Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

This Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 is a vehicle to cut $22 billion of support to our nation's students and represents one of the most disgraceful examples of intergenerational theft that we could witness. This is today's generation wilfully denying future generations the access to funds—to the investment—in the next generation's preparation for a world of work that will be dramatically different to ours. As I said, it is disgraceful to see this bill being dressed up in the way that it is—claiming to do one thing and doing something vastly different. This government is claiming that they now recognise the value of needs based funding without properly funding to meet the need.

As is always the case with this Prime Minister, it is all show and no substance; claiming one thing but filled with cowardice and unable to actually admit at that dispatch box exactly what he and his government are doing. He is prepared to go out to the media and to say to them that what they are doing, effectively, is saving $22 billion. They say to the media that compared to Labor's arrangements this represents a saving of $6.3 billion over four years and $22.3 billion over 10 years. That is how it gets briefed out to the media. But when questioned in this place as to whether or not that is exactly the case, or asked to say to the Australian public, out of his own mouth, what this bill will do and how much money it will cut out, there is cowardice: a refusal to acknowledge exactly what they will do or what the Prime Minister will oversee. This is the Prime Minister who claims that he is all about innovation—the Prime Minister who claims that he is all about technology and the Prime Minister who thinks that these are exciting times and that the nation needs to become more agile—presiding over a regime that will see less, not more, invested in the next generation of young Australians.

That is why I find this bill so offensive, because on so many levels, as I said, it is about show rather than substance. Once the caravan rolls on there will be a whole bunch of people left without the proper support and facing a future where more skills—greater skills and higher levels of skills—will be demanded and we are not investing in them.

He wheels out, for example, David Gonski, the person who spearheaded the actual review into the way in which we fund education in this country. He wheeled him out at a press conference a few weeks ago to distract—to have the 'Oh, wow!' moment—to make the media, and therefore the public, think that this new model that is being put forward by the Prime Minister is as it is claimed to be: an embrace of needs based funding. Actually it is not; it is a classic case of the sequel not being anywhere near as good as the original. His claim that Gonski 2.0 represents an advancement, or that it properly fulfils and reflects what was originally intended, is wrong. Simply wrong! Again, it is showmanship and not the real deal.

And what will happen as a result of it? As I said, we will see less money. We have had, though, those opposite say in the weeks and months leading into this that Gonski is not all about money. I listened today to the contribution of my colleague the member for Hunter. There was something in his words that struck me when he stood at this dispatch box this morning. When those opposite say that Gonski should not be all about money, that it is not about throwing money at education, he said, 'Let's forget these people who say money doesn't matter. Have a look at some of the outcomes of some of our very wealthy private schools and some of the outcomes of our public schools and the difference between them, and ask yourself, "Why?" It is about money; money does matter.' And he is absolutely right.

Money makes a world of difference when it is employed in an effective way, in a way that changes outcomes and in a way that can differentiate between how education was previously carried out and how it can be much more intensive and much more focused on the needs of the students themselves. When I think about the impact of that money, I think about what Gonski's original thoughts were. The original report recognised that education had an ability to break down clusters of disadvantage. It looked at different parts of the country where an investment in education could actually break down disadvantage, where it could be used as a sledgehammer in cases where intergenerational unemployment had condemned families to a much poorer pathway and a less enriched life. It talked about clusters of disadvantage. That is what Gonski said he was about: breaking down those clusters.

A few years ago, my area had to endure SBS coming in and filming various families in neighbourhoods of need. They were effectively gawking at the type of disadvantage that exists in my part of Western Sydney. It was purely for entertainment. A lot of us objected to the way in which people were portrayed in the promotion for Struggle Streetthat was the program's name. We objected to it, because we all knew that once the channel changed, once the program ended, once the focus shifted, no-one would be there to properly fund or make the decisions that would make a meaningful difference in the lives of those people who had been featured on the TV screen for that short period of time. It was exactly what I was worried about, and it was what I was critical of at the time. The entertainment has been had, but where is the investment to get people out of Struggle Street and ensure that they are not stuck there, that their kids are not stuck there and that their kid's kids are not stuck there? That is what this bill should be about; but, instead of getting people out of Struggle Street, it is putting them on a funding goat track. It is not properly meeting need.

The Schooling Resource Standard was all about identifying particular schools where there were higher concentrations of kids from low-income backgrounds, kids with disability, kids from non-English speaking backgrounds or kids from Indigenous backgrounds. These factors would be taken into account and people would make decisions to properly support and invest in those students in a much better way than what had previously occurred. Let's look at what this government will do through failing to fund education in those neighbourhoods of need and how the funding in this bill does not properly support need and how it will rob people in my part of Western Sydney. Let's look at the list of schools that will lose substantial funds over the years 2018 and 2019. Doonside Technology High School will lose $1.4 million; Evans High School, $1 million; Bidwill Public School, $1.1 million; Lethbridge Park Public School, $1.13 million; Hebersham Public School, $1.4 million; Plumpton High School, $1.4 million; and Shelley, Tregear and Whalan public schools will all see massive cuts of between $900,000 and $1 million each. What stood out to me in particular was Crawford Public School in Doonside. It will lose nearly $1 million. When I went to Crawford Public School's presentation day in December last year, I got to hear the principal of that school get up and say what Gonski meant for that school and how they were able to make investments in getting someone in to help students with maths, to improve the results of the students in those studies. They said it made a big difference. These funds make big difference. So when those opposite say money is not everything—well, you cannot do anything without money. You cannot invest in that way—in a specific, strategic, targeted way—to see a change in results, in this case in mathematics, with Crawford Public School in 2018-19 losing nearly $1 million. It is simply scandalous that we will have that, that those people would potentially go on without the right skills into a life of unemployment, or long periods of unemployment, becoming long-term unemployed because they do not have the skills that are required and demanded in the future economy.

And I have teachers writing to me saying: 'I'm writing to you as a concerned teacher from Doonside Technology High in relation to the proposed changes to the school funding model. Despite the rhetoric of the Turnbull government, this is not a commitment to genuine needs based funding.' They go on: 'Over the next two years, under this new model, Doonside Technology High will experience a substantial loss in funding of $1,360,465. Doonside Technology High is a school committed to the provision of quality education to a student cohort with complex learning needs. As a concerned teacher I ask that you reject outright the Turnbull government's cuts to education.' That is signed by Jamie Campbell, from Doonside High. They know what this will mean.

And then you look at the future, when you consider that 13 out of 19 Australian industry sectors are being affected by technological change and three out of five jobs are being completely upended by technological change. Some of the work that has been done to investigate the impact of automation suggests that 40 per cent of jobs in financial services and 50 per cent of jobs in manufacturing could be automated. Then there is fast food and accommodation. Fast food jobs are entry-level jobs for a lot of people, or jobs for creating bridges between jobs for people who are out of work or mature-age people. Between 60 and 90 per cent of those jobs will be gone because of automation. In Japan now there are hotels that are fully automated and you hardly see a person. In the US they are starting to have automated hotels as well. The accommodation sector will be changed profoundly by automation.

So, what do we need to do? We need to ensure that we are actually skilling people up. The government released a report last year called Tomorrow's digitally enabled workforce. It was released by the Minister for Employment. It is collecting dust and has not even been acted upon by the Department of Employment. The report says:

Increased use of automated systems is raising the complexity of tasks and requiring higher skill levels for entry-level positions.

That is for just the entry-level positions. And the report talks about the changing nature of employment, the fact that the job market is in transition. Over the past five years—since 2016—the occupational groups that contributed most to employment growth in Australia were health care, social assistance, and professional, scientific and technical services, offsetting falls in manufacturing, agriculture, forestry, fishing and mining. It is all changing, right before our eyes. What are the skills that are needed? This report indicates that they are skills in creativity, problem solving, advanced reasoning, complex judgement, social interaction and emotional intelligence. These are all skills that we need to invest more in. Lifelong education and training for all Australians is needed to prepare both young and old for new and different jobs and employment models.

So, this is what we know is going to hit. This is what we know is going to change Australia's workplaces. And it is this higher-intensity level of skill development—embedding that into future Australians—where we need to see more, not less, spent on education. And let me make this point: ever since becoming an MP back in 2010 I have become profoundly conscious that the decisions made in this place matter. Regardless of what people may or may not say about politics, the decisions that get made here do impact people. The decisions to do things—but, importantly, also the decisions not to do things—matter. In this case, with the $22 billion that might be forgone, we will not be able to go back and fix things. There will be young people going through school who will not have the level of support that they need, and we cannot go back and fix that, because once the funding is not there and the teaching is not provided, future generations will be affected.

That is why, on this side of the House, so many of us see as an article of faith the need to ensure the proper level of funding, because if we do not we are robbing future generations and—worse—we cannot go back and necessarily fix it as easily as we would like. We cannot support this bill in all conscience. We cannot and must not support it. We should be supporting the amendment that has been put forward by the shadow minister. (Time expired)

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