Andrew Wilkie (Clark, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Education is critical to the future success of every child and of Australian society more broadly. But this future is under threat, with school quality and student outcomes continuing to decline and wealth based inequality and segregation in our education system only getting worse. All of this, sadly, seems at odds with our history. Free, compulsory primary education for all students has a long tradition in Australia, with each colony having had legislation in place to offer this to citizens by the 1880s, provided on the basis that all citizens deserved an equal right to education regardless of their financial capacity. Moreover, in 2011 the Gonski reforms sought to address deficiencies in the education system by establishing the Schooling Resource Standard, or SRS. This set a funding level that all governments have agreed is the minimum required to meet the needs of every student.

But, despite this, in 2023 almost all public schools across the country are still funded below the SRS, the effect of which was made clear to me when I met last week with school principals, who shared alarming stories of the impacts of this underfunding on children and school staff in public schools across the country. In other words, the Gonski reforms are failing, and failing by design, because the current agreements between the Commonwealth and state governments for public school funding in effect guarantee that most schools will never be fully funded.

At my request, the Parliamentary Budget Office investigated one option to address this underfunding: lifting the Commonwealth government's share of funding for public schools to 25 per cent of the SRS by 2028. Their report shows that the total cost to 2028 would be $9.18 billion, or about $1.8 billion a year. The PBO also estimated that an average of about $3.5 billion would be required each year afterwards. For context, the stage 3 tax cuts are estimated to cost $20.4 billion in their first year alone. In other words, just a relatively modest investment would go a hell of a long way towards ensuring that every child has what they need to succeed at school.

Of course, while costings like the PBO's are very useful, in all the talk of funding we must remember that, as the Gonski report itself noted, funding for schooling must not be seen simply as a financial matter but rather as investing to strengthen and secure Australia's future. This is all the more reason the government must not shirk the challenge before them—the challenge to find the money and invest in our kids—because, as the Gonski report also noted, Australia and its children now and in the future deserve nothing less.

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