James Stevens (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Government Waste Reduction) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to contribute on the second reading of the Better and Fairer Schools (Funding and Reform) Bill 2024 and, even more importantly, the amendment that's been moved by a Greens member, because the position of the Greens when it comes to school funding is very important and very relevant to all Australians but particularly to the people of my electorate of Sturt.

In my electorate of Sturt, 56 per cent of enrolments in secondary education is with the non-government school sector. That's more than half of the families in my electorate of Sturt who send their children in secondary school to a non-government school. Regrettably, the Greens have a radical and frightening policy position to defund non-government schools. If they get their way, if they are successful at the next election and can implement their values when it comes to school funding, they will be ripping away the entirety of taxpayer funding to the non-government school sector. That is truly frightening to me, to the parents in my electorate of Sturt who send their children to non-government schools and to any parent around the country who either sends their school children to non-government schools now or intends to in the future. This will be the most radical defunding of education in the history of the Commonwealth of Australia. That is the proposition that the Greens seek to implement if they succeed in having some kind of powerful position post the next election.

Why? The Greens are a communist party. At every opportunity they want government to do absolutely everything. They hate the non-government school sector because that is not the government providing an option for parents to educate their children. When it comes to the non-government school sector, it's even worse because almost the entirety of non-government schools are run by the faith based sector. One thing the Greens hate more than the government not doing something is the faith based sector providing services like education to our community. My position couldn't be more the reverse of the Greens when it comes to that. Whether it's education, aged care or the many programs that the faith sector provides in our community, we are lucky to have them and grateful for what they do. At every opportunity we will bitterly resist and oppose the hatred that the Greens have for the faith community and the faith sector.

Their position on defunding non-government schools is probably the one that would have the most frightening impact, particularly on my constituents. That's why I take the opportunity in this debate on school funding to make it very clear that there is an election coming up in less than six months. I think, regrettably, the Greens have had these crazy policy positions for a long time, and not enough attention has been put on the positions that they hold. In the last 12 months, I think people have started to wake up to the Greens—who they really are, what they really stand for and what the consequences of voting for the Greens, empowering them and putting them in decision-making positions might be on the lives of everyday Australians. My hope is that, at the next election, people take a much closer look at the policy positions of the Greens than they have in the past.

The Greens were a very different political force 10, 20 or 30 years ago. They were very much an environmental movement that became a political party. In the era of Bob Brown, certainly, they were focused on environmental issues and things that I have a great deal of support towards, like much better custody of our environment and addressing important issues like climate change and other environmental risk. But what has clearly happened in the last 10 years or so is that the Greens environmental political movement has been hijacked by the old socialists and communists, whose brand was completely trashed through the decades of the post-Second World War era up to the fall of the Berlin Wall. They were thoroughly, comprehensively and consistently rejected as a political option by the Australian voters through that time.

They have infiltrated the Greens political party and they have brought their insane policy positions with them, whether it's school funding and scrapping support for the non-government sector, whether it's private health insurance and getting rid of the private health insurance rebate or whether it's reintroducing death taxes on inheritance. In my home state of South Australia, they want to scrap the naval shipbuilding sector completely. That would mean more than 10,000 jobs in the South Australian economy gone. All these things will have an enormous impact on the people of Sturt, the people of South Australia and the people of Australia. But I actually think that the most significant and serious issue is their frightening position on funding for non-government schools.

I say very clearly to the non-government schools sector that we in the coalition back you and support you. We are here to make sure that you keep the quite appropriate, justified and necessary financial support that you receive from the taxpayer. Eighty per cent of school funding to the non-government sector comes from the Commonwealth. That will absolutely be there, reliably, under a coalition government. But the threat to it is the frightening scenario of the Greens political party holding some kind of balance of power after the next election and using that balance of power to implement their radical agenda. No. 1 on their list, unfortunately, is the non-government school sector and funding from the taxpayer to the non-government school sector. That will increase school fees for the parents of my electorate of Sturt by thousands of dollars a year, on average. In the middle of this cost-of-living crisis, the last thing that the people of Sturt need—56 per cent of the parents in Sturt send their children to a non-government school—is their school fees going up by thousands and thousands of dollars a year because the Greens have been able to implement their frightening agenda to de-fund the non-government school sector.

Now, this will be a debate that will, I think, be very significant in my electorate and many electorates through the campaign that is already under way, and there will be a spotlight on the position that the Greens have to de-fund non-government schools like there never has before. The unfortunate reality is that there is a higher likelihood than ever that they will be in a position to hold a future potential minority Labor government to ransom on these issues if we don't call them out on their policy positions and if we don't ensure that we defeat them at the next election. We are lucky and grateful to have the non-government school sector in this country. In some electorates, like mine, they educate more than half the students. Parents actively make a choice to send their children to a non-government school. We believe in choice and we believe in those options being properly and appropriately supported through taxpayer funds. Don't forget, an enormously higher amount of money goes to the government sector—generally and on a per-student basis—than the non-government sector. If we didn't have the non-government sector, the cost of providing education in this country would absolutely explode, and that means higher taxes for everyone. So, on top of the increased school fees for parents under the Greens' school funding policies, we'd also have to dramatically increase taxation on all Australians to fund the enormous growth that would be necessary in funding the government sector, because a lot of parents wouldn't be able to afford—if their school fees go up by thousands of dollars a year—to keep their kids in the schools that they're in right now.

I condemn the Greens for this dangerous policy but I give them a commitment that I will join with them in making sure everyone knows where they stand when it comes to funding the non-government sector or, in their case, de-funding it.

See this speech in context