Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) notes that:

(a) only 1.3 per cent of public schools nationally receive their full schooling resource standard funding, while 98 per cent of private schools are currently overfunded;

(b) in Queensland this year, public schools will be underfunded by $1.7 billion, which is approximately $3,000 per student;

(c) schools like Indooroopilly State High School, in the electoral division of Ryan, are so overcrowded that students do not go to the bathroom because the lines are so long; and

(d) public schools should be genuinely free for all students; and

(2) calls on the Government to make public schools genuinely free and immediately lift funding to deliver 100 per cent of schooling resource standard funding to every public school in the country.

If politics is about choices, why is it that this Labor government chooses low taxes for billionaires and big corporations and then chronically underfunds public schools? We know that, right now, only 1.3 per cent of public schools across Australia are fully funded under the Gonski scheme, and that's really only the schools in the ACT. This year, Queensland public schools will be underfunded to the tune of $1.7 billion. In my electorate of Griffith, that's $53 million in 2022, which means that schools like Cavendish Road State High School is underfunded by $4.8 million, Balmoral State High School is underfunded by $2.4 million, Whites Hill State College is underfunded by $2.5 million and Narbethong State Special School is underfunded by $28,000 per student.

This has awful impacts on our public education system, and it beggars belief when Australia is one of the wealthiest countries in the world and when fossil fuel corporations and big corporations like Coles and Woolworths and the big banks have record profits—the Commonwealth Bank alone recorded a $10 billion profit. That $10 billion is enough to fully fund public schools, but it's going into the coffers of the Commonwealth Bank in the form of profit instead. The government does have the power to raise taxes on those big corporations and fully fund our public schools but, instead, they choose low taxes on big corporations and chronic underfunding of public schools.

The impacts are many and disgraceful, frankly, in a wealthy country like Australia. We know that, over the next few years, 40 per cent of public schools surveyed are going to run out of space. There's talk about mould in classrooms and air conditioners that don't work. But, more importantly in a way, it deprives students and teachers of the time and resources they need to provide the best education they can. Ask any public school teacher and they'll tell you they're chronically overworked, classroom sizes are too big and, often, they're having to dip into their own pockets just to cover the basics to make those schools function.

The idea of free public education in Australia is a bit of a lie. Every parent knows—or the vast majority of parents know—that schools are going to ask them to pay voluntary student fees, which, if they don't pay, often means that their kids don't get to participate in sport or any of the other extracurricular activities. This means, right now, we have a system where parents of public school students are having to pay extra just to make the schools function because the federal government refuses to fully fund public education.

What we know is that, over the last few years, the Productivity Commission has found that real per-student government spending on private schools grew by 3.7 per cent a year in the decade to 2022. That's 60 per cent higher growth than for public schools, which only saw a 2.3 per cent annual increase. So there was more of an increase in funding for private schools than there was an increase in funding for public schools. We know that five private schools spent, over a decade, more money on their facilities than did 3,000 public schools. That is deeply unacceptable—again, in a country like Australia that apparently prides itself on equal opportunity and its egalitarian society.

The other impacts are many. If you have a situation in a cost-of-living crisis where parents have less capacity to pay—especially in working-class or poor areas——it just means those public schools get less funding. What that means is that teachers can't be paid as much, schools can't hire as many teachers as they need to hire and, so, we have a flow-on effect where teachers are being chronically overworked, experienced teachers are becoming burnt out as a result of having to deal with much-too-large classes and much-too-high workloads, and then we're losing experienced teachers, which puts more of a burden on the new teachers coming in, which increases the burnout, and that's partly what has caused the massive teacher shortage across Australia. We know that it's tough for those teachers, especially in rural and regional areas and poor and working-class areas, and it's tough for those families who can't afford to pay more to the school to offset the chronic government underfunding. The teachers then have to deal with difficult situations in the classroom, but they don't have the funding or support to do it.

Despite all of that, public school teachers do a heroic job, as do P&Cs and student and parent committees in making up for that chronic underfunding. But why is it that so often the burden falls on teachers, students and parents to make up for the fact that the government has chosen, for whatever reason, low taxes for big corporations and chronic underfunding of public education? The frustration here is that they could fix this, they could tax big corporations and they could fully fund our public schools.

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