Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure to follow the member for Moreton in speaking in this debate on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. From the outset, I will make it clear that I support the amendment moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in respect of this legislation.

Like so much of what the Turnbull government does and says, there is more spin than substance in its rhetoric. That is very much the case with respect to this legislation and the funding proposed within it. Like most things that this government also does, the Australian people will very quickly see through it—and they have done so with respect to the proposed school funding.

The truth of the matter is that the Australian people no longer believe this Prime Minister. And whilst the Prime Minister thinks that if he screams louder, as he does every day when he comes into question time, that they might hear him, I say to him that he is wrong. People are not interested in how loud he screams, but they are interested in what he has to say. The reality is that what he has to say is neither convincing nor, in fact, the truth.

I do not think that anyone in this House would disagree that education funding is absolutely critical to the future of the individual child and to the future of our nation. We compete in a world where those who are the best educated seem to make the most progress and get ahead. We understand that. We understand that if we are to remain competitive then we need to have a good education system. Again, I do not think that anyone in this place would disagree with that, that the system could do with a great deal of improvement. That is why the Gonski report that was commissioned by the previous Labor government is now the subject of debate. It was all about trying to set up a better system than we had previously.

But when you have a system like the one brought into this parliament by the Turnbull government, in which every individual public school, every individual private school and every sector within the education portfolio—whether public, independent or Catholic—can all do their own sums, and in most cases have come back and said to us, 'When we do our own sums the announcements simply don't stack up, because we are going to be worse off,' then you have to wonder why members opposite continue to beat their own spin lines that this is good funding for education. Indeed, I have noticed how few members opposite have come in to defend this legislation. If it were so good I would have expected that every one of them would have been lining up to speak about it so that they could, in turn, send their speeches out to their communities. But they are not in here defending it because they know that it has come under criticism, and rightly so, from across the board.

It is true that this legislation offers more money than what the previous Abbott and then Turnbull governments promised in 2014. But it falls well short of what was promised in the 2013 election, when the coalition went to that election claiming that they were on a unity ticket with Labor with respect to education funding, that they would match Labor's funding commitment. Well, they have not, and the reality is that had they matched Labor's commitment at that time there would be an extra $22.3 billion over the next 10 years allocated to education in this country. That is not my figure; that is the government's own figure that they were prepared to put on a briefing note with respect to the effects of this legislation. And when you go through the figures, that is about right, because it is roughly $2 billion per year less that is going to education as a result of this proposal, and $6.3 billion less over the next four years. This is from the government's own documents.

The government are again coming into this place with rubbery figures to justify what they are saying and defend their position. Trevor Cobbold, the national convener of Save Our Schools, has done his own independent analysis of the funding and he claims that the total increase per student over 10 years amounts to only about 40 per cent of the increase planned under the original Gonski funding package that the government was supposedly on a unity ticket with Labor on in 2013.

I want to talk for a moment about some of the messaging I have picked up from members opposite with respect to this legislation. If members recall, it was only last year or the year before when members opposite would come into this place and say that education funding does not really matter—it is not about funding; it is about the way we organise courses and curriculums within the schools. Those few members who have come in to defend this legislation have suddenly seen the light and have said how terrific this additional funding is for the schools in their area, talking about all the wonderful things that those schools will be able to achieve. The reality is that funding does matter and, as other speakers on this side of the House have pointed out, those schools that are better resourced and better funded end up producing students who do better.

The government says this is sector-blind funding. Again, if you go through the analysis of who is going to get what, this is not sector-blind funding. I listened to the Minister for Education a week ago addressing the independent schools on this issue. A question was asked of him about a school that was going to be losing funding, and the minister's response was along the lines of 'Please keep talking to my department because I am sure we can work through this'—in other words, 'We will do what we think is appropriate for your school and we will find a way of doing it'. This is a policy that was cobbled together on the run and, quite frankly, on scrutiny it does not stack up.

We hear from the government every day criticism of the multiple agreements that were in place under the Labor government. Again, as many members on this side of the House have quite rightly pointed out, every school and every sector within every state has a different starting point because of the kind of funding arrangements that have been in place for decades. It is therefore not surprising that we have a whole range of different agreements in order to start where those schools currently are and then gradually bring them all to the same place. It seems to me that there would be no other way of doing it and indeed, again, I suspect that this is an attempt to do the same by this government except they have decided to start at a different point.

Members opposite say that the government are not cutting education funding, and they point to the fact that, supposedly, the funding that was previously committed was over a 10-year period, it was not in the forward estimates, there was no funding set aside, et cetera. They also say that we have to balance the budget. You cannot have it both ways—you cannot be saying, 'We are not cutting funding but we have to balance the budget'. The truth of the matter is that by saying they have to balance the budget they are admitting that they are making cuts. There is also the argument about where the funding is coming from. I will come to that a bit later on, but there is funding available because the budget is about choices and the truth of the matter is that if the government wants to prioritise education it could do so by making cuts in other areas—cuts that I will talk about if time permits me to do so.

This is a proposal which, quite frankly, disadvantages many schools across the country and I want to talk just for a moment about some of the differentiation I have picked up within it. In particular, I note there is a cut in funding to the Catholic education sector. I do not want to buy into arguments about the differences between the various sectors because, quite frankly, they are all based on historical differences and I have no doubt that each of the sectors could quite forcibly argue their case as to why the amount of funding they are receiving is appropriate for their schools. But what I will say is this: firstly, every school should be entitled to an increase as a result of, if nothing more, the CPI increases on a yearly basis. Secondly, every school should also be entitled to additional funds if there are additional enrolments at their school. So there would be, in my view, an automatic increase in the amount of funding that would, under normal circumstances, be allocated to the education portfolio if nothing else changed and we simply followed the CPI increase and enrolment number increases. It is my understanding that those two indexes have not been followed through and accounted for in the same way as the funding that will go to all schools under this proposition.

There is another matter with respect to the Catholic sector. Again, my understanding is that the Catholic schools in this country—some 1,737 of them—account for some 20 per cent of all the school students across Australia. That means that tens of thousands of children are currently going to Catholic schools across the country. Some of them have just started, some are midway through their schooling and some of them are perhaps close to the end. The government propose to cut their funding without, to my knowledge, having at any stage consulted with the Catholic sector—and, if they did consult, it was absolutely minimal. Had the government bothered to consult, they perhaps would not be in the mess they are currently in with respect to the funding that is going to go to Catholic schools.

It is unfair on those schools, but it is even more unfair on the parents of those children who made a conscious choice to send their children to the school they did based on their understanding of the fees that they would incur. Before they select a school for their children, most parents would look around and find out what they are committing themselves to and how much it is going to cost them. They have now made that choice and they are suddenly going to be hit with additional costs that many of those schools will have to pass on to them because my understanding is that many of the Catholic schools will have their funding cut. The member for Eden-Monaro, who spoke earlier, pointed out a very good example of that. It is totally unfair to do that, and I would defend any school sector—public, Catholic or independent—if they were being treated that way. If there is an anomaly in the system there should, at the very least, be consultation with the sector so that it can be worked out over a period of time that allows the sector and the families of the children who go to those schools time to adjust to the changes that need to be made.

The last point I want to make is on the funding that goes to South Australia. My understanding is that South Australia stands to lose some $265 million from the public school funding that will go to the state over the next two years. One of the schools that is going to be hit hard by that is a school in my electorate, the Roma Mitchell Secondary College, which will get a cut of $1.2 million over the next two years. Again, if I look at the modelling done by Trevor Cobbold of the funding and how it goes to each of the states, I see that the Northern Territory, Tasmania and South Australia are going to be the hardest hit as a result of this funding allocation by this government. I would suggest that the Northern Territory, Tasmania and South Australia are areas with some of the highest social needs, and they are going to be hit the hardest.

That is why this funding is being criticised and is not being supported by hardly any of the sectors. Indeed, when I look at the education sector more broadly, it seems that whichever way this government turns with this funding it has come under criticism. A policy that I am sure that the government brought into this place believing that it would be a winner for the government has turned into a nightmare for it because, when you study the detail of it, it simply does not stack up to the claims that this government makes.

Finally, I would make the point that this is a government that has choices—like all governments do. It brought into this place a budget only this month, and we now know that, in the context of this budget, $65 billion is going to be allocated for tax cuts to multinational companies and big business. I accept that $24 billion of that has already been committed to, but there is another $40 billion that this government wants to give to any company that has a turnover of more than $50 million. It does have a choice: it could put that $40 million into health and education, and it could restore the $22.3 billion in education funding that it has cut.

The argument that the government puts forward in support of the $40 billion of tax cuts is that it will add to the gross domestic product of this country. It will add, even at the best estimates, some one per cent between now and the next 20 years. I put it to the government that another $22 billion in education funding would deliver much more economic growth and much more prosperity to this government than would the tax cuts that it proposes to make to big business, many of which will go offshore and never be seen by people in Australia.

The government has got its priorities wrong. This was an opportunity to fix education funding once and for all, and again this government has failed that test.

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