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

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2014 today. As with every opportunity to comment on what this government has been doing in the education space, particularly in the school space, sadly, this is yet another example of the betrayal, the deception and the short-sighted stupidity which this government puts into place when it comes to the important issue of the importance of our schools.

If the government had simply kept the promises that they made to the Australian public at the last election, we would not need to be here today, considering many of the parts of this bill. If the government had simply kept their promise to deliver the full disability loading in 2015, we would not need to consider amendments relating to funding for independent special schools. If the government had any sort of clear vision for schools policy and if they actually cared at all about what happens in Australian classrooms, I would not need to be standing up here today, defending the Gonski reforms, standing up for students with disability and arguing for transparency and accountability in our schools funding—something that you would think that all sides of politics could agree on.

In terms of the specifics of the bill before the House, this bill establishes a mechanism to allow the minister to make payments to schools for a reason prescribed by regulation. The government has announced that this will facilitate the payment of around $6.8 million in support to boarding schools in 2014-15, but at this stage it has not provided any funding beyond that period. This will assist schools with more than 50 Indigenous boarders from remote communities or where more than 50 per cent of boarders are Indigenous and come from remote communities. We, of course, support this measure. We know that this is just one of many steps that the government must take to close the gap in the school education.

It is also Labor's position that the first focus of the government should be to make sure that every school is a great school and that every child should have the resources and support to achieve their best, no matter where they live, what school they attend or what opportunities they are given. This is the central principle behind the Gonski reforms. It absolutely applies to schools in remote Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities and it is these schools that we must not overlook; we must not just focus on those Indigenous students who have the opportunity to go and stay in boarding schools at existing independent schools. Supporting boarding schools cannot be used as an argument to leave schools and communities behind. On this side of the House, we will continue to fight for those schools and to ensure that we have quality and great schools no matter where they will be.

We know that closing the gap in the educational attainment of Indigenous Australians requires a focus not just on boarding schools but on every school single bush school and every single remote classroom. I know that my colleague the member for Lingiari, who joins me in the chamber today, has been a long-term passionate advocate of this cause. It is something that Labor is absolutely committed to. But, for those students and those communities, who want to use them, boarding schools are part of the solution. For a whole lot of practical reasons, particularly in high school, boarding does have an important role to play in helping Indigenous students access subject choices and the opportunities that can only be provided in a larger school. Support for Indigenous students to attend boarding schools is consistent with Labor's policies in government. Therefore, in the parliament today we support this measure.

This bill also changes the funding transition rules for independent special schools so that their funding is not worse off from next year. It is a change that this parliament would not need to consider and that would not need to be brought before us if the government had kept the very clear promise that they made to implement the full Gonski disability loading for 2015 and to allocate additional resources from that time. We know that, as part of the important school reforms that the Gonski review came up with, there were six additional funding loadings: one for small schools, one for remote schools, one for Indigenous students, one for students with low English, one for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and, importantly, one for students with disability. These loadings were fully defined when the Australian Education Act was introduced, with the exception of the loading for students with disability. We knew that the full implementation of the loading for students with disability was scheduled for 2015. This was to allow time for data collection and further collaboration with the states and school systems to ensure that the final disability loading would give students the resources they needed.

We know that this was a big job. Definitions of the disabilities that attract extra support vary significantly across the different states and territories, and so does the average level of support which is delivered in those jurisdictions. There are ranges from $4,000 to $40,000 per student. Labor funded the $100-million-per-year More Support for Students with Disabilities program to make sure that those students who need the most assistance got the assistance that they needed while work continued to finalise the full Gonski disability loading in 2015.

Before the election, this process, just like the Gonski school funding reforms, had bipartisan support. Those opposite stood before the Australian public and offered support. The education minister promised:

If elected to Government the Coalition will continue the data collection work that has commenced, which will be used to deliver more funding for people with disability through the 'disability loading' in 2015.

That promise was clear and that promise was straightforward. However, students with disability, along with their parents and their carers and their teachers and their principals and their fellow classmates, have been utterly betrayed by this government. In one of the most shameful moves that they have made amongst a crowded field in the education space, they walked away from the students who need that support the most—students with disabilities. That is something for which they should be condemned.

We know that, in this year's budget, the government cut the $100-million More Support for Students with Disabilities program and failed to replace it with the promised additional funds. At the same time, stakeholders are reporting that the government has dropped the ball on the finalisation of the Gonski disability loading. There has been almost no consultation and, when consultation has occurred, it has been rushed and it has been secretive. This means that neither the promised additional funding nor the promised full Gonski loading for students with disability will be implemented next year, and students with disability will have $100 million in support cut next year. This government has been absolutely shameless in pretending that black is white and in rewriting history, in sliding away from its very clear commitments on schools.

However, the most heartless of all broken promises in education is undoubtedly the broken promise to fund the full Gonski disability loading from 2015. The government made many promises to get elected, and then they cut support for students with disability in the budget—and we on this side will not let them forget, or the Australian public forget, and we will keep fighting for these students who need us. Labor will not stand in the way of measures within this bill ensuring that funding flows to independent special schools next year, but we will absolutely be taking the government to task on their broken promises for students with disability.

This bill also seeks to delay, by at least a year, the implementation of school improvement plans. This was a very important component of the school funding reforms—that there would be additional dollars, but there would be school improvement plans to outline exactly how those dollars were being used to improve the education that was offered to students in those schools. While the government will say that this is about tackling bureaucracy, this is really about watering down accountability and getting rid of transparency. It is another step in this government's so-called no-strings-attached approach to school funding, because we know that school improvement plans, at their very heart, are about making sure that the money invested in schools by the federal government actually reaches classrooms—that it actually improves students' results. This is a vital part of the school reforms and our school system. These plans are not about ticking boxes. There are no forms. The evidence that sits behind them has been independently developed and endorsed by all states and territories, Liberal and Labor. It is galling hypocrisy that, on the one hand, the education minister will prance in here and say that money does not matter—that it is not money that makes the difference—but, on the other hand, he does not care if schools actually deliver the reforms which have been proven to boost results.

We could take for example the current situation in Victoria. Despite claiming to be delivering the Gonski reforms, the Victorian Premier has shrouded school funding in secrecy. Victorians do not know if funding is reaching classrooms, and principals have simply no idea if they are getting the needs based funding their school was promised. Instead of following through on Gonski reforms and putting an end to this confusion, the government has decided that they want to keep parents, teachers and principals in the dark, and this Prime Minister is doing absolutely all he can to help out his mate the Victorian Premier to fudge the books and avoid having to prove that every dollar is reaching those schools and those students who need it the most.

It is not just me who is worried about accountability. It is not just me who will argue that this so-called no-strings-attached formula means that we do not know if the dollars are reaching the schools and the students who need them the most. I look towards this media release—not from a particular close friend of mine, but from the Hon. Campbell Newman, as well as his education minister, who has stated, as recently as last week:

Queensland is the only state or territory in Australia that is giving every single cent of this funding directly to schools.

The Queensland Liberal government are saying that funding is not reaching the schools for which it is intended, and this government, through this piece of legislation, is trying to cover that fact up so that there is no transparency and no accountability.

I would not rule out the possibility of making some changes that might make the process easier for schools. That could be a good thing. But that should not come at the expense of the accountability of billions of dollars of federal investment, or at the expense of the central principle of the Gonski reforms—that funding should be based on need and should drive real improvement in the classroom.

That brings me to our fundamental concerns about the government's weathervane approach to schools policy. This is a government that simply does not know where it stands on schools policy. Worse than that, this is a government which apparently does not care at all about schools policy. We know that, since the Gonski report was handed down, they have been prepared to shamelessly adopt any position, to adopt several positions, to make any statement, or to say anything that they think will sound good in that particular 24-hour news service. They do not have values, they do not look at evidence and they have absolutely no vision for Australian schools—which is why we have seen the education minister simply making it up as he goes along.

The coalition's schools policy has been an utter comedy of errors since the Gonski report was released, and it would probably be a little bit funny if it were not for the fact that the consequences are just so serious. If I were to simply describe the contradictions and the backflips, I do not think anyone would believe me. I do not think anyone would believe that one minister could have as many different positions as our very own education minister has put forward, but there have been no fewer than nine positions adopted by the government since the Gonski report was handed down. So I will tell the story in their own words—in the words of the Prime Minister and in the words of the education minister. This parliament can see for themselves that we have a government which is clueless when it comes to schools policy but, worse than that, we have a government which is actively destroying school reforms which have been fought for and hard won.

In government Labor commissioned a review into school funding led by David Gonski. It was the biggest review this country has had into school funding in over 40 years. We know that the review panel received more than 7,000 submissions, they visited 39 schools and they consulted 71 key education groups across Australia. This review identified the problems we face in our schools—growing inequality, falling results, increasing numbers of low-performing students and the decreasing numbers of high-performing students. It set all of this against the backdrop of better school results in many of our neighbouring countries.

This report was painstakingly researched. It was backed by evidence and the Gonski panel handed down a report which was fiercely independent and was in absolutely no way partisan. It was a moment of truth. It was an opportunity for genuine reform in our schools. It outlines the challenges that schools across Australia face but, importantly, it also identified many of the solutions. Those solutions must not be turfed aside simply because this government did not commission the report themselves. Let us have a look at what the member for Sturt, the now Minister for Education and then shadow minister for education said at the time. Just one hour and 45 minutes after it was released he dismissed it out of hand. He immediately denied the reports findings that the Howard government's SES school funding system was broken and, in fact, on 20 February 2012, he launched a passionate defence, stating:

I believe the current SES funding model is the fairest model available.

It was absolutely clear at this point that the member for Sturt had not even taken a cursory look at the report of the biggest review of our school system in 40 years.

Later, in September 2012, it appeared the coalition had finally admitted the old school funding model was broken, that money was not driving improvement and that Liberal state cuts were leading to dangerous downward spirals in future federal funding because of the automatic link between state cuts and less federal money in the future. The member for Sturt then announced a new policy on schools, when he declared in the parliament, in September 2012:

In fact the Coalition is the only political party with a policy to increase funding to all schools by six per cent.

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