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

I rise to speak on the Schools Assistance Amendment (Financial Assistance) Bill 2011, which seeks to amend the Schools Assistance Act 2008 in order to extend the current funding arrangements to non-government schools. This includes extending recurrent funding arrangements until 2013, using the coalition’s socioeconomic status, SES, funding model. Grants for capital expenditure are also to be extended until 2014. It has long been the coalition’s policy to maintain the existing SES funding model, and for this reason the coalition will not oppose the bill. While schools know exactly where they stand with the coalition on school funding, a very serious question mark hangs over the future of school funding under the Gillard Labor government.

Nine years ago, the Prime Minister described the SES funding model as ‘flawed and unworkable’. Today in this chamber we are considering, at the Prime Minister’s behest, whether we should extend this model. It is the sort of doubletalk we have come to expect from this Prime Minister and this government. The decision to extend the existing SES funding model was made during the election campaign as the government faced mounting pressure to outline what form the new funding model would take. No-one in the non-government school sector is in any doubt that this was done to avoid revealing Labor’s true plans for schools funding right before the election. It was a desperate attempt to avoid a showdown with the non-government school sector.

Further evidence of this can be seen with the initial refusal of the then Minister for Education, Simon Crean, to guarantee during the election that funding for non-government schools would be maintained in real terms, inclusive of indexation, beyond 2012. The coalition knew, based on published information from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, that indexation and supplementation for all non-government schools over the four-year life of a school funding agreement equates to approximately $1.3 billion. It was only at the eleventh hour in the election campaign that the Prime Minister, after intense pressure from the coalition and the non-government school sector, was forced to guarantee indexation for non-government schools until 2013 by extending the SES funding model for another year.

A $1.3 billion shortfall in funding would have resulted in higher school fees for families. Unlike Labor, the coalition acknowledges that many parents scrimp and save to send their children to a non-government school of their choice. It still leaves a potential $1 billion shortfall in non-government school funding in real terms over the life of the next agreement if indexation is not guaranteed beyond the end of 2013. Parents who have children in non-government schools deserve to be told by the Prime Minister and Labor whether they can expect a massive hike in their school fees in a few years time. The Prime Minister must also guarantee that, beyond the next election, no non-government school will be worse off in real terms. Labor have certainly promised a lot in education, but in reality they have delivered very little.

The coalition believes in excellence in both government schools and non-government schools. That is why the former coalition government introduced the socioeconomic status funding model for non-government schools, which ensures funding is distributed on a much more equitable basis than Labor’s former educational resources index. Because general recurrent funding under the SES model distributes according to need, the schools serving the neediest communities receive the greatest financial support. It means that parents at all income levels have a realistic capacity to choose the most appropriate schooling for their child. The SES funding model creates an incentive for non-government schools to attract students from low-income families.

Unlike Labor, we genuinely believe in the absolute freedom of parental choice when it comes to the education of our children. We believe that it is the right of every parent to choose the education of their children and we advocate that government should encourage and facilitate, not control or restrict, the exercise of this freedom of choice. Comments made by the members of the Labor Party remind us that it is the party of the ‘private schools hit list’ and the politics of envy. They voted against the SES funding model when it was introduced, and many of their members, including the Prime Minister, are on the record opposing equitable funding for non-government schools.

The Prime Minister once said of the SES funding model, on 20 August 2001:

This government, for its funding for private schools, has adopted a flawed index, the so-called SES model, which does not deliver on the basis of need. We know that model is flawed …

So I want to caution the parents of children at all non-government schools: Labor’s hit list of non-government schools will be more deadly than ever this year, given the review of schools funding will be led in the context of this new Labor-Greens alliance.

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