Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move opposition amendments (1) to (3):

(1)    Clause 15, page 20 (lines 4-8), omit paragraph (c), substitute:

             (c)    if a law of the Commonwealth or a State requires the body or authority to be audited - the relevant audit expresses concern about the financial viability of the body or authority.

(2)    Clause 22, page 25 (lines 3-11), omit the clause.

(3)    Clause 24, page 26 (lines 5-16), omit subclause (1), substitute:

        (1)    A funding agreement must require the relevant authority for the non-government school, or other non-government body, to ensure that a report (or reports), of a kind (or kinds) required by the Minister, is given to the Minister in relation to programs of financial assistance provided under this Act, so far as they relate to the relevant authority.

It is not the intention of the opposition to unnecessarily delay the passage of this bill through the Senate. Nor is it our intention to stop the bill from having its effect from 1 January, but it certainly is our intention to hold fast to these three amendments, which will improve an otherwise flawed bill. We would hope that the government would seriously consider adopting the three amendments that the opposition has moved. They deal with proposed sections 15, 22 and 24 of the bill.

I will start with section 24, which relates to funding disclosure. The bill marks a very considered change from the policy of the previous government with respect to funding disclosure. The Minister for Education pointed out quite correctly in the debate that the financial statements required by non-government schools at the moment do require a certain level of funding disclosure. They are made available to the minister, and therefore the department, as part of the records of the school and they do go some way towards providing quite detailed financial information. This bill, however, which requires the disclosure of all funding sources from the school or any body associated with the school, would allow for the publication of that information. This is a critical change and is the hidden agenda contained in this bill.

We all know that the minister and most members of the Labor Party privately oppose the socioeconomic status model of funding for non-government schools. They are on the record opposing it. They opposed it as recently as 2004, when they introduced their own new policy, which was the national resource index. They oppose the SES model because they do not in their heart of hearts really support government funding for non-government schools. During the previous government, the information that was available to the government about the funding sources of non-government schools was never published. Under this government, that information would be published—the minister confirmed that in the second reading debate. It neatly ties in with the review being planned for 2010 of the SES model for non-government schools.

Blind Freddy could tell you that the government, and its fellow travellers in the Australian Education Union and elsewhere amongst the left-wing ideologues who have opposed the SES model, will use this information about non-government schools to mount a case and an argument against the SES model—to throw the model out and replace it with a national resource index. Non-government schools should be very, very afraid of this information being in the hands of the Labor Party. They had no fear from us, but the hidden agenda in the Labor Party’s bill is to take the SES model apart. The member for Throsby alluded to it. Julia Irwin, the member for Fowler, alluded to it in her speech. So our most important amendment is to remove the funding disclosure requirement for publication contained in this bill.

Secondly, the bill contains a mandated national curriculum. The opposition support a national curriculum but we do not support what this bill requires, which is an inflexible, mandated national curriculum which puts at risk the Steiner, Montessori, International Baccalaureate, special needs schools which care for those people who have special needs and other schools that have a unique curriculum. How does the curriculum of those unique schools fit into the mandated, inflexible national curriculum that is tied to funding contained in this bill? That has not been cleared up by the government in this debate and it should strike fear into the hearts of the principals and governing bodies of those kinds of unique schools.

Finally, this bill allows the minister to delay or stop funding to a school that has received a qualified audit on grounds other than financial viability. That is a change in this bill that has never been seen before under the previous government. If an auditor qualifies an audit for governance reasons that have nothing to do with financial viability, it puts the power in the hands of the minister to delay or reject funding for that school. That is a new and far-reaching power which the opposition says should be removed from this bill. For that reason, I call on the government to support the amendments that the opposition has moved.

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