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

This motion is about education funding. I commend the member for Wakefield for bringing it before the House. But we just heard the member for Hughes, in five minutes, talk about anything but education funding, which is proof of the very point we are trying to make—that $210 million has been cut from South Australian schools as a result of the Turnbull government changing the agreement that previously existed between the federal government and the state of South Australia. This is a cut; it's a real cut, based on a previous agreement. So it's no good for members of the government to come into this place and say, 'This is not a cut. Education funding is going to increase over the next few years.' It may well do, but it will not increase by the amount that was previously committed to South Australia by a previous federal government. That's why it is a $210 million cut.

It's interesting that, last week, when there was an MPI before this place on this very issue, not one South Australian member was prepared to come into the chamber and defend the cuts, because they knew that, for all their attempts to spin it as an increase, the reality is that it's going to be a $210 million cut to South Australian schools. I say to the member for Grey, who spoke earlier on with respect to Ceduna, Ernabella and Fregon schools: Ceduna will lose $461,000 from these cuts, Ernabella will lose $145,000 and Fregon will lose $58,000. These are some of the most needy schools in South Australia, and yet they will lose that money, which would have gone a long way to helping the students who go to those schools and their families.

For South Australia it means that public schools will be the worst off out of this $210 million cut. They will lose $168 million. These are the schools that look after our lowest-income families—the schools that need it the most. I'm aware of schools in South Australia that are already bursting at the seams; they do not have enough classroom space and, therefore, have too many children in their classrooms, because they could do with the extra funding. Yet we're seeing the funds being cut.

In my own electorate of Makin, 38 schools are going to lose $16.6 million over the next two years. Those are, again, schools that I'm very familiar with, and I can assure listeners to this debate that they are not wealthy schools; they are not schools that have extravagant facilities; they are schools that could use every single dollar. I want to list just some of those because I can't list the whole 38: Keithcot Farm Primary School, $434,000; Salisbury East High, $565,000; Para Hills High, $456,000; Salisbury Heights Primary, $367,000; and East Para Primary, $408,000. Those are just some examples of some of the cuts that are being made to schools in my electorate, where the parents will inevitably have to pay because, when the schools cannot afford to fund the facilities that they need, they inevitably increase their school charges to the families of the students that go there.

So funding does make a difference. It makes a difference to the quality of the education for the child, but it also makes a difference to the families who are already struggling because they have probably had their hours cut at work and because of the increased cost of living—and who now will have to find additional dollars just to make sure their kids get an education.

I want to single out a couple of schools in particular that are going to get cuts. The Modbury Special School looks after children with disabilities. I have been to the school several times. It is a very high needs school. And it is going to get a $144,000 cut. These are students that, in all fairness, need all the support they can get. The staff that are already at that school do a fantastic job. But they could do an even better job if they had additional funding. Yet they will be getting a $144,000 cut. As the member for Wakefield pointed out, the special school in his electorate will also be getting a cut.

This is a government that simply doesn't believe in education. We have a Prime Minister who talks about innovation and science but simultaneously cuts education funding to the tune of about $17 billion from what it would otherwise have been, cuts university funding by $2 billion, cuts funding to our TAFEs by about $3 billion, and then talks about us being an innovation nation. You cannot be an innovation nation when you withdraw funding to the education services of whichever stream people want to go down. You cannot expect this nation to prosper from that. Unfortunately, this is a government that absolutely has its priorities wrong when it can find $65 billion in tax cuts for big business and cuts education funding.

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