Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I will be asking the minister questions. We know that the budget outlines $80 billion in cuts to schools and hospitals. Its estimates also reveal that $30 billion of these cuts will come from schools. We saw that in this exchange between Senator Wong and Mr Ray, deputy secretary of Treasury, in an estimates hearing:

Senator WONG: Can you confirm that, with that figure, broadly you are looking at around 30 for schools and 50 for hospitals?

Mr Ray: It is a little bit under 30 for schools and a bit over 50 for hospitals.

So it is $80 billion in cuts to schools and hospitals, confirmed by this government's own Treasury department.

Now, with school cuts, this means that the game is up for this government. The public service has confirmed the biggest-ever cuts to schools that we have seen in this nation, and we know that there will be devastating consequences: less disability support, subject choices drastically limited, school support officers and teachers' assistants cuts, sport and music programs cut, remedial support cut and class sizes increased. But the government has made these cuts without any understanding of the impacts. We know that Senate estimates revealed that despite starting work on its $80 billion cuts to schools and hospitals before Easter, the government still has no idea of the impact on the classroom and had not done the work to look at the potential impact.

The education department could not say how many schools would close, how many teachers would be sacked or give any indication of the impact on students. It is absolutely frightening that the government would make the largest-ever cuts to our schools with no idea of the consequences.

Before the election, Tony Abbott promised that there would not be cuts to education but now it is clear that he simply does not care what damage these cuts will do. The government have walked away from the commitments that they have made time and time again, including the so-called 'unity ticket' before the election—and didn't they pull one over the Australian public with that!

What we do know is that the Liberal state governments have said that they do care about these huge cuts from the Abbott government. We have seen New South Wales, Victoria, ACT and SA all commit to meeting their responsibilities under the six-year Gonski agreements—something that this government has failed to do. We have seen New South Wales Liberal Premier Mike Baird say that education cuts were 'a kick in the guts'. He said:

… what services would they like us to cut …. you cannot outsource your problems to the states …

Similarly, we have seen the New South Wales education minister, Adrian Piccoli, speak out against these cuts to education. We have seen the Victorian Treasurer, Michael O'Brien, say:

When we handed down the Victorian budget last Tuesday we put extra money into Victorian hospitals and extra money into Victorian schools. We didn't put that extra money in so that the federal government can take money out.

And we have seen the Queensland Treasurer, Tim Nicholls, say that the federal budget was an attack on Queensland's health and education services.

We have also seen the New South Wales National's conference just last weekend call for the government to fund the full six years of the Gonski review. And we have seen these attacks to the indexation of schools, which the now minister himself said, in opposition, were a 'frightening prospect'—to have indexation of three per cent. He is now happy to see indexation of just 2.5 per cent moving forward.

So my questions in relation to these huge funding cuts are: how many Liberal and National backbenchers have raised concerns about the breaking of the Gonski agreements and the $30 billion cuts to schools? How can the government justify making $30 billion in cuts to schools without any assessment of the impact they will have? Can the minister guarantee that no school will close as a result of these cuts? Or can the minister outline exactly how much worse off each school will be because of these cuts? On what evidence about the cost of delivering high-quality school education did the minister base the government's school-funding model from 2018, which will index funding at just 2.5 per cent? And can the minister justify a school-funding model that cuts funds to schools in real terms and which schools have warned will lead to reduced programs and quality, and higher fees?

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