the same manner as so many communities raise money for the health of their communities in the form of health services—I am sure you would be aware, Mr Acting Deputy Speaker Adams, that they raise a third of the money for the Royal Flying Doctor Service—they also acknowledge the need to support, through the P&C, the schools in their community. In some parts of my electorate communities often raise money through rodeos and in other parts of my electorate someone might want to donate one tonne of grain at harvest time. To go where? To go to the school.

Those parents will be penalised under this bill. They will find that if they give, in whatever form—through a donation, a raffle, a rodeo, a sports day or in kind—that it will be considered a part of the wealth of the school. I know that this is going to hit rural Australia hard, but I also know that this Labor government does not really care about rural Australia. We hear sweet words from the Prime Minister and the agriculture minister occasionally that they have travelled out there on the jet. They do not advise people that they are coming. They get a little group around them—they do not want a big group—and then they disappear. They are there for a couple of hours and then they are gone. But if they spent a bit of time out there they would understand that parents in those areas—just like our city cousins—are very supportive of choice of education for their children, and in supporting their children they know that any extra money that they can raise will go to improve the services and facilities of their school.

That is why it was, when we returned to this side of the House after the last election, it was devastating news to learn that the Investing in Our Schools Program was to be axed by this Labor government. The Investing in Our Schools Program provided schools across the length and breadth of Australia with funding to purchase much needed equipment and materials and to construct much needed infrastructure. One of the key aspects of that funding initiative is that it had to be signed off by the P&C. So you had the P&C involved with the teachers, who identified where they could improve the educational opportunities for the children at their school.

Schools in my electorate of Maranoa received more than $12 million from the Investing in Our Schools Program. We did not discriminate on the basis of whether they were a small country school that went to primary level with 20 or 30 student, or a bigger school—like the Warwick State High School in Warwick, which has over 1,000 students—because they were all entitled to the same amount, but it had to be on an application supported by, and signed off by, the P&C of that school.

I had much pleasure in going to so many of these schools where I saw upgrades to classrooms. I remember Freestone State School, I think east of Warwick, which put on an additional classroom, and at Ballandean, south of Stanthorpe, they upgraded a classroom for their prep year. The program refurbished exercise courts—multipurpose courts for tennis, basketball and netball—constructed shade structures, built new and safer playgrounds and installed air conditioning.

One of the first things some of the schools east of my home town of Roma did—in fact, even in my own home town of Roma—was to air-condition the school. In that case it was a state public school. But we have a Labor administration in Queensland, and they think that they can live in high rises and have their offices in Brisbane fully air-conditioned but that the kids who live east of a line from about Mitchell down to St George do not need air conditioning. It is not hot there, in their determination, so they will not air-condition those classrooms, but, through the Investing in Our Schools Program under the previous coalition government, the Roma Middle School, including the administration offices, were air-conditioned because that was the priority of the P&C of the Roma Middle School. I could repeat that story for Chinchilla High School and for the Tara State School, where that was the priority.

In the summer, even on a day like today, in October, it is nothing to see temperatures above 40 degrees, day after day, with kids in their classrooms trying to learn. The teachers and parents have told me that since they put in the air conditioning, the children are able to sit there, study and concentrate in some relative comfort. But that was under the coalition government’s Investing in Our Schools Program, which was shamefully abolished by this Labor government with no regard for the impact it would have on the people from rural and remote parts of Australia—or in fact across Australia, because they were all treated equally. Some of the money from the Investing in Our Schools Program went into specialised learning rooms, such as music rooms. Music programs are important in any school today. Some schools even bought portable classrooms. In one school, east of Warwick in my electorate, they upgraded the toilet because they could not get the money out of the state Labor government in Queensland to do so. This program was abolished by this Labor government. It is an out-of-touch and heartless act that is impacting on children. That is the important point to make.

The program was so successful and beneficial in Maranoa to so many little schools that I travel to—some, as I said earlier, which have only 20 or 30 students. It was a joy to go there to see the parents, who felt that at last they could do something to improve the school and support their fundraising efforts. They had often had a raffle or a sports day to raise money for the school. But they could never get the quantum of money that was required to make a real difference, to do things like put air conditioning in the school, which could cost upwards of $100,000, or put in a new water tank or upgrade the toilet. They never had the money to upgrade the tennis, netball or basketball courts for sporting and exercise activities for their students.

I recently visited Thargomindah State School in my electorate of Maranoa, where I was absolutely blown away by the efforts of the principal, the teachers, the P&C and the students. It was really heartening for me to see the dedication shown by the principal and the teachers in giving the best opportunity and start in life to the 30-odd children in that very small community. The children of the school took me to see not only their classrooms, which are now air conditioned, and the work they do in there but also out to the back of the school, where they have a vegetable garden, which helps them understand the importance of fresh vegetables to healthy living. They also showed me their poultry, so they are learning something about animals. It might seem a bit mundane in this part of the world, but I raise that issue because it is a great school and it was great to see the teachers, the parents and the students all showing such pride in their garden and animals and to see the lessons that are learnt from looking after poultry and from growing fresh food in the garden—food which they can take home at night. They are lessons that we can all learn from.

Time does not allow me to touch on the failure of the government in relation to the technical colleges. One very quick point I do make is that, although Labor and the now Prime Minister announced before the last election that every school would have a technical college, not one of the 153 schools in Maranoa got any funds allocated under the first round. (Time expired)

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