Patrick Gorman (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Any parent should be able to expect stable, predictable funding for their school. Sadly, there is complete chaos when it comes to the coalition's approach to funding. The complex field of mathematical study now known as chaos theory was founded on the work of Edward Lorenz at MIT, a passionate educator and a passionate sharer of knowledge. He wrote some 55 years ago a paper called 'Deterministic nonperiodic flow'. Many in this House would know that better today as the butterfly effect. I raise this because chaos theory is the only way that you can properly describe the coalition's approach to school funding. The fluttering wings in the Liberal Party have led to chaos when it comes to schools funding—chaos that has caused COAG cancellation. On 26 August the Prime Minister said, 'We've got a lot of work to do, but we're restoring stability.' Tell that to a state premier or a territory chief minister. There's no stability in their program and no stability of when they're going to meet for COAG. There's no stability at all.

This debate is important to my community. It's important to me as the son of two Western Australian teachers. My father was a principal for many years. He proudly led Lance Holt School, which is now led by another great Western Australian educator, one of my former teachers, Kathryn Netherwood. Leading a school is a tough but rewarding job. You'd think, at least, that the government wouldn't make it harder and that they'd give a little bit of certainty and a little bit of stability to let educators do what they do best. I know that my father stressed about his school budget—the need to ensure the stability of the school's finances. Schools aren't just providers of education but also direct employers, particularly those in the independent and Catholic sector. When a school doesn't have secure funding, the teachers do not have secure work. It's just another way that, when you don't provide that stability of funding, when you have a chaotic schools policy, you're disrespecting teachers. You're disrespecting people like my mum and my dad. Teachers work in chaotic environments, but the chaos they're used to is handling a classroom of 30 children or teenagers. It requires strength of character. They shouldn't have to also worry about whether their school's going to have enough money to resource their school the following year.

I also want to acknowledge that it's not just governments that fund schools. Parents and citizens organisations and parents and friends organisations do amazing work finding that extra $1,000 here and there to grow a school's capacity to deliver for the students. For many of those schools, the canteen might be the financial powerhouse of the parents and citizens or the parents and friends, so I'll take the opportunity to give a shout-out today in this place to the staff and volunteers at school canteens across the country providing stability—more stability than we see in this place—for the funding of their schools.

When we talk about stability, it's odd that we'd see the king of chaos, often known as the member for Warringah, appointed as special envoy for Indigenous affairs. One of the things that the 'special' envoy has said is that he wants to increase Indigenous attendance at remote schools.

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