Justine Keay (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

(   I am a mum with three children, all in primary school, and this year my youngest has started kindergarten. With this budget, I am absolutely livid that this government will take away $22 billion from education, from schools, from my kids' future, from the needs that they will have as they move through their education. It is quite astonishing that the member for Dunkley says there are no cuts. Those opposite have to look at the government's own documents—their own paper admits to the cuts. They call it a savings, but we call it a cut. They are the same thing. So, please admit that that is what it is.

Under Labor the Schooling Resource Standard for all schools and all systems in Tasmania would be at 95 per cent by 2019. That standard ensures there is the funding needed to give every child a quality education but now, under this government, that standard goes down to 20 per cent for public schools. What happens to the rest? In Tasmania, the Tasmanian schools in every sector will lose $85 million over the next two years—$68 million from Tasmanian public schools. I want to read out a quote from the Australian Education Union:

Instead of the $100 million our schools would receive under our six-year signed agreement, the Federal Government is offering just $16.5 million to the 2018/19 financial year.

It is $16.5 million when they should have got $100 million. On the night of the budget the Premier of Tasmania celebrated the federal budget, celebrated these cuts to Tasmanian schools. As the Deputy Leader of the Opposition said before, he is the only Premier in the whole of this country who is agreeing to these cuts to his own schools. It will be very exciting to see what the Tasmanian state budget delivers tomorrow for education. How is a state like Tasmania going to make up for this shortfall? How are they going to meet the 95 per cent of the resource standard? The Tasmanian state education minister, who is a state member in my electorate, said that the axing of the Gonski $100 million that I referred to before 'will condemn generations of Tasmanians to educational disadvantage'. This is the state education minister, but the Premier is saying, 'Well, this is fantastic—we really do need a $68 million cut to Tasmanian public schools!' The $85 million cut to all Tasmanian schools over the next two years will mean larger class sizes, reduced numeracy and literacy support and less individual attention, and a reduction in support services like counsellors, school psychologists and speech pathologists—all those supports that do give real meaning to needs based funding. One of my schools, Ulverstone High School, wrote to me to tell me about what the additional funding under this agreement has meant to their school:

The additional funding has enabled our School to provide extra support for students in Literacy and Numeracy through support staff working in classes with students and providing extra support for disengaged students. The implementation of 1:1 devices for all students is underpinned by the extra funding that the School has been able to access to provide all students with access to technology.

Is that going to continue under these cuts? Is the state government going to make up the difference and ensure that the kids at Ulverstone High School will get the funding they need for extra resources for numeracy and literacy? We will see tomorrow, in the state budget, but I am certain that that will never happen.

The Catholic schools are also very worried. I have met with the Catholic Education Office in Tasmania a couple of times in the last week. They are very concerned that the federal government is not giving them any information so they can inform their families what these cuts mean for them. Here are the government, the parties that say parents need to have a choice in education, and now they are forcing parents to make that choice based on funding. Schools in Tasmania are low fee schools. Fees range from $1,000 to $2,000 per year, and this government is putting that situation at risk and will close those schools down.

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