Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill and its impact on students and families around this country and, more specifically, those students and families from Western Australia. I will not support this terrible Liberal government bill, because this bill would result in a $22.3 billion cut to Australian schools compared with the existing arrangements. I will not support this bill, because it would see an average cut to each school of around $2.4 million. I will not support this bill, because it removes extra funding agreed with the states and territories for 2018-19 which would have brought all under-resourced schools to their fair funding level. I will not support this bill, because it will hurt public schools. They will receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the government's $22.3 billion cut to schools compared to 80 per cent of extra funding which was made under the Labor school funding plan. This bill will result in fewer teachers, less one-on-one attention for our students and less help with the basics for those that need it most.

I will not support this bill, because it will cut important aspirational targets which are good for this country. This Liberal government will no longer aim for Australia to be one of the top five high-performing countries in reading, maths and science by 2025. This bill will eradicate the aim to halve the gap between the outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students by 2020. So I will not support the Australian Education Amendment Bill, and neither should anyone else. It is a shame it has even been put before us.

These are significant measures and they have wide-ranging and far-reaching ramifications. We all know that history is important, so let me take us back for a little refresher. First of all, I want to go back a bit in time, only four years ago, to 2013. It is election time. The writs have been issued and the public will go to the polls in a month. The education sector is pretty satisfied at this time. Parents are relieved to know that true needs based funding will be a reality across the country. No matter what happens, the Labor-led education funding reforms are enshrined in legislation, the Labor-led charge and leadership to ensure needs based funding is rock-solid and the then opposition leader, the member for Warringah, has stated, 'There is no difference between Kevin Rudd and myself when it comes to school funding.' That was the start of the unity ticket on school funding. Remember that? That was when the Australian public were led to believe by the Liberal Party that they supported genuine needs based funding in schools. Well, it did not last long. There was a backflip less than a day after from the Liberal education spokesman at the time, the member for Sturt. He stressed that Liberals would only honour the first year of Labor's fully funded reforms—a little crab walk off the stage. And then, days before the election, the member for Warringah and the member for Sturt promised to match Labor's commitment to fund education over the forward estimates. Remember that? That is the unity ticket I was talking about.

Fast forward to 2017, and we can see this for what it always was—purely low-grade electioneering. It was only after the severe public reaction to the disastrous 2014 federal budget that the government truly realised how much students, teachers and families depended on needs based funding for the fair and good education that Australian children deserve and need. That budget, the 2014 budget, saw a Liberal government rip $30 billion out of schools over a decade by strolling away from its promises to Australian children and to Australia's future. That budget disaster cost them a Prime Minister and a Treasurer. Even as they slowly came to terms with the enormity of their decisions for the future of young Australians, it has taken two years to come up with a scheme that attempts to disguise their twisted version of needs based funding as a funding increase, all supported by a natty little content-lite, facts-lite calculator website. It is on the internet, so it must be true—and, as the Prime Minister invented the internet, it really, really must be true! But, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you and I know, a leopard does not change its spots. There was $30 billion ripped out of education in the 2014 budget and $22 billion ripped out in the 2017 budget—I wonder what will happen next. What this natty little website does not tell the public is how much the state governments will contribute to the education of their children. It does not state how much their own fee contributions will build on the education of their children and the students. It only tells part of the story, and in doing so misleads the Australian public.

This side of the House, along with education experts, state governments, the Catholic school system and right across the country parents and parents and friends associations, can see what this scheme is—a $22.3 billion cut to funding schools across Australia., I am not fooled, Labor is not fooled and the Australian public are not fooled. Let me be clear—I know I have said it a couple of times, and I will keep saying it: under the proposed arrangements, in this bill, $22.3 billion will be cut from schools across Australia compared to the existing arrangements. Those opposite have said this is an unbelievable figure, and in some respects I agree—it is unbelievable. It made my jaw drop. How on earth, after their clearly now-abandoned cries of bipartisanship support for education, can this Liberal government continue to rip and tear holes in the hopes and dreams of students and parents and still choose to give big business a $65 billion tax cut? The Treasurer confirmed this recently in question time. It is unbelievable that they would rip out education funding which is equivalent to sacking nearly 22,000 teachers; it is unbelievable that on average each school loses $2.4 million; it is unbelievable that only one in seven public schools will get their fair level of funding, which is supposed to be 95 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard, by 2027.

We on this side of the House are not the only ones stunned with disbelief. The outrage is felt around the country, and it is real—despite what members opposite may say. The New South Wales P&C Federation said on 3 May this year:

The Turnbull Government must not renege on the funding promised under the Gonski agreement signed in 2013.

The Liberal government likes to demonise unions, but I stand with the hardworking and committed teachers and school staff that form the Australian Education Union, who said on 4 May this year:

The Prime Minister has effectively abandoned the most disadvantaged schools and their students.

The Daily Telegraph on 3 May reported that the Liberal New South Wales education minister is considering court action to safeguard the state's share of education dollars. It was also reported on 3 May that the Queensland education minister has said that government schools across the state will be $300 million worse off. It was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald on 5 May that some Catholic schools will be forced to dramatically increase fees or close their doors. Again, these are just some of the comments aimed at the federal government in a veritable bombardment of criticism against these proposed cuts.

This protest salvo of return fire from public interest groups, parents and friends associations, governments, schools, students and many others pales into comparison with the missile launched by this Turnbull government that will leave a smoking crater of broken promises where genuine needs based funding once stood. The devil is in the detail here, and nowhere is this more evident than in the proposed removal of extra funding which was previously agreed to with the states and territories for 2018-19, which would have brought all under resourced schools to their fair funding levels. It takes the axe to public schools, which will receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the government's proposal compared to 80 per cent of extra funding from Labor. That is some unity ticket—that is a funding disparity of 30 per cent.

It is often claimed by the opposite side of the House, the government, that the coalition are the better economic managers in this country. Hardly a day goes by when the Liberals do not wistfully look back in time to the excesses and ease of the immobile Howard government and claim that doing nothing at all qualifies for financial management accolades. The Liberals believe their supposed economic genius is justified—how can this be so, how can this be true, if they are not willing to invest in the future education of young Australians? It has been consistently shown in research papers, academic discussions, economic reports and Productivity Commission reports that investment in education lifts standards of living dramatically across a nation. Global Partnerships for Education informs us that one extra year of schooling increases a single person's income by 10 per cent, and each additional year of schooling can raise our overall annual GDP. By ignoring this type of data and instead pushing us backwards, this Liberal government endangers our economic prosperity and the economic growth of Australia in the long term. If the Liberals want to run future election campaigns on this supposedly safe economic foundation, they may want to take a second glance at the pillars of education they intend to demolish, lest that foundation begin to collapse—if it has not already.

Let's take a closer look at my own home state of Western Australia. How the Liberals plan for education in WA is supposed to help the education sector over there. I can tell you now that the announcement was met with fury, not least of all from the new WA state government itself. Is it not enough that we have to fight tooth and nail to get fair Commonwealth funding for transport infrastructure in WA? Is it not enough that we have to be dudded repeatedly when it comes to the outdated GST redistribution system across the country—despite the fact that a large chunk of the federal cabinet comes from Western Australia? Is it not enough that we have to make do with a dismal share of investment in naval shipbuilding in order to shore up support for the re-election of the Minister for Defence Industry? No, apparently it is not enough. The federal government continues its war on WA by ripping out $649 million in Commonwealth education funding from 2018-19 to 2021-22.

I might take a moment to explain something the federal government may not be aware of. Twice a year in Western Australia a census is carried out by the WA education department that determines funding allocations for students who are at a social disadvantage—students with disabilities, Aboriginal students and students who are having to learn English as a second language. The WA education minister, the Hon. Sue Ellery, has called the government out on it and highlighted that there is no possible way that the Commonwealth could base funding arrangements around this census, around the actual need the department establishes, but have no knowledge of the results—none at all. And now these students have been placed at risk because of reckless decisions and political point scoring by a federal government that would not consult with the WA education sector and take into account the sensitive processes run by the WA education department—processes that assess the actual need of WA school students. The minister, along with the WA treasurer, the Hon. Ben Wyatt, has called them out on this lack of proper consultation and slashing of funding, calling the figures released 'disingenuous and inaccurate'.

The WA education minister is right to point out: 'WA Liberal federal MPs need to explain to their local schools why not only are we getting ripped off with the GST; now our school funding is also being short-changed.' Again, it is unbelievable—absolutely unbelievable. How much more must Western Australia be penalised? What torturous thought bubble is the Treasurer and his Prime Minister going to come up with next for my state of Western Australia?

My electorate of Brand is home to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the metropolitan area of Perth. The 2011 census recorded the suburb of Calista—where I was born—in Brand as the fifth most socioeconomically disadvantaged SA2 area in the Greater Perth region. In the rest of WA there are many other communities that are worse off, including those in remote communities with a high Indigenous population. How on earth are we supposed to help lift these communities without properly investing in their future and the future of their children, to give parents a chance for their kids to have the best possible opportunities in life, the opportunities that some people never had as children? This is 2017. The world has changed. Educational standards and the syllabus has all changed.

In Brand we have schools giving fantastic opportunities to their students, and it is the same around the country. These successful programs and these positive learning environments are under threat from a mammoth $22.3 billion cut to school funding that this Turnbull government is proposing. It is wasteful and it is shameful. We have seen the data, the statistics, the budget papers and the press releases. It is all very well to quote numerical figures and cloak it in a conservative ideology, but what does it all mean? How does it work? At its most basic, this bill results in fewer teachers. Fewer teachers means less one-on-one time for individual students and less help to get through the basic curriculum. It is no good for students. It removes the requirements that state governments increase funding for schools, meaning that 85 per cent of public schools will not meet their 2027 fair funding targets. State governments that have underperformed have been left off the hook.

What is most absurd is how it affects different parts of the country. I feel for the Northern Territory at this time, too; it sees a growth rate of 1.3 per cent over 10 years. People should be ashamed of what they are proposing for this country.

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