Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is good to see the member for Moreton got a little bit more time. I have listened to two government speakers in this debate and I would have to say that any notion of bipartisanship on this MPI is sadly lacking. For the member for Moreton's edification before he leaves the chamber, I came through the state school system. I am very proud of that fact. I agree that we need to give our schools a robust financial foundation for the future and, equally, we need to give our children a sound foundation for the future.

But the question I raise, as with anything that this government seems to do, is about the fact that they seem to have all this funding available but no way to pay for it. If we are going to spend an extra $5 billion on top of our existing funding to the education system, my first question is: how is the government going to pay for it? It has not yet explained that fundamental question of funding these promises. Or is it going to be the case that the very students that are supposedly going to be assisted through this extra funding proposed under the Gonski model when they enter the workforce are going to be the ones paying the debt and the interest that paid for their education? Is that a question that this government opposite can actually answer? No, they cannot because they have not been able to tell us yet how this is going to be funded.

We hear all this rhetoric of the education revolution, but what we really need is to support what we have and what we have built upon and use that as an existing foundation to continue to improve our education system. We need to improve the quality of our curriculum. We need to improve the training and experience of our teachers, to improve the environment in our schools. In order to get these things done, it is paramount that we continue to apply an appropriate level of funding to those schools.

It is quite evident that this government, from reports over the weekend, is more than a little reluctant to actually achieve that outcome, with some 3,200 schools potentially at risk of losing funding. Under that model there are some six schools in my local electorate which would lose some $3 million. How are we going to improve those schools in my electorate, schools such as Waterford State School? My old primary school will lose almost $1½ million. Eagleby South State School will lose some $700,000, Highland Reserve State School some $400,000, Beenleigh State School close to $250,000, Shailer Park State School over $200,000 and Assisi Catholic College some $50,000. Most of these schools are located within the lower socioeconomic areas of my electorate, and these are schools that have been working extraordinarily hard to improve the educational outcomes for their students. Many of those students have disabilities and special learning requirements.

To juxtapose the government's position with ours, the coalition has quite clearly said that it is our policy to maintain the current level of funding plus a yearly six per cent indexation, meaning over four years both government and non-government schools will receive recurrent funding increases under a coalition government. Compare this to Labor's spin of 'no school will lose a dollar in funding'. Well, we heard there would be no carbon tax as well and look what happened there. It is easy for the government to say that no school will lose a dollar of funding, but is it a dollar of funding today or is it in real terms, meaning that their payments will be indexed, or will there be no indexation and just the current funding arrangement, thereby meaning schools will actually lose funding?

Historically, Australia's education system has performed relatively well. According to the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment 2009 results, of the 65 assessed school systems, Australia was ranked ninth in reading, 10th in science and 15th in mathematics. These results were significantly above the OECD average on all three measures and ranked us clearly above nations like the US, UK, Germany and France.

It is sad to say, though, that between 2000 and 2009 Australia was one of only four countries to record a statistically significant decline in student reading performance. Yet this decline occurred despite education spending over that period increasing in real terms by some 44 per cent. In other words, we have been paying more and achieving less. For the last five years we have heard the constant refrain from the current federal government about an education revolution, but instead of a revolution we have seen a masterclass in wasteful spending and appalling mismanagement, all without any tangible impact on what actually matters: improving how and what teachers are teaching so student outcomes can be improved.

I would like to make another point in relation to improving our schools, and that is about the misconception that non-government schools should receive less funding support because they are considered privileged. There are probably a few facts that are worth noting in relation to school funding. There is a lot of discussion that private schools receive funding unfairly. Let's look at some of the facts. Government schools currently receive some 78 per cent of the total funding from all governments and educate 66 per cent of all students. Non-government schools receive 22 per cent of funding and educate 34 per cent of students. There is no support for the argument that non-government schools receive an unfair distribution of the funding. In addition to that, the parents who send their children to those non-government schools pay taxes like everybody else and a portion of their taxes is going to support not only their school but also the government school sector. So there is absolutely no merit in the argument of unfairness in funding. We have clearly stated that we will maintain funding to both the non-government school sector and the government school sector.

See this speech in context