Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

By leave—the coalition members of the committee are in broad support of the aspirational goals of the Australian Education Bill but are of the opinion that it is not good process to recommend to the House that the House of Representatives pass a bill when the committee has not been able to ascertain what implications the final bill will have for Australia.

At the end of the inquiry coalition members were asked to support a recommendation that the bill be passed. It became apparent throughout the inquiry that in fact the bill was incomplete and cannot operate without quite serious amendment, particularly to the last clause, which the chair just referred to, clause 10, which of course says that the bill is non-legally binding.

It occurs to the members of the coalition that to recommend that the House pass a bill when we do not know what the effect of that bill will be—what impact it will have on education, what impact it will have on schools throughout Australia—is probably reckless. But we are not prepared to recommend that the House not pass the bill. What we suggest is that the bill be returned to the House. The government should make the appropriate amendments to allow that bill to function, and then it should be re-referred to the Standing Committee on Education and Employment to provide some guidance to the House as to whether the bill is likely to function in the way in which the government proclaims that it should function.

Quite a number of contributors raised the issue with us that there was a lack of detail. One contributor said that they had had 16 different variations of the funding model. The independent schools association of Australia said that they thought it was more like 30. At that stage, they had no idea where the negotiations were likely to settle. Given that we have been finding out more in the press about this process than we actually found out in the committee, it seems to me and to the rest of the coalition members that we should have another chance to review the bill when that negotiation is complete.

At this stage, this is an aspirational bill and, as I said earlier, the aspirations are in fine order. So I look forward to the ensuing debate that is likely to come—perhaps even in the next few hours—and I look forward to seeing what amendments the government is going to put forward to facilitate the operation of this bill throughout Australia. The schools and the schooling systems in Australia need to know how this bill and the new regime will affect their funding model just for next year, because this is due to be implemented from 1 January 2013. At this stage, unless something has happened behind closed doors in very recent times, I understand there is no certainty at all surrounding those issues. So we look forward to the debate and we look forward to the government's amendments. I hope in the end that perhaps we will be able to support them.

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