Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Medicare) Share this | Hansard source

As a result of the Turnbull government's $210 million funding cut to South Australian schools, 38 schools in my electorate are going to lose $16 million over the next couple of years. That includes schools like Modbury High School, which will lose $750,000; Banksia Park International High School, which will lose $765,000; The Heights School, which will lose $1.1 million; Roma Mitchell Secondary College, which will lose $1.2 million; and Golden Grove High School, which will lose $1.2 million. I singled those five schools out of the 38 for this reason: they are all secondary schools and they are all schools that meet and deal with students with high needs. These are the schools that most of our new arrivals who live in the north-eastern suburbs will go to. They are schools that cater for children with a disability, and these are the schools that need all the support they can get, yet their funding has been cut by this government.

I could talk about the other 34 schools, but clearly time will not allow me to do so. These are the schools, like most public schools, where the lower income families send their children. Unfortunately, it's always been the ideological view of this federal government and previous coalition governments that they are not responsible for the funding of public schools in this country. Clearly, that is the attitude of the member for Boothby, the member for Grey, the member for Barker and the member for Sturt, who are not standing up to their government in respect of these cuts, which they know are being perpetrated on the schools in the areas that they represent. Rather than come into this place and say that they oppose the Turnbull government's cuts, they are simply remaining silent. It was interesting to see that they were given approval to be let off the leash to come out and oppose the GST cuts to South Australia, but they're not prepared to come in here and oppose the education funding cuts to South Australia. It's also interesting that the cuts come from a minister who comes from South Australia, and the minister previous to him was also from South Australia, yet both of them have turned their backs on South Australians. As we've heard, it wasn't just them; it was also the Nick Xenophon Team that supported those cuts when they went through this parliament—the team that claims to stand up and support the battlers of South Australia. I can tell all people in this place that the battlers are the ones who predominantly rely on the public schools of our nation.

Despite all of the denials and protestations about the increased funding that we're going to see from the Turnbull government, the reality is that the funding cuts are there. They are real, and South Australia will get $210 million less than they would otherwise have got under the agreement that was previously made between South Australia and the federal government.

It's also true that funding does matter to schools. It's not just the school itself where the funding matters. If schools are denied funding, they in turn have to put up their fees and charges for the families of the students who come to their schools. Again, we're talking about families who come mainly from low-income areas. These are families who have had to deal with living increases, health funding increases, in many cases cuts to their working hours, and stagnant wages, as we heard again in question time today. Yet they will be forced to increase the fees that they pay for their children to go to school.

Because of these funding cuts, the schools will have little choice but to increase their fees, but more insulting is that the education funding cuts that have been made by the Turnbull government are made at a time when the government says, 'We can afford $65 billion in business tax cuts.' Clearly, this is a government that has its priorities wrong, because the return on investing in education is much greater, and will always be much greater, than the return that the government will get by providing tax cuts. I think every smart country knows that, and we're seeing that. The smart countries of the world have always invested first and foremost in their education systems.

Labor will take this issue right through to the next election, because Labor members do care about education, and we oppose the position taken by this government. It's not just in schools. We go to our universities and we see billions of dollars cut there. We go to the TAFEs and we see some $3 billion cut there. Then we go to the education system more broadly and there's $17 billion of cuts there. Enough is enough, and this government's got its priorities wrong. (Time expired)

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