David Fawcett (Wakefield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is addressed to the Prime Minister. Would the Prime Minister outline to the House how the government is supporting choice in education for Australian families? Is the Prime Minister aware of any alternative views?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Wakefield. As somebody who for 40 years both in the Liberal Party organisation before I entered parliament and in the parliament as a member, as a Treasurer, as an opposition leader, as a spokesman on various matters and for the last 11 years as Prime Minister, as somebody who has been for all of those years a true believer in choice in education, not a latter-day believer, not a political believer but a true believer in choice in education, I say to the member for Wakefield that the choice available for Australian parents is strong and real under this government.

I say that as a great admirer of the government education system and as a proud product of the government education system of New South Wales. I will always be grateful for the education I received in the government system in New South Wales in the 1940s and 1950s; nonetheless, I am great believer in choice. I can inform the member that almost one-third of all students in Australia are now attending non-government schools. That represents a 21.5 per cent growth in non-government school enrolments since 1996 and that compares to a one per cent growth in government school enrolments in the same period.

As I think honourable members know, much of the growth in the non-government school sector has occurred in what you might loosely call the low- or medium-fee independent sector rather than in the Catholic systemic sector or in the more traditional GPS sector, where, although there has been some growth, the growth has not been great. I notice that the Leader of the Opposition has said that his party has abandoned the hit list policies of both the Beazley and Latham periods of Labor leadership. I think it is worth recalling for the House that the growth in the small independent school sector has largely resulted from the decision taken by this government in 1997, pursuant to a promise made in the 1996 election campaign, to abolish what was unusually and inappropriately described as Labor’s ‘new schools policy’. Although it is 11 years ago it is worth recalling that, under that policy, broadly speaking you could not establish a new independent school in an area already serviced by a government school or a Catholic school. Effectively, that meant you would not get the funding, and that particularly restricted the efforts of people in the outer metropolitan areas of the larger cities to establish new non-government schools.

We promised to change that, and we did. But we only got the change through as a result of the support we received from Senator Brian Harradine, and 10 years after the event I record my continuing gratitude to Senator Harradine for supporting us. When the parents of children at independent schools in the category I am referring to hear what the Leader of the Opposition says about his new policy, I think they should be reminded that Senator Carr, who is now the shadow minister for industry but who was then the spokesman on education, said during a debate on an amendment to reinsert the old restrictive approach of the previous policy:

We believe that, on the issue of choice, private schooling is an addition, not an alternative, in terms of providing reasonable access to quality government schooling.

It is also interesting to note that, on 4 September, during the debate on the bill to introduce the SES funding formula, the now Leader of the Opposition criticised the amount of funding that would go to category 1 schools under the new funding formula. This is what the Leader of the Opposition had to say when he was speaking in that debate:

... the proposal put forward by the shadow minister for education, Michael Lee, to instead dedicate this funding to special needs education is in fact a wise way to go.

He went on to describe funding to category 1 schools as a ‘windfall allocation to schools that do not need this money at the end of the day’. In other words, this newfound believer in freedom of choice does not really believe that category 1 schools should get any funding at all, that it is a windfall to those schools. So my advice to parents who want to exercise freedom of choice when they hear the Leader of the Opposition is that he is a Johnny-come-lately on this subject. He has never believed in it, whereas he is opposed by somebody who has been a true believer in choice in education all of my active political life.