Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am particularly pleased to rise to speak today on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, because earlier this week we on this side of the House commemorated the 75th anniversary of Sir Robert Menzies' speech 'The Forgotten People'. A number of us on this side of the House went down to Old Parliament House to an event organised by the Menzies Research Centre to reflect on that speech and on the contribution Sir Robert Menzies made in his long parliamentary career.

Sir Robert Menzies was the first Prime Minister to provide Commonwealth funding for schools when he famously, after the 1963 election, provided Commonwealth funding for non-government schools. Since then there has been a tradition of Commonwealth funding for schools. And it is particularly interesting to be speaking on this bill in the context of that week. In Menzies' speech 75 years ago he reminded people that the class war was a false war. Yet every time I have heard members opposite speak about education funding it is a repeat of the class war. In fact, every time I hear members opposite speak about education funding they spend about half their speeches talking about how bad corporate tax cuts are. Well, unless we have good small businesses employing people in this country, what are we going to do with the graduates from our schools? What are we going to do with the graduates from our universities? There is a continuing class war obsession on the other side. We seek not only to acknowledge that the class war is a false war but also to say that the war in relation to classes is a false war. With this legislation we are stopping the war in relation to classes by providing sector-blind needs based funding.

The coalition is always cleaning up Labor's mess. All over the country we saw the posters, we saw the demos and we heard the campaign slogan 'I give a Gonski'. The government is now giving Labor the chance to give a Gonski, and Labor seems as though they are squibbing that opportunity yet again. They like to say they gave a Gonski, but in government they failed to implement the Gonski review. In government Labor cut a range of asymmetrical deals with different states and different education systems which created a mockery of the so-called needs based funding system. They did different deals with different states. The Leader of the Opposition when he was education minister was so desperate to get anyone to sign up to his deals he would give anything away.

Some schools, as a result of the funding deal the then Leader of the Opposition did, do not attract their needs based funding for over a century. That is not good education policy, that is not needs based funding reform and it is not good education funding reform. Labor's funding arrangements were not only unfair—they do not deliver performance improvements. Here are the words of the Independent respected education policy analyst and former departmental secretary and hand-picked member of Labor's own Gonski review panel, Ken Boston. This is what he said about what Labor implemented:

Now, this was not what the Gonski review recommended.

He went on to say:

… Shorten hawked this corruption of the Gonski report around the country, doing deals with premiers, bishops and the various education lobbies. These bilateral negotiations were not a public and open process, as would have been achieved by the National Schools Resourcing Body; they dragged on for twenty-one months up to the September 2013 election; and they led to a thoroughly unsatisfactory situation: agreements with some states and not with others, and—among participating states—different agreements and indexation arrangements.

That is not me—this is Labor's own hand-picked expert for the Gonski funding panel, Ken Boston. But now Labor are turning their back on Gonski altogether. In fact, now they have been given a chance to vote for the Gonski needs based funding model and they are choosing to vote against it. They are voting against a policy tradition that on their side of the House dates back to the Whitlam era. Needs based funding as an idea entered the public arena when Gough Whitlam was opposition leader. Labor has been calling for needs based funding for years, and they will need to explain to the Australian people why they will vote to see government schools receive at most 4.7 per cent legislated funding growth compared to the 5.1 per cent average annual increases on offer, why they will vote for schools of identical need to receive different levels of federal funding from the Schooling Resource Standard just because they live in a different state. They are even voting against David Gonski himself. Here is what he said at the announcement of the government's funding plan:

… I'm very pleased to hear that the Turnbull Government has accepted the fundamental recommendations of our 2011 report, and particularly regarding a needs-based situation … I'm very pleased that there is substantial additional money, even over indexation and in the foreseeable future.

He went on:

… when we did the 2011 review, our whole concept was that there would be a school's resource standard which would be nominated and we nominated one, and I'm very pleased that the Turnbull Government has taken that …

Labor's abandonment of Gonski is part of their tissue of lies about education funding. They accuse the coalition of cutting funding to education but the truth is there are no cuts. The coalition is delivering record and growing funding for schools—a record $242.3 billion is going to be invested in total schools recurrent funding from 2018 to 2027, including $81.1 billion between 2018 and 2021. Funding for schools will grow from a record $17½ billion in 2017 to $30.6 billion in 2027. Funding will grow faster than broader economic growth, with total federal funding growing by approximately 75 per cent—I say it again, 75 per cent— over the next 10 years, with funding per student growing at an average of 4.1 per cent per year.

We are going to transition all schools to consistent Commonwealth shares of the Schooling Resource Standard by increasing funding. In the government sector we will increase the funding from an average of 17 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard to 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard. That is because the funding of government schools has been primarily the responsibility of state governments, but the Commonwealth is now increasing its percentage. In the non-government school space we are increasing the average of 76.8 per cent for non-government schools to 80 per cent in 2027, again reflecting the historical position of the Commonwealth as the main funder of non-government schools. At the national level, funding per student for all sectors will continue to increase in real terms. Over 10 years there will be 5.1 per cent increases in the government sector, 3.5 per cent in the Catholic sector and 4.1 per cent in the independent sector.

The current national schools arrangements introduced by the previous government are not only unfair but they are not actually driving any improvements in education outcomes. This is despite the increase in funding over a very long period. The government's Quality Schools, Quality Outcomes document released in May 2016 proposes a range of practical reforms to reverse Australia's declining performance. That is why I am so pleased to see that part of the package that was put together at the announcement is what is known as Gonski 2.0.

As we know, there have been disappointing results in recent national and international assessments Australia has participated in. Whether it is in science, maths or literacy, we are not doing as well as we used to do. Whether it is in NAPLAN, PISA—the Program for International Student Assessment—or the trends in international mathematics and science study, Australia continues to slip. We are now being beaten by countries with less developed economies, like Kazakhstan and Slovenia.

When we read the original Gonski review it is clear that the review was focused on funding and equity, but it also presaged the need to improve declining school performance. That is why it is so good that David Gonski has agreed to lead a new inquiry into improving the results of Australian students. The Review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools will provide the Turnbull government with advice on how this extra Commonwealth funding should be used by schools to improve student achievement and school performance. David Gonski will be joined by Ken Boston, who was a member of the original Gonski panel. The review will make recommendations on the most effective teaching and learning strategies to reverse declining results and to seek to raise the performance of schools and students. David Gonski will provide his report to the government by the end of the year, ahead of the negotiation of the school reform arrangements with states and territories in the first half of next year. The question for those opposite is: will Labor treat Gonski 2.0 like they have treated the Gonski funding reforms in this bill?

I would like to talk briefly about what this bill will mean for my electorate of Berowra. One of the great assets we have in Berowra is the quality of our schools and the quality education they provide children. When I go around our schools—whether it is the school presentation day or awards night, when I visit classrooms and when I go to the school fairs—I see the enthusiasm and the excellence across all sectors which exists in the schools in my electorate. Total federal funding for all schools in my electorate amounts to $1.12 billion over the next decade, supporting 51 government, Catholic and independent primary and secondary schools and the over 26,000 students that attend Berowra schools. By 2027, the 35 government schools in my electorate will receive more than $514 million in funding. The 12 independent schools will receive more than $467 million in funding. Over $137 million will be contributed to the Catholic education systems on behalf of the four systemic schools in my electorate.

I acknowledge that two of the 24 schools which will receive less funding than they have received under previous arrangements are in my electorate. Those schools are Mount St Benedict College at Pennant Hills and Oakhill College at Castle Hill. Following the Minister for Education's announcement I reached out to both of these schools to discuss the changes and to see if there was anything I could do to assist them. I want to thank the principal and the acting principal of those schools and the chairs of the councils for the constructive approach they have adopted.

I am a strong supporter of the schools and school communities in my electorate. I have been advocating to the Minister for Education on behalf of all of Berowra's schools to ensure he understands the needs of our schools. I look forward to continuing to work with our schools as the funding program is implemented.

It is important to outline some of the measures that are contained in this bill. This bill will implement the government's commitment to support parental choice, to deliver real needs-based funding and long-term certainty for parents and schools and tie funding to reforms that evidence shows will actually improve student outcomes. That is the purpose of the Gonski 2.0 review. We want to set Commonwealth schools funding up for the next 10 years and beyond. We want to apply indexation arrangements to Commonwealth schools funding and transition schools to a common Commonwealth share of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2027. As I said before, that is 80 per cent for non-government schools and 20 per cent for government schools.

We want to enable regulation to allow the Commonwealth to withhold, reduce or recoup funding paid to jurisdictions which do not meet the Commonwealth's requirement to at least maintain their per student funding level to both government and non-government schools to prevent cost-shifting—and we have seen cost-shifting under the current arrangements, particularly in South Australia. We want to require cooperation with the implementation of the national policy reforms to lift student outcomes, and we want to improve accountability and transparency of school funding arrangements through ministerial reporting requirements by removing the requirement in the current act for schools to have onerous and prescriptive implementation plans. The bill will also make a range of technical amendments, including to improve the efficient operation of the act.

The government is basing these changes on what is known as the Schooling Resource Standard under the act. The Schooling Resource Standard provides a measure of the relative funding need of schools and is comprised of a base per student funding amount, which is three-quarters of the total funding plus six loadings. Those loadings relate to a range of things, such as disability, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and students with low-English speaking proficiency and educationally disadvantaged backgrounds.

For non-government schools the base amount is discounted by the capacity of parents in the school community to financially contribute to the schools' operating costs, and this is calculated using ABS data. Then there are school level loadings for the school's size and location. Those loadings take into account individual student needs, and that is based on the data that is provided to the Commonwealth. The socioeconomic disadvantage loading is based on the socio-educational advantage index, based on the education, occupation and employment of parents, as indicated by a form that those parents complete. Students from the two bottom SEA quartiles attract funding at different rates.

Principals and teachers are able to use the funding provided to their school to best allocate resources and address the needs of their students and more autonomy. We must continue to drive for more autonomy in our schools. It means that they can choose to invest the extra funding in these like speech pathology and special needs teachers according to the particular needs of their school community.

While Commonwealth funding is calculated based on the entitlement of individual schools, schools in government and non-government systems distribute their funding to their member schools according to their own allocation models—and we are not interfering with those allocation models. Every student within a school within their individual circumstances and background will count towards their Schooling Resource Standard.

In conclusion, this bill presents a challenge. It presents a challenge to Labor. Do they support needs-based funding—which has been their tradition since the late sixties? Do they support improving outcomes for school students? With David Gonski's endorsement of the government's proposals, do they still give a Gonski?

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