Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the bills before the parliament—the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I follow parliamentary colleagues with interest, and I particularly empathise with some of the newer members of parliament. The member for Corangamite, who I wish well with his parliamentary career, is beset by one of the great challenges of being a new member of parliament—and that is being fitted up with speech material that the executive has provided. It fails the test of being the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It usually contains some very good debating points and is usually very good for rallying the troops at a Labor branch meeting, but it seems to gloss over many of the realities that are actually part of the debate. But that is something that the longer one has the honour and responsibility of representing a community in this place the more one becomes more alert to it and the more one does some of one’s own research just to try and make sure that that the argument being put forward is rounded and reasonable.

This is something I draw into the debate today. These are an interesting combination of bills. This is actually the ‘Mark Latham insight package’. I remember when the current Prime Minister was amongst many in a cheer squad suggesting that Mark Latham would be a great Prime Minister for Australia. They were grim days for some in the Labor Party, and I acknowledge the counselling that followed for many after those difficult years. But at that time the then Labor opposition leader, supported by the current Labor leader, who is our Prime Minister, was running around the country with a hit list of schools. In some kind of throwback to divisive warfare between people claimed to be of privilege and people claimed not to be, we had a list of schools that were under attack and going to have their funding significantly reduced. Much has been said about these bills, but there is one undeniable truism—that is, they were inspired by insights gained when Mark Latham was the leader of the Labor Party. It was not a wise thing—in fact, in political terms, it was very courageous—to be open and frank with the Australian public about carving out significant funds of money from school communities.

These are school communities characterised as non-government school communities. These are school communities that, in addition to accepting the responsibility and challenge of creating an education institution that meets their ambitions and that focuses on the kind of curriculum outcome and the learning environment, develop a supportive, nurturing school community of the kind that people are prepared to commit not only themselves to but also commit their resources to. They make a private decision to direct some of their personal income, over and above the taxes they pay, into providing a different kind of school opportunity for their children.

The debate, which I had hoped was long past, said that having made that decision, having chosen to use some of their own family’s personal income to direct those resources to the education of their children, should not immediately make parents incapable of receiving assistance that would be available to other parents for the education of their children. What was needed was a system to put in place how to calibrate that level of support. What emerged was the SES system, a model that took account of the wealth and income—primarily the income—of census collector districts in neighbourhoods where the students who attended those schools came from and then used that as a relevant proxy to calculate what was an adequate level of funding for those non-government schools. Something that is often overlooked is that people often forget that under any circumstances under the application of that model would you find the poorest Australian families who go without much to support a decision to send their child to a non-government school—even for the poorest of Australian families, they were not going to receive more than 70 per cent of the funding that went towards the education of a student from one of the wealthier Australian families who happened to be attending a government school. This is an interesting thing to appreciate, that no matter how impoverished family may be, the level of assistance the Australian taxpaying community and governments provided would never exceed more than 70 per cent—and that is compared to funding available in government schools. This was the context. So the SES model that was put forward had that sensitivity to the income levels of the neighbourhoods from which students were derived so that those from wealthier neighbourhoods might receive as little as 30 per cent of the funding available for the education of their child from government sources compared to if that child was attending a government school. That also said to students coming from poorer communities that the school community which they attended would benefit from getting a higher level of funding than if the students had come from wealthier neighbourhoods. It also said to schools, perhaps in wealthier communities or perhaps blessed with students from wealthier families, that it was in those school communities’ interests to embrace scholarships and opportunities from those from a less fortunate background, as that would not only enrich and broaden the population within the school community, but there would be some financial encouragement for it as well. This was the notion.

Mark Latham thought he would take an axe to that scheme; he would pick out a handful of school communities. No-one really quite understood how he arrived at the ones he did. I know that in my electorate of Dunkley, school communities that had been working very hard for decades to establish themselves were in the gun. School communities like the Peninsula School—a school that the late Sir Philip Lynch was heavily involved with, a school that has prided itself on being inculcated with its local community—which was one of those in the gun, could not quite work out why. Having worked so hard to establish itself and to get itself onto a viable financial footing, under a Mark Latham Labor government it was going to be rewarded for that enterprise and effort, for that thoughtfulness and efficiency in which it had developed that very impressive school community, by being cut off at the knees. You can imagine the non-government school community was outraged.

Political parties are learning animals. To the Labor Party’s credit, it realised, if it was going to run the ‘me too’ microscopic differences between Labor and the Liberals leading up to the last election, to position Kevin Rudd, our current Prime Minister, as ‘John Howard lite’, that it needed to make as few of these highly contentious and divisive debates as it could. So it went to the electorate saying: ‘Look, we’re going to pretty much keep the funding system that’s there. We’ll go around the countryside bagging the daylights out of it. We’ve got speaker after speaker being highly critical—and then some!—of it at the time of its introduction, but we’ll just leave it and we’ll say to those parents and those non-government school communities, “Rest safely; there is no fear in having the Labor Party elected, because we will maintain the SES funding model.”’ That was the pitch that was put to the Australian public. And this is what is embedded in this bill. The bill seeks to carry forward that election commitment and to provide the framework for which $28 billion will be apportioned between non-government primary and secondary schools in Australia from 2009 to 2012.

But what is also embedded within this bill is that it seeks to give effect to an assurance that nothing will change, if you are a non-government school community participant—parent, student, teacher—with Prime Minister Rudd at the helm. That was the reassurance. Yet, in this bill, all of the foundations for bringing about an enormous change are embedded in this bill. This is the Trojan Horse that non-government school communities have woken up to. The only endearing feature that many in the non-government school community can point to is that those little ticking time bombs have not been activated yet, that there was an election assurance that not much would change, but while the funding triennium works its way through it seems as though everything may change and the non-government school community has many things to be concerned about. So not much will change, but Labor are setting it all up so that they can turn this funding system on its head, and that is what is causing great concern to the opposition and to the non-government school community.

The non-government school community is very diverse, and few that have not been part of it would understand how diverse it is. You often in the debate hear references to Kings and all these high-profile, quite remarkable school communities where those critical of non-government school systems try to point to those exceptions and say they are the rule. They are exceptional and they are exceptions. For the vast majority of school communities in the non-government school sector life is very different. It is not a debate about what next to invest in of an outstanding quality in terms of improvement in facilities and the like; it is about how you sustain the quality of the education that you are offering. You see many selfless, tireless parents in the non-government school community commit weeks and weeks, weekend after weekend, to fund-raising effort after fund-raising effort to make sure that the school community they are so committed to can continue to prosper and hopefully grow and flourish in the years ahead. So when we talk about the non-government school it is important to understand there are different kinds of non-government schools. The SES model introduced by the Howard government sought to identify that.

This bill seeks to carry it forward in some kind of Trojan Horse and embedded within that Trojan Horse are a number of specific areas of concern. The first of these, which a number of colleagues have highlighted it, is that there are changes to the grounds upon which the minister can refuse or delay payment. It talks about qualified audit reports as an example, without going into the fact that you can have a whole range of reasons for qualifications on the audit report that may have absolutely nothing to do with the long-term viability or the capacity of the school community to carry forward its school curriculum. That is issue No. 1.

Issue No. 2 is a new requirement that states comply with the yet to be seen, yet to be finalised, capital ‘N’ national, capital ‘C’ curriculum. This is quite interesting, because there is quite a lot of debate going on at this moment about the formulation of the national curriculum and a number of my colleagues have pointed to some of the interesting suspects that are involved in that exercise. I will not offer a commentary on the input other than to say that never has there been a more important body of work that should involve the broader school community than the national curriculum.

I contacted principals of non-government schools in my electorate. One of the things they said was that it is hard to know quite what that particular funding requirement will mean—the degree of specificity that may be in that national curriculum, the scope for an independent school to remain and retain the word ‘independent’. Are they going to have the opportunity, as happens in many jurisdictions, to work within an approved educational framework that also provides them with the scope to apply the pedagogy, to apply the practice, the learning styles and techniques, the professional insights, the innovations that are at the heart of independent schools? Are they in fact going to be able to retain the ‘independent’ bit of the independent school tag? This is not known. We do not know at this stage whether compliance or strict adherence to the national curriculum will allow scope and flexibility in the years to come to those that choose an alternative curriculum that is highly credible and deemed to satisfy other framework arrangements. This is something of great concern. This is about making sure that ‘independent’ stays in the independent school community so that they can proceed with that innovation, so that they can address particular learning challenges and student needs in the way that they see fit, so that they can innovate and so that they can provide the kind of responsiveness and insight and particular attentativeness to their student population that has attracted so many in the Australian public to have their students attend non-government schools. That is a particular concern.

Another one is the additional reporting requirements for schools, particularly in relation to funding sources. The new section 24(1) in this bill provides a new basis for which schools will need to provide information to the minister without actually disclosing how that information will be used. This is another one of these troubling Trojan Horse elements. It seems to actually invite participating non-government schools to provide the very material that they will then be fitted up with in whatever the post-SES framework will look like. It is unclear what the motive is in the legislation and explanatory memorandum. But if you look at some of the speeches that have been made about the SES model, and even if you listen to some of the members that are making their contributions here, you start to get a sense that there will be a new basis on which funding will be allocated, yet to be described, yet to be defined, but some new definition of ‘need’.

Need is a good starting position, and that is what the SES model sought to address, but the complexity and composition of non-government schools and the nature of their activity make some of the glib, simplified rhetoric-inspired notions that seem to be put forward to substitute for the SES very worrying indeed. What are the grounds that will be now explored through additional reporting requirements—reporting requirements that do not have any utility in relation to the funding model and structure as it stands, but information that will be harvested nonetheless for an application that many in the non-government school community are quite worried about? What will be made of school communities that offer extracurricular activity—some of the commitments to sports and the arts that are part of the comprehensive curricular and learning offering that non-government schools provide?

Will we get back to the old ERI—the educational resource index—days of the former Labor government, where someone tried to run around and find any avenue or source of resources that might come into the school? You started to seeing non-government schools overseeing conglomerates of different business enterprises as they tried to present the material in a credible way, given that that was what was encouraged of them through the ERI? What do you do about those sporting commitments? What do you do about programs of excellence—about music, about extracurricular activities, about participation in cadets? These are things that some would say are bolted on, but in many non-government schools they are inculcated in the full engagement and involvement that parents and students are expected to make. Or is this the Trojan Horse of the Victorian model where a base rate is applied and then there is some justification for wiggling that one way or another or adding on other things? This is not clear. This is why the non-government school community are nervous and this is why they have written to the minister. The AISV has written to the minister seeking to have a dialogue about these things, because so much about this bill is not explained. We have the comfort that we will keep things going as they are but also a Trojan Horse where so many other motives, and not all of them terribly positive motives, seem to be given life in these provisions that we are debating today.

Then there is also the removal of the new non-government schools establishment grants. I had a quick ring around the school communities in my area—particularly those that are in a formative stage and are just starting to take enrolments—and I am hopeful that they will not be disadvantaged. This is a throwback to the old new schools policy of the former Labor government, under which there were no new schools. It was a euphemism. They had a new schools policy which did all it can to discourage the establishment of new schools.

Let us look at some practical examples. I have touched on the concerns about how adherence to the national curriculum may or may not work and how there is a desperate need for the non-government and broader teaching community to be more involved in that exercise. Many of them referred me to example of where they felt like they were just bystanders hearing about and learning of things through the media. They were not clear about how that was going to evolve. They were not opposed to the general idea, but they were wondering how they could be a part of it so that their interests and their school community’s objectives could be addressed and incorporated.

There were other issues. I will give you one example. There is a remarkable school community in the electorate of Dunkley. This is St Anthony’s Coptic Orthodox College in Frankston North, a school community that purchased a disused former state government primary school and over the last 13 years has established a P to 12 curriculum in stages, meeting all the academic requirements for them and achieving very impressive academic outcomes for their students. They now have over 300 students commuting from as far away as Melbourne, some 45 kilometres away, to attend this school community, where their Coptic Orthodox faith is embedded in a very credible and highly valued educational experience for the families and students that attend.

This school community spends about $600,000 a year on transport, as it brings 300 of its 320 students to that learning institution in Frankston North each day. How will that be viewed? Will that be viewed as some displacement of resources? Will this community be penalised because of the transport levy that is imposed on its students, which is not a small amount? It is important that those students have the opportunity to be educated in the way that their family and they aspire to. I admire what Father Daniel Gabriel and all of the team at St Anthony’s Coptic Orthodox College are doing. I hope that they will not be penalised for offering a door-to-door transport service for a population catchment that probably has about 1.5 million to two million people in, of whom 300 make that journey to Frankston North every day. Their fundraising efforts should not be penalised. (Time expired)

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