Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am absolutely pleased to rise to speak on what I believe is an incredibly important issue. I thank the member for Hotham and I thank the member for Hasluck. This is an issue that goes to the heart of our schools and our communities. Having come from a public sector education in Victoria, I know the work that has gone on in schools to ensure that students' human rights are being met and to ensure that, from the principal down, inclusive practices are occurring on the ground in our schools. I have worked at the coal face with parents of students with disability as they enter what they often perceive to be a hostile environment. This is difficult work. It is time consuming work. It is important work. It is imperative that all of our students in all of our schools have high expectations made of them from their parents and from their schools.

I was one who was heartened before the election to hear Minister Pyne, now the minister, say on 23 August that more funding for people with disability through the disability loading would be in our schools in 2015. It is now nine months into 2015 and this promise of new funding has not been met. The reality is that, because of this government's cruel broken promise, students with disability will simply be locked into educational disadvantage and will not have the resources they need to meet their full potential. Despite how hard schools work, the resources need to be put in place.

The review should have been completed. That is why there is a Senate inquiry. Labor initiated it because we believe every student, including students with a disability, deserves a great education. We believe they all need to have expectations set, that they can learn and that support is put in place to ensure that they do learn. We have heard from the member for Hotham of the research by Children with Disability Australia showing that as many as one in four children with a disability have been denied enrolment. This is an appalling statistic, but it is a statistic that can be addressed with action from this government.

Keeping promises is what government is about, and we have thousands of families waiting for this promise to be kept. In Victoria the state government is conducting a government schools funding review conducted by Steve Bracks, our former Premier. He has released an interim report this weekend, and there are a couple of key things in there that I think are worthy to echo in this chamber today. Schools and the community want trust and confidence in Victoria's funding system—a fairly simple statement but one that we need to see heeded. They want a system that provides resources to schools based on the educational needs of students to obtain a high-quality education—again, something that needs to be addressed by this government. Specifically, with students with disability, the interim report reads:

Stakeholders are concerned that funding is not meeting the diverse needs of students with disability, compounded by the growth in numbers of students. Many parents have fought for extra funds for their children and will resist schools pooling funds for broader use. Concerns were also raised that children with learning difficulties are not funded in the same ways as students with disabilities.

These are the issues that Minister Pyne's promise before the election go to the core of, and yet it is September 2015 and still we hear nothing. Our parents, our teachers and our carers work incredibly hard but they need to be supported by government. They need this government, they need Minister Pyne, to focus on the things that are needed in our schools, to take responsibility—not have the federal government walk away from its responsibility in our schools. This is an issue that differs state by state, and until we get a national approach to students with disability in our schools we will continue to have what happens in Queensland to be different from what happens in Victoria, and to drive parents to despair.

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