Michael Danby (Melbourne Ports, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I want to talk about school funding and in particular certain schools in my electorate which have been grossly underfunded and discriminated against. These schools serve the Orthodox Jewish community. They are Yeshivah College, Adass Israel School, Yesodei Hatorah College and Sholem Aleichem College. They are all fine schools which serve both the religious and secular needs of this community. They do particularly well academically within their limited resources. They are not wealthy schools, and the level of resources that they can offer their students is not comparable to some other schools in my electorate.

Under the Howard government, the SES model is used to fund these schools, as it is for all other independent schools, but because these schools are in relatively affluent suburbs, they are classed as wealthy schools. This is one of the underlying faults of the SES model. We have basically a lot of poorer kids in a wealthy postcode and large families, which are quite natural for this community within my electorate. Yeshivah College, for instance, is classed as being as wealthy a school as Wesley College whereas in fact it has nothing like the same level of resources.

During the 2001 election campaign, the then education minister, Dr Kemp, made a specific promise to these schools. He promised that he would review the effect of the SES model on these schools. In a letter to the Australian Jewish News, he said, ‘There will be funding certainty for the Jewish schools under the coalition.’ In fact, the only certainty is that nothing was done. During the 2004 election campaign, Brendan Nelson came to Melbourne Ports and accused Labor of threatening these schools’ funding, while promising increased aid to these schools. Still nothing was done.

Now, finally, the new Minister for Education, Science and Training, Ms Bishop, has announced that the unfair SES system is being reviewed. The Howard government has admitted that its system for the funding of non-government schools has broken down. But the disadvantage of these less well-off Jewish schools in my electorate will continue unless the situation for these schools, which are grossly underfunded under the government’s model of education funding, is solved, as the Liberals have promised for the last eight years—promises they have not honoured.

Now, through a media mouthpiece, the new education minister has the cheek to say she is going to come to my electorate, among other electorates where there are large numbers of independent school students, and expose the Labor Party. Well, she is in for a shock if she comes to Melbourne Ports, because parents from these schools will be demanding that the funding promised to them by two previous education ministers be given to them—and, if I were them, I would be asking for back pay. Where is the funding that these schools should have got over the last eight years, funding that has been denied them and that would have given them the same level of resources as surrounding schools?

The minister’s statement must be followed by action that deals with this grossly unfair situation we have at present. The minister should also admit that the promise made by Dr Kemp in 2001 that appeared on the front page of the local newspaper on 19 October 2001—that Jewish schools in Melbourne Ports would not be disadvantaged by his SES system—has not been kept. Similarly, the promise by the previous minister for education, Brendan Nelson, made in 2004 to these schools—again, coincidentally before the last federal election—has also not been kept.

I cannot believe the level of hypocrisy of going to the media and saying, ‘I am coming to attack Labor in electorates where there is a high level of participation in independent schools,’ when your government made promises to the constituents, parents and students of my electorate over the last two elections that it did not keep, did not honour, and then having some mouthpiece of yours say that these seats are vulnerable at election time for political exploitation by the Liberal Party. If I were a parent of students at one of those schools, I would be rising up, like many writers of letters to the editor in my electorate have been, pointing out the hypocrisy and double standards of the Liberal Party and of successive Liberal education ministers over this issue. Labor are also reviewing our policies on schools, and I welcome that. I am confident that in 2007 we will have a policy that offers fair treatment to all schools, not just in my electorate but in all electorates, particularly to the less well-off schools in our community.