Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I hope you will remain to hear the bits of wisdom of which I intend to advise the government on this matter. Prior to question time I made the point, firstly, that when it comes to the funding of government schools, which are not included in this legislation, the Australian taxpayer contributes about 50 per cent through such taxes as the GST. In fact, whatever the activity of state governments it is typical that 50 per cent of their expenditures on whatever service is provided are funded through this parliament by the Australian taxpayer.

I also argued the case, just prior to question time, that there is a huge shortage of teaching staff in both the private and public sectors who are capable of teaching the higher levels of maths and other such subjects that are necessary to give young people the opportunity to enter university to study engineering, medicine and many other professions. In an experience known to me, an elite private school charging very significant fees talked a student into taking a lower standard of maths to ensure she got a higher TEE. When I heard this, I queried the University of WA as to whether this was a fact. The Vice-Chancellor replied, ‘Yes, we look at the TEE levels, but if the subjects by which it has been earned are not of the necessary level for admission to these professions then the student does not get selected.’ The student, having done extremely well with her TEE levels, consequently had to take on an entirely different course from the one that she desired.

I made the point that, if this shortage of teachers exists, it is probably time for the government to give special consideration to any impediments to retired professionals coming back into schools to teach these special subjects on a part-time basis and being remunerated. That remuneration should not affect any of their other entitlements. (Time expired)

Darren Cheeseman (Corangamite, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today I rise to speak on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and associated bill. The first bill is for an act to grant financial assistance for non-government primary and secondary education for the period of 2008-12 and for related purposes. Through new grants and funding structures such as the new national partnerships scheme, this government is improving the quality of education for both private schools and schools in low socioeconomic communities. The Rudd government is reforming the education system to provide equality in a system that has been underfunded for too long. The debate has often been defined by the schools that ‘have’ versus the schools that ‘have not’, by private versus public, by traditional versus innovative by and the previous federal government versus the states. We are now heading into uncertain economic times and I note there has not been sufficient development in the education system since the early 1990s.

We have a responsibility in this economic climate to invest our best efforts into the education of individual students no matter what type of school they attend—whether it be public, private or Catholic. The Rudd government is committed to providing all schools with security and certainty through national school reform as a part of Labor’s education revolution. In supporting independent schools the government is retaining the current Commonwealth funding arrangements for the period 2009-12. Within these arrangements the socioeconomic status score funding model, the current indexation arrangement, will be maintained. In the long term the government is undertaking a review of funding arrangements which will include an extensive consultation process with all stakeholders. This legislation will contain a new accountability and performance-reporting framework for non-government schools and systems. This will bring independent schools in line with the framework proposed for government schools under the national education agreement which is currently being negotiated through the Council of Australian Governments.

This is an important reform of our education system, which we promised at the last election and are now delivering on. We are honouring our commitment made to the Australian people at the 2007 election. In the current economic climate, we cannot underestimate the importance of quality education and good schools to the nation’s future prosperity and social goals. This reform to our education system has come not too soon. Around the world today, governments are dealing with the most challenging global economic conditions in living memory. To give you an example, when considering the current economic climate, it is interesting to observe the effects of the last time we had serious economic upheavals. Observing school retention rates produced by the Australian Bureau of Statistics in 1989 the secondary school retention rate was just 60 per cent. This rapidly increased for the three years to 1992, when 77 per cent of students stayed in secondary education to year 12 level or equivalent.

It is easy just to cite figures from the Australian Bureau of Statistics, but, to emphasise the point, I was actually in school at that point. I was at Mount Clear Secondary College in the early nineties and I witnessed firsthand the drying up of jobs for unskilled labour. It was a common theme for a lot of the students that I went to school with that we stayed at school because job opportunities were no longer there. Some of my peers had elder siblings who had left school to undertake a trade, and those opportunities no longer existed by the time I reached that point in my life. There were a number of older students who returned to school because the employment opportunities that they had taken up had dried up as the international economy contracted.

One thing we need to keep in mind is that the Liberals in 12 years did nothing to reform our education system. Today’s challenges and tomorrow’s challenges must be dealt with through comprehensive legislation, and I believe this legislation does that. Be they secondary school leavers or graduates, we need to be able to provide all students with the skills to participate in a workforce dominated by tighter demands through this economic turmoil. This is not totally about fixing a system to accommodate unfortunate circumstances; this is also about fixing a system that has begun to fail school leavers and graduates in many circumstances. For instance, chapter 3 of the Economic survey of Australia 2008, published last week by the OECD, states:

… reading performance has deteriorated between 2003 and 2006 and a considerable gap in performance related to disadvantage remains.

The last decade has seen opportunity after opportunity go missing. However, Labor are delivering on the promises that we took to last year’s federal election. We are not talking about core promises versus non-core promises, as the previous Liberal government did. We are talking about promises that we made to the people of Australia, and we will deliver on them in full. To borrow from the Prime Minister’s speech at the National Press Club on 27 August 2008:

This challenge is becoming increasingly complex as the balance of global strategic and economic power shifts to the Asia-Pacific region, as terrorism continues as a global and regional threat, and new challenges emerge such as energy security.

This is important, but we cannot do this if we cannot read or write. This government is committed to equipping students with literacy and numeracy skills so we can meet the modern and future challenges that face our country and our families. It is patently obvious that year 9 students who have difficulty with numeracy and literacy are more likely to leave school. It is our responsibility to equip every school leaver with the knowledge and skills they need to be able to tackle the demands of today’s and tomorrow’s society.

We cannot ignore the fact that nations in advanced and emerging industrial economies are investing in strategies for rapid educational improvement for their citizens. Australian enrolment rates in early childhood education are very low by international standards. In 2006 Australia maintained a 40 per cent enrolment rate for children aged four and under as a percentage of the population aged between three and four. The OECD average was 70 per cent for the same period. Of greater concern is the fact that 30 per cent fewer Indigenous people reach year 12 qualifications in comparison to their non-Indigenous counterparts. Australia cannot take its high achievements for granted any longer. Overall, our progress as a nation has been held back by a long tail of underachievement at the bottom, with little support from the last government to address this. To combat this, our aim is to raise year 12 retention rates to 90 per cent by 2020. We are going to halve the retention rate gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students by 2020. We are determined to close the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

This government is determined to make big improvements right across the board to bring an end to the culture of toleration—the idea that it is okay for some children from poorer homes and disadvantaged communities to be left behind in their education. This government has a responsibility to reform the education system and provide basic skills as well as a high level of education and critical skills for those individuals to be able to survive and prosper in our community. This government is committed to implementing an education revolution, which is obviously a policy agenda to significantly improve the quality of Australian schools. There is a need for school reform to assist education for disadvantaged communities, and this is also an opportunity, of course, to provide positive reform for schools that are doing well. I do not want to take away from the fact that many of Australia’s independent schools are achieving excellent results. All of the reforms that we are undertaking to assist students and schools and to create a national framework are available for all schools, whatever system they come from—whether they be independent, public or Catholic.

In the May budget we allocated $19.3 billion over the next four years for education initiatives. This includes a national curriculum for all students in English, maths, science and history—all very important and critical elements to any national curriculum. We also included a national Asian literacy program, which I think is a tremendous initiative that will give us the skills to respond to the growing opportunities that exist within Asia. We provided $1.2 billion for the digital education revolution, leading to the development of a world-class national curriculum and the rollout of trade-training centres in schools throughout Australia. These initiatives are already well underway, with independent schools receiving over $12 million in funding to date. In my electorate, Trinity College Colac received 142 new computers. Over time, the digital education revolution will provide access to a computer for every student in year 9 through to year 12. This reform has been driven by new understandings about the best ways to improve educational outcomes.

A report by the McKinsey consultancy group titled How the world’s best-performing school systems come out on top published in September of last year confirms the importance and significance of high-quality teaching within schools. It is obvious that we need the right people to become teachers in our communities. In Australia, the average starting wage of a teacher is 75 per cent of the wage that they will be earning in 15 years time, which is coincidently also the peak. We need to develop the skills of educated people to become effective instructors. A great chef is not necessarily going to be a great teacher of apprentices. We need to recognise and reward good teachers and, where possible, direct the best teachers to where they are required to help educate the most disadvantaged communities. Through the new National Partnership on Quality Teaching this government will ensure that the best graduates are recruited, that the best teachers are rewarded, that school leadership is recognised and that excellent facilities are provided. Those resources will be directed to where they are required the most, irrespective of whether they are a government school or a non-government school.

Integral to the Rudd government’s reform of the education system is the establishment with the states of the National Schools Assessment and Data Centre. This government is providing $17.2 million for the National Schools and Data Centre, which will ensure effective program implementation. By analysing all data collected from educational institutions, from early learning centres through to secondary schools, we will be able to effectively direct resources where they are most needed. In order for this data to be accessible, from 1 January next year schools will be required to report on performance as part of the national education agreement. Within this framework parents will be able to see how their children are performing at school and how their school is performing for their children. In creating a standard format by which educational institutions can be assessed, there will be consistent reporting of data that is relevant to understanding the effectiveness of schools and educational providers.

There will be consistent data on student populations. There will be clear data on socioeconomic status numbers. There will be relevant data on Indigenous student numbers, students with disabilities and students who are learning English as a second language. Through these processes we can establish the differences that extra resources make. We can provide better information to parents and to students about their education and their educational provider. We can be better informed as a whole in assisting the future development of positive informed policy. This framework will give parents, the public and the government information about every school. We are creating a sound policy of equality in education standards. The same rules will apply to both public and private schools nationwide.

This government, unlike the last, has not been asleep at the wheel. The Labor Party went to the polls last year knowing full well what we were about to do—that is, to create an education revolution that would go across all school sectors. The government are intent on rebuilding the literacy and numeracy levels within our communities. We are intent on improving the quality of teaching and on providing a sound education system for both public and private sectors, with substantial improvements in educational outcomes. This is paramount to the current generation of students, who will need skills to meet the demands of the future. We have to equip all of our children, whether they be in public or private schools, with the education to improve their chances of having successful, rewarding and fulfilling lives. School reform is critical to cementing a sound future for Australia. I commend the bills to the House.

Bruce Billson (Dunkley, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Sustainable Development and Cities) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution to the bills before the parliament—the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I follow parliamentary colleagues with interest, and I particularly empathise with some of the newer members of parliament. The member for Corangamite, who I wish well with his parliamentary career, is beset by one of the great challenges of being a new member of parliament—and that is being fitted up with speech material that the executive has provided. It fails the test of being the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. It usually contains some very good debating points and is usually very good for rallying the troops at a Labor branch meeting, but it seems to gloss over many of the realities that are actually part of the debate. But that is something that the longer one has the honour and responsibility of representing a community in this place the more one becomes more alert to it and the more one does some of one’s own research just to try and make sure that that the argument being put forward is rounded and reasonable.

This is something I draw into the debate today. These are an interesting combination of bills. This is actually the ‘Mark Latham insight package’. I remember when the current Prime Minister was amongst many in a cheer squad suggesting that Mark Latham would be a great Prime Minister for Australia. They were grim days for some in the Labor Party, and I acknowledge the counselling that followed for many after those difficult years. But at that time the then Labor opposition leader, supported by the current Labor leader, who is our Prime Minister, was running around the country with a hit list of schools. In some kind of throwback to divisive warfare between people claimed to be of privilege and people claimed not to be, we had a list of schools that were under attack and going to have their funding significantly reduced. Much has been said about these bills, but there is one undeniable truism—that is, they were inspired by insights gained when Mark Latham was the leader of the Labor Party. It was not a wise thing—in fact, in political terms, it was very courageous—to be open and frank with the Australian public about carving out significant funds of money from school communities.

These are school communities characterised as non-government school communities. These are school communities that, in addition to accepting the responsibility and challenge of creating an education institution that meets their ambitions and that focuses on the kind of curriculum outcome and the learning environment, develop a supportive, nurturing school community of the kind that people are prepared to commit not only themselves to but also commit their resources to. They make a private decision to direct some of their personal income, over and above the taxes they pay, into providing a different kind of school opportunity for their children.

The debate, which I had hoped was long past, said that having made that decision, having chosen to use some of their own family’s personal income to direct those resources to the education of their children, should not immediately make parents incapable of receiving assistance that would be available to other parents for the education of their children. What was needed was a system to put in place how to calibrate that level of support. What emerged was the SES system, a model that took account of the wealth and income—primarily the income—of census collector districts in neighbourhoods where the students who attended those schools came from and then used that as a relevant proxy to calculate what was an adequate level of funding for those non-government schools. Something that is often overlooked is that people often forget that under any circumstances under the application of that model would you find the poorest Australian families who go without much to support a decision to send their child to a non-government school—even for the poorest of Australian families, they were not going to receive more than 70 per cent of the funding that went towards the education of a student from one of the wealthier Australian families who happened to be attending a government school. This is an interesting thing to appreciate, that no matter how impoverished family may be, the level of assistance the Australian taxpaying community and governments provided would never exceed more than 70 per cent—and that is compared to funding available in government schools. This was the context. So the SES model that was put forward had that sensitivity to the income levels of the neighbourhoods from which students were derived so that those from wealthier neighbourhoods might receive as little as 30 per cent of the funding available for the education of their child from government sources compared to if that child was attending a government school. That also said to students coming from poorer communities that the school community which they attended would benefit from getting a higher level of funding than if the students had come from wealthier neighbourhoods. It also said to schools, perhaps in wealthier communities or perhaps blessed with students from wealthier families, that it was in those school communities’ interests to embrace scholarships and opportunities from those from a less fortunate background, as that would not only enrich and broaden the population within the school community, but there would be some financial encouragement for it as well. This was the notion.

Mark Latham thought he would take an axe to that scheme; he would pick out a handful of school communities. No-one really quite understood how he arrived at the ones he did. I know that in my electorate of Dunkley, school communities that had been working very hard for decades to establish themselves were in the gun. School communities like the Peninsula School—a school that the late Sir Philip Lynch was heavily involved with, a school that has prided itself on being inculcated with its local community—which was one of those in the gun, could not quite work out why. Having worked so hard to establish itself and to get itself onto a viable financial footing, under a Mark Latham Labor government it was going to be rewarded for that enterprise and effort, for that thoughtfulness and efficiency in which it had developed that very impressive school community, by being cut off at the knees. You can imagine the non-government school community was outraged.

Political parties are learning animals. To the Labor Party’s credit, it realised, if it was going to run the ‘me too’ microscopic differences between Labor and the Liberals leading up to the last election, to position Kevin Rudd, our current Prime Minister, as ‘John Howard lite’, that it needed to make as few of these highly contentious and divisive debates as it could. So it went to the electorate saying: ‘Look, we’re going to pretty much keep the funding system that’s there. We’ll go around the countryside bagging the daylights out of it. We’ve got speaker after speaker being highly critical—and then some!—of it at the time of its introduction, but we’ll just leave it and we’ll say to those parents and those non-government school communities, “Rest safely; there is no fear in having the Labor Party elected, because we will maintain the SES funding model.”’ That was the pitch that was put to the Australian public. And this is what is embedded in this bill. The bill seeks to carry forward that election commitment and to provide the framework for which $28 billion will be apportioned between non-government primary and secondary schools in Australia from 2009 to 2012.

But what is also embedded within this bill is that it seeks to give effect to an assurance that nothing will change, if you are a non-government school community participant—parent, student, teacher—with Prime Minister Rudd at the helm. That was the reassurance. Yet, in this bill, all of the foundations for bringing about an enormous change are embedded in this bill. This is the Trojan Horse that non-government school communities have woken up to. The only endearing feature that many in the non-government school community can point to is that those little ticking time bombs have not been activated yet, that there was an election assurance that not much would change, but while the funding triennium works its way through it seems as though everything may change and the non-government school community has many things to be concerned about. So not much will change, but Labor are setting it all up so that they can turn this funding system on its head, and that is what is causing great concern to the opposition and to the non-government school community.

The non-government school community is very diverse, and few that have not been part of it would understand how diverse it is. You often in the debate hear references to Kings and all these high-profile, quite remarkable school communities where those critical of non-government school systems try to point to those exceptions and say they are the rule. They are exceptional and they are exceptions. For the vast majority of school communities in the non-government school sector life is very different. It is not a debate about what next to invest in of an outstanding quality in terms of improvement in facilities and the like; it is about how you sustain the quality of the education that you are offering. You see many selfless, tireless parents in the non-government school community commit weeks and weeks, weekend after weekend, to fund-raising effort after fund-raising effort to make sure that the school community they are so committed to can continue to prosper and hopefully grow and flourish in the years ahead. So when we talk about the non-government school it is important to understand there are different kinds of non-government schools. The SES model introduced by the Howard government sought to identify that.

This bill seeks to carry it forward in some kind of Trojan Horse and embedded within that Trojan Horse are a number of specific areas of concern. The first of these, which a number of colleagues have highlighted it, is that there are changes to the grounds upon which the minister can refuse or delay payment. It talks about qualified audit reports as an example, without going into the fact that you can have a whole range of reasons for qualifications on the audit report that may have absolutely nothing to do with the long-term viability or the capacity of the school community to carry forward its school curriculum. That is issue No. 1.

Issue No. 2 is a new requirement that states comply with the yet to be seen, yet to be finalised, capital ‘N’ national, capital ‘C’ curriculum. This is quite interesting, because there is quite a lot of debate going on at this moment about the formulation of the national curriculum and a number of my colleagues have pointed to some of the interesting suspects that are involved in that exercise. I will not offer a commentary on the input other than to say that never has there been a more important body of work that should involve the broader school community than the national curriculum.

I contacted principals of non-government schools in my electorate. One of the things they said was that it is hard to know quite what that particular funding requirement will mean—the degree of specificity that may be in that national curriculum, the scope for an independent school to remain and retain the word ‘independent’. Are they going to have the opportunity, as happens in many jurisdictions, to work within an approved educational framework that also provides them with the scope to apply the pedagogy, to apply the practice, the learning styles and techniques, the professional insights, the innovations that are at the heart of independent schools? Are they in fact going to be able to retain the ‘independent’ bit of the independent school tag? This is not known. We do not know at this stage whether compliance or strict adherence to the national curriculum will allow scope and flexibility in the years to come to those that choose an alternative curriculum that is highly credible and deemed to satisfy other framework arrangements. This is something of great concern. This is about making sure that ‘independent’ stays in the independent school community so that they can proceed with that innovation, so that they can address particular learning challenges and student needs in the way that they see fit, so that they can innovate and so that they can provide the kind of responsiveness and insight and particular attentativeness to their student population that has attracted so many in the Australian public to have their students attend non-government schools. That is a particular concern.

Another one is the additional reporting requirements for schools, particularly in relation to funding sources. The new section 24(1) in this bill provides a new basis for which schools will need to provide information to the minister without actually disclosing how that information will be used. This is another one of these troubling Trojan Horse elements. It seems to actually invite participating non-government schools to provide the very material that they will then be fitted up with in whatever the post-SES framework will look like. It is unclear what the motive is in the legislation and explanatory memorandum. But if you look at some of the speeches that have been made about the SES model, and even if you listen to some of the members that are making their contributions here, you start to get a sense that there will be a new basis on which funding will be allocated, yet to be described, yet to be defined, but some new definition of ‘need’.

Need is a good starting position, and that is what the SES model sought to address, but the complexity and composition of non-government schools and the nature of their activity make some of the glib, simplified rhetoric-inspired notions that seem to be put forward to substitute for the SES very worrying indeed. What are the grounds that will be now explored through additional reporting requirements—reporting requirements that do not have any utility in relation to the funding model and structure as it stands, but information that will be harvested nonetheless for an application that many in the non-government school community are quite worried about? What will be made of school communities that offer extracurricular activity—some of the commitments to sports and the arts that are part of the comprehensive curricular and learning offering that non-government schools provide?

Will we get back to the old ERI—the educational resource index—days of the former Labor government, where someone tried to run around and find any avenue or source of resources that might come into the school? You started to seeing non-government schools overseeing conglomerates of different business enterprises as they tried to present the material in a credible way, given that that was what was encouraged of them through the ERI? What do you do about those sporting commitments? What do you do about programs of excellence—about music, about extracurricular activities, about participation in cadets? These are things that some would say are bolted on, but in many non-government schools they are inculcated in the full engagement and involvement that parents and students are expected to make. Or is this the Trojan Horse of the Victorian model where a base rate is applied and then there is some justification for wiggling that one way or another or adding on other things? This is not clear. This is why the non-government school community are nervous and this is why they have written to the minister. The AISV has written to the minister seeking to have a dialogue about these things, because so much about this bill is not explained. We have the comfort that we will keep things going as they are but also a Trojan Horse where so many other motives, and not all of them terribly positive motives, seem to be given life in these provisions that we are debating today.

Then there is also the removal of the new non-government schools establishment grants. I had a quick ring around the school communities in my area—particularly those that are in a formative stage and are just starting to take enrolments—and I am hopeful that they will not be disadvantaged. This is a throwback to the old new schools policy of the former Labor government, under which there were no new schools. It was a euphemism. They had a new schools policy which did all it can to discourage the establishment of new schools.

Let us look at some practical examples. I have touched on the concerns about how adherence to the national curriculum may or may not work and how there is a desperate need for the non-government and broader teaching community to be more involved in that exercise. Many of them referred me to example of where they felt like they were just bystanders hearing about and learning of things through the media. They were not clear about how that was going to evolve. They were not opposed to the general idea, but they were wondering how they could be a part of it so that their interests and their school community’s objectives could be addressed and incorporated.

There were other issues. I will give you one example. There is a remarkable school community in the electorate of Dunkley. This is St Anthony’s Coptic Orthodox College in Frankston North, a school community that purchased a disused former state government primary school and over the last 13 years has established a P to 12 curriculum in stages, meeting all the academic requirements for them and achieving very impressive academic outcomes for their students. They now have over 300 students commuting from as far away as Melbourne, some 45 kilometres away, to attend this school community, where their Coptic Orthodox faith is embedded in a very credible and highly valued educational experience for the families and students that attend.

This school community spends about $600,000 a year on transport, as it brings 300 of its 320 students to that learning institution in Frankston North each day. How will that be viewed? Will that be viewed as some displacement of resources? Will this community be penalised because of the transport levy that is imposed on its students, which is not a small amount? It is important that those students have the opportunity to be educated in the way that their family and they aspire to. I admire what Father Daniel Gabriel and all of the team at St Anthony’s Coptic Orthodox College are doing. I hope that they will not be penalised for offering a door-to-door transport service for a population catchment that probably has about 1.5 million to two million people in, of whom 300 make that journey to Frankston North every day. Their fundraising efforts should not be penalised. (Time expired)

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. One of the joys of sitting in the Speaker’s chair for much of the day is that you get to hear lots of speeches. I have listened to quite a few on this legislation today. I listened to the member for Dunkley, the member for Kalgoorlie and the member for O’Connor, and the constant criticism was that we on the Labor side are the ones who create this ‘them and us’ mentality within the education system. But all of those speeches were about creating a ‘them and us’ system.

What those opposite are saying is this: ‘Parents out there whose children are at non-independent schools—government schools—are bad. They are obviously rotten parents. They are obviously bad parents because they are not sacrificing enough because they are sending their children to government schools. They are not doing enough to support those government schools.’ Everybody in this place knows that that just is not true. Everybody on the opposition side goes to countless fundraisers at government schools.

I spent my weekend at two of my fantastic schools. The Mont Albert Primary School had an art show on Friday night. It was out of this world. It was put on by three of the parents. They got some phenomenal artists. Out of the sale of the art that was on display at the Mont Albert Primary School, a state government school, they raised much needed funds. The school supports a whole lot of recently arrived migrants who are not able to attend the school because they are in a bridging visa E situation and they are not eligible to be within the state school system because they are non-residents. The school will continue to support those kids through the funds raised, as well as giving much needed facilities to the school. The art show was held in a hall that was built through funds raised by the parents over years at the Mont Albert fete.

On Saturday, I then went to Our Lady’s Primary School in Wattle Park, a local Catholic primary school that was having its annual fete. It is one of the big things in the neighbourhood. Annually, you run into literally everybody at the fete at Our Lady’s. I ran into all my nephews, I ran into my mother, I ran into my brother and his son, I ran into half the kids and parents from my school, the Wattle Park Primary School. It is a great day and we go to the fete because we want to support education in our electorate. We do not divide; we support education.

I am really over the opposition bemoaning parents who send their children to all sorts of schools, because it is wrong. There are parents out there struggling day in, day out to send their children to independent, non-independent and government schools, to send their children to TAFE and to send them off to university. They should not be lambasted for not having the resources or the desire to send their child to an independent school.

I am not going to bag independent schools; I went to one. I am a proud product of the Catholic school system. I praise my parents, who sent their five kids to Catholic schools from prep to HSC. Think about it: my dad was a bank teller. He did not have a lot of money. And my mum only returned to the workforce much later in life to teach within the Catholic education system. We are proud of that. We are proud of the fact that they then managed to send five of their children, the first generation, to university. It would never have happened unless we had had Labor governments, because we are the ones who introduced support for non-government schools. I am sorry: I am sick of the ‘them and us’ argument, and it is the opposition that keeps running with it.

The Rudd government came to office last year on a platform that highlighted several key areas in which to invest significant resources. On top of the agenda was introducing an education revolution to the Australian schooling system. We made a commitment to the Australian public that we would develop a new educational framework for investment and reform in Australian schools. Through 2008, we have been working towards that goal, setting the foundations for Australia to be at the forefront of educational outcomes into the future. Already we are beginning to see tangible components of the education revolution throughout Australia, with computers being rolled out in schools, new trades centres being planned and an education tax refund available for expenses that have occurred since July of this year.

The Rudd government also made a commitment to right the wrongs of the past and made Indigenous reconciliation a focal point of its tenure in office. The commitment of this government to the issue was made clear when the Prime Minister formally apologised to Indigenous Australians for the oppressive laws and policies of former Australian governments. One of the key messages to arise from the apology was that reconciliation through apology and acknowledgement, while vitally important, is not enough on its own. The Prime Minister committed the government to closing the gaps that exist between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in key areas such as education.

It is the context of these two interconnecting issues that I address the chamber today regarding the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. Throughout the years of the Howard government, school funding was delivered without regard for overall quality and with little strategic framework. The Rudd government has rightly positioned education at the forefront of its agenda and will implement measures that will achieve fairer educational outcomes. A world-class educational system is pivotal to Australia’s economic and social future. It is imperative that we invest now to ensure the continued economic and social progression of our nation and that we put in place a framework from which our schools can achieve world-class outcomes.

The Schools Assistance Bill will appropriate $28 billion for non-government schools for the years 2009-12. This bill is part of the Rudd government’s minimum $42-billion commitment for schools funding during this period. This bill is in keeping with the government’s election commitment for non-government schools during 2009-12, and it will give certainty for funding for non-government schools, focus on quality and apply transparency and accountability requirements that are consistent with those for government schools. Let me reiterate that: these are things that we already require government schools to provide. It should not be an impost that non-government schools provide them, and we are giving them certainty into the future. I certainly know from talking to the staff of the fantastic non-government schools in my electorate—Avila College, Emmaus College, Hunting Tower School, Kingswood College, Mount Scopus Memorial College, Our Lady of Sion College, PLC, St Andrews Christian College and Wesley College—that they are all appreciative of the certainty of the funding.

A perpetual focus of Australia’s schooling debate for many years has been the competitive relationship between government and non-government schools. This debate stems from concepts that are somewhat misguided. There are schools from both sectors that struggle with limited resources as they attempt to serve the community. This government has signalled that it is time to move on from the past debates about the funding of government and non-government schools. Instead, we have committed to put our energy into improving the quality of school education for all students. We have indicated the need to take a national approach to our schools through a comprehensive strategy that aims to achieve higher quality in all applicable areas. One of the schools in my electorate that I mentioned, St Andrews Christian College, is a school that started from nothing and is now growing, vibrant school. They are facing uncertainty because the land they are currently renting from Vision Australia has been sold from under them. This is certainty in a very uncertain time for the school community of 300. By the end of 2009, they will have no home to locate to. I am working hard with the school because it is a vibrant school that many parents in my electorate choose to send their children to and enjoy that community. You are not going to go out there and say, ‘You are a bad school because you are a non-government school.’ We are working with all our schools, and I want to assure the community at St Andrews that, hopefully, we will be able to resolve this situation that is getting a bit stark.

To achieve this goal, the Rudd government is working with the Council of Australian Governments, COAG, to develop aspirations and policy directions that will set the framework for investment and reform as we move towards a word-class education system. This will result in a national education agreement, which will be finalised through COAG by the end of this year. This COAG reform agenda will result in all governments in Australia working together to improve outcomes for all children through agreement to a single set of objectives, outcomes and outputs which will deliver consistent schooling across the whole of Australia. Again, I am not sure why there is concern about national consistency. At the end of the day—at year 12—that is what we already have because that is the set of standards that most kids apply to when they are looking for their end result. In Victoria it is the dreaded TER result. Nowadays it seems you have to get 99.9 to get anywhere in this life, and if you are not going to crack the old 99.9 it seems to be fairly devastating. Most schools work towards that final agenda, because those exams—in Victoria it is the SACs—are all set at the same level. Schools are already working towards a basic curricula formula.

We are not going to implement something that is one size fits all, because we do recognise that, within certain school sectors, the religious nature of the school will form a requirement of what they teach. I know that at Mount Scopus College, the largest Jewish school in the country, the study of Hebrew is probably high on people’s agendas. It certainly is within that school, and we will continue to respect that. This national education agreement will allow the government to tackle its three major priorities for reform: raising the quality of teaching in our schools; ensuring all students are benefiting from schooling, especially in disadvantaged communities; and improving transparency and accountability of schools and school systems at all levels. The $28 billion Schools Assistance Bill is a major building block in constructing a national framework for schooling that meets Labor’s election commitments.

Non-government schools in my electorate will welcome the introduction of this bill to parliament. Chisholm is home to many non-government schools, as I have said, that will feel assured by the funding stability the bill offers by maintaining SES funding and indexation arrangements, one of our 2007 election commitments. Chisholm is an extremely diverse and multicultural electorate. My constituents will therefore welcome the fact that this bill targets funding for the teaching of languages other than English, with a commitment of $56.4 million over the next four years for the teaching of Asian, European and Australian Indigenous languages in non-government schools. This bill will also provide $43 million over the next four years for the English as a Second Language—New Arrivals Program to ensure newly arrived migrant and refugee school students receive support in learning English. These commitments will be well-received in Chisholm, as will the government’s continued commitment to the key areas of numeracy and literacy.

An important reform to stem from this bill is that it will help create consistent education reporting and accountability across all schools and sectors. Collecting and reporting on a comprehensive range of school information is critical to ensuring a fair and effective school system and for identifying and addressing the needs of students at risk of educational disadvantage. Greater school accountability was a theme that Labor heavily emphasised prior to the 2007 election. It is a theme we will now deliver on through this bill with the implementation of a simple and strong system of performance information reporting. This bill will see schools deliver high-quality accountability and reporting in a manner that will be far less burdensome than previous arrangements. It will significantly reduce much of the red tape that resulted from reporting obligations imposed by the former government and will focus on five key areas: national testing, participation in a national report on the outcomes of schooling, provision of individual school information, provision of reports to parents and the publication of information by schools.

My endearing nine-year-old got her AIMS test recently for the grade 3 standards. She dutifully informed me how she compared against everybody else in the class, so do not think it does not go on. She knew where she fitted into that band, and she was a bit devastated that her best friend, Clare, got a couple of better scores than she did. So it is not just us who look at these things and want to understand them; it is actually our children too. Even though she had done brilliantly across the board, and I tried to emphasise to her emphatically that she really did not have any worries, she went away feeling that she was not quite good enough in spelling.

It is important that government receives detailed school-level data in order to target resources more effectively in areas of need. The community cannot have a proper, fully informed debate about whether or not schools are funded adequately without information about the needs and capacities which children bring to each school and how well the school is equipped to meet those needs. Parents in my electorate of Chisholm will welcome easy-to-understand, meaningful reporting on how their child is progressing at school and how their school is performing in comparison to others. This will equip parents in my electorate with the evidence they need to make informed decisions regarding their children’s schooling. As mentioned, it will also assist the government in identifying areas where additional assistance is required. These same requirements will also apply to government schools, meaning every parent in Chisholm will have access to the same level of information relevant to their children’s education. This does not mean league tables.

This legislation sees the government honour its election commitments to non-government schools. However, it is important to note that the government will of course deliver Commonwealth funding to public schools. This will occur with the arrival of the national education agreement, mentioned previously, which the government is working on through the COAG processes. This will result in three important new agreements for schools which will improve teacher quality, improve literacy and numeracy standards and assist disadvantaged schools and communities to achieve desired outcomes.

Constituents in my electorate are well aware of the importance of Indigenous reconciliation and closing the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. Many of the schools in Chisholm actively celebrated the Rudd government’s apology in the first sitting week of parliament this year. Whilst I do not have an Indigenous community within my electorate, I do have two non-government schools, Avila College and Wesley College, which actively support Indigenous education in other areas. Wesley College is actively trying to preserve a couple of Indigenous languages—they are being taught and fostered within the school—and they are assisting a remote community with creating a dictionary for Indigenous language. So people in my electorate will be welcoming these measures.

A central element of this bill is the provision of additional funding estimated at $5.4 million for all non-government schools where 80 per cent or more of the students are Indigenous and for non-government schools in remote areas where 50 per cent or more of the students are Indigenous. These schools often serve some of the country’s most disadvantaged children, and it is therefore vital they receive significant support from the government.

This bill amalgamates several separate components of funding for schools with Indigenous students that were previously funded under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act. The Rudd government will provide an estimated $239 million over four years under this newly combined Indigenous funding guarantee and Indigenous supplementary assistance. The government’s commitment to improving the education standards of Indigenous Australian’s through this bill aligns with our commitment to closing the gaps between the educational outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians.

It is on the issue of Indigenous education that I come to the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 that will amend the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000. These new arrangements will result in more funding being provided to Indigenous students by the Rudd government, with more than $500 million being appropriated between 2009 and 2012 for Commonwealth-led initiatives and partnerships.

Initiatives such as the Sporting Chance Program will be maintained through this bill. It will provide support to the expansion of literacy and numeracy programs for Indigenous students and offer professional development support to assist teachers in developing individual learning plans for Indigenous students. This bill will see the Northern Territory receive an additional 200 teachers and three new boarding colleges for Indigenous secondary school students—and, from listening to previous speakers, I know this will be welcome. This bill will dramatically reduce red tape and improve flexibility for education providers to focus on closing the gap in the education outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The changed arrangements for schools will provide greater flexibility in how they support Indigenous education to achieve agreed outcomes.

The vitally important goals of halving the gaps in literacy and numeracy achievement, halving the gaps in year 12 or equivalent attainment and halving the gaps in employment outcomes for Indigenous Australians are key priorities for the Rudd government. We are working with government and non-government education and training providers to meet these goals. The introduction of this bill can make a signification contribution to closing these educational gaps that are crucial to improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

Prior to the 2007 federal election, Labor committed to undertaking an education revolution and to introducing reform aimed at closing the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. The two bills I have spoken about today are at the core of these issues and the Rudd government’s agenda for a better Australia. The implementation of these bills will allow us to move forward confidently and work towards a world-class educational system that is supportive, fair and structured to dramatically improve the educational fortunes of both Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians alike. Both bills will receive the support of my constituents in Chisholm. I commend the bills to the House.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I acknowledge the member for Chisholm. As a youngster, I attended Kerrimuir Primary School, along with the member for Casey, and went to Mont Albert Primary School for sports days. I certainly do not want to punish my parents for sending me to those primary schools.

Of the two bills the House is considering today, I rise to support the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and to oppose the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 amends the Indigenous Educated (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000. The bill focuses on simplifying the legislative arrangements for Commonwealth funding of schools with a high proportion of Indigenous students. It appropriates more than $640.5 million for non-Abstudy payments and anticipates Abstudy payments of an estimated $102.1 million, an amount that will be adjusted as per demand. There is a significant Indigenous population in my electorate that would benefit from this legislation. Census statistics show that in 2006 there were 1,229 Indigenous persons below the age of 19 in Swan. The coalition is committed to improving educational outcomes for Indigenous Australians and will be supporting the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008.

The bill I oppose today is the Schools Assistance Bill. I am concerned not only with the practicality of the components of this bill but also with its dangerous ideological underpinnings. The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 was introduced to the House last month following the expiry of the Schools Assistance (Learning together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004. The bill will appropriate $28 billion to provide funding for non-government schools from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2012.

I am pleased to note that Commonwealth funding for non-government schools remains essentially unchanged. In 2008-09 an estimated 67 per cent, or $6.4 billion, of Commonwealth funding for schools will be provided to non-government schools. The government has also retained the socioeconomic status—SES—funding regime, which it rightly conceded during the 2007 federal election campaign was the will of the people. On the surface, therefore, it may seem that the government has retained the coalition’s policy of support for non-government schools. Indeed, on 9 October, the member for Lalor claimed:

For too long the debate about schools was diverted into unproductive avenues.

                  …              …              …

The true target of our efforts must be individual students no matter which type of school they attend.

                  …              …              …

... we are moving beyond the traditional and discredited focus of schooling debate in Australia; the debate that revolved around competition between sectors and failed to focus on the realities of need and outcome across all sectors.

Fine words. However, as I will point out later in this speech, they are not entirely honest words. Behind the cloak of bipartisanship and pragmatism this bill gives clear suggestions that the Rudd government is planning to replace the SES with the Australian Education Union’s favoured and discredited ERI model. I will return to this topic later in my speech.

Before I outline the components of the bill that I object to I would like to reflect on the importance of non-government schools to Australia and in particular to my electorate of Swan. Recent statistics show that in 2007 a total of 29.9 per cent of primary school enrolments were made at non-government schools. At secondary school level, 33.6 per cent of total enrolments were at non-government schools. In my electorate of Swan, the latest statistics from the state government show that approximately 49 per cent of all enrolments this year were in non-government schools. This breakdown shows a total of 45 per cent of primary school enrolments and 56 per cent of secondary school enrolments at non-government schools. There is thus a greater proportion of non-government schools in my electorate compared to the national average.

This bill is clearly of importance to the many parents and children in my electorate and it is with this in mind that I will express my objections to the bill. I have spent considerable time meeting with parents in my electorate, and they are extremely critical of the Labor state’s curriculum. But they are more concerned that a national curriculum will be heavily weighted to a left-wing education overseen by a communist and will punish non-government schools for participating in the infrastructure developments of their schools. I am concerned by the inclusion of a new provision by which the minister may delay or refuse to authorise payment to a government school. This new provision is detailed in section 15(c) of the bill and states that the minister may intervene in this matter if:

… a law of the Commonwealth or a State requires the body or authority to be audited—the relevant audit:

(i) is expressed to be qualified; or

(ii) expresses concern about the financial viability of the body or authority.

In my experience there are not many audit reports that do not have some sort of qualification in them. The wording of this provision is at present too broad. General points or qualifications by an auditor meant to assist the school in its financial planning could automatically allow the minister to delay payment. Such a provision is likely to put undue pressure on auditors and schools alike to come up with the ‘correct result’ and reduce vital transparency in the auditing industry.

Secondly, I am deeply troubled by the new requirement that schools comply with the national curriculum. As honourable members will no doubt know, part of the Rudd government’s education revolution has been to develop a national curriculum in four subjects: English, mathematics, science and history. Personally, I support a national curriculum. I think that it is a fantastic idea. Requiring non-government schools to abide by a national curriculum is inappropriate. It is likely to prevent Australian citizens from taking internationally respected qualifications such as the International Baccalaureate or the University of Cambridge International Examinations as non-government schools will find it difficult to comply with the national curriculum whilst continuing to teach within their chosen curriculum in other areas.

Similarly, it is likely that alternative educational philosophies, such as Perth Montessori School’s in my electorate of Swan, will face similar difficulties in meeting the requirements of this clause. The Perth Montessori School is based in the suburb of Burswood. Montessori education is centred on the child, with the Montessori ‘director’—or teacher—guiding rather than teaching. They are facilitators in the process of learning. The Montessori director presents the information to the child in a climate of mutual respect. By following and observing the child the Montessori director can recognise and respond to each child’s individual needs. Development of self-esteem, tolerance, mutual respect and concern for others are traits that are nurtured in a Montessori environment. In May I had the pleasure of presenting a flag to the Perth Montessori School and was fortunate enough to be given a tour of the school by principal Gary Pears. I saw for myself the benefits of their different educational approach. The school would simply not be able to function if a national curriculum was forced upon it. Diversity breeds strength, and this legislation would homogenise.

To enforce a national curriculum is to restrict parental choice and to restrict competition in the marketplace. According to an article in the Australian newspaper on 8 October 2008, education is Australia’s third biggest export, worth $13.7 billion, after coal and iron ore. We cannot afford to become uncompetitive in the global market for skills, which is what this provision will propagate. This argument on its own is enough for one to seriously question the wisdom of the national curriculum provision. When one takes into account the initial steps the Rudd government has taken towards its creation, the argument becomes compelling.

The formation of the history curriculum is to be overseen by Professor Stuart Macintyre, a former Communist Party member whose major works include histories of Marxism in Britain and a history of the Australian Communist Party. I ask you, Mr Deputy Speaker: is this professor likely to provide a balanced and accurate history of Australia for the learning of our future generations? Last week the framing document for the English curriculum was released. Whilst the back to basics approach is welcome, the inclusion of critical literacy means we must reserve a decision until the full document is released. The English curriculum is being written by Professor Peter Freebody, a leading advocate of critical literacy in English courses. According to Professor Freebody:

Literacy education is not about skill development, not about deep competence.

This is not a message I would want my son to be taught under, and yet this is the man who, if Kevin Rudd has his way, will dictate what every school child in our country must learn. These choices by the Rudd government show that Labor cannot be trusted to decide on a national curriculum for our government sector, let alone our non-government sector.

Thirdly, I would like to draw attention to the additional reporting requirements for schools, particularly in relation to funding sources that this bill would lead to. Section 24(1) of the bill indicates that the minister will be given substantial new powers to demand information about the internal financial affairs of a school community. Schools in my electorate would have to disclose details about fundraising events, scholarship funds and even PTA meetings and chook raffles, a time-honoured tradition in Australia. Similar to the first provision I spoke about, this places a high red-tape burden upon schools. Non-government schools should be focusing on providing a quality education to their students and not spending resources preparing costly reports for the federal government.

More seriously, though, this is an unwarranted intrusion into the affairs of schools and has significant implication for privacy. Parents should be encouraged to contribute, not discouraged from contributing, extra funds towards their child’s education. Can the government tell me that they do not want a group of interested parents investing in the infrastructure and, more importantly, in the safety of their children’s school? Does investing in infrastructure and safety of the school have to be done only by the state? Why would the curriculum budget be slashed because individuals want to improve the infrastructure of a school? Why? The only reason I can think of is the politics of envy. The only other explanation for why the government would seek this information is that it is planning to return to the union favoured ERI funding system, which has no basis in fairness. The Labor Party wants to build up its database of sensitive financial information and ultimately use it to restrict funding to many non-government schools in my electorate. I will go into this further later in my speech.

Another objection refers to the removal of the non-government schools establishment grants. The Howard government saw merit in increasing the viability of the non-government sector and encouraging new schools where community demand and private sector interest warranted it. This was crystallised in the new non-government schools establishment grants. Sadly, section 100 of this bill only makes provision for those schools approved in 2008 to receive grants in 2009. This amounts to a phasing out of the coalition’s new non-government schools establishment grants. The Labor government would appear to be returning to the ideological position taken in their new schools policy, and ultimately this will make it increasingly difficult to set up a new non-government school.

Having stated my specific objections to the aspects of this policy, I would like to consider in more detail the ideological underpinnings of this Labor bill—in particular, the danger to the SES funding model. The Howard government established the SES, or socioeconomic status, approach in 2001. The SES model, rather than asking parents intrusive questions about their income and other personal information, links student addresses with the ABS census data on three variables: income, education and occupation. The resulting socioeconomic index is then converted into an SES score for each school. The SES scores are then compared to the average amount it takes to educate a child in Australia. Non-government schools which draw students from high socioeconomic areas are then provided with a lower percentage of this average than non-government schools which draw students from lower economic areas.

The SES works well. It is a discrete, clear and simple mechanism for distributing federal funding. The SES legislation package also guaranteed that federal funding would not be reduced for any single non-government school. Many parents make significant sacrifices to be able to send their children to schools that reflect the values they hold or specialise in programs in which their children excel. The SES model reflects government’s appropriate role in enabling those parents to make the choices that are best for their family and for their child.

The union favoured ERI model is flawed. The model, used from 1985 to 2000, primarily measured the ability of a given school to generate funds by itself. It then took the discrepancy between this figure and a standard level of resources based on government school per-student cost to determine the level of government assistance. The model was widely criticised as too complicated, susceptible to manipulation and generally a disincentive to private effort. The funding achieved by a given school depended to a large extent on how familiar it was with the funding model and frequent changes to the formula. Many schools sought financial advice from specialist ERI advisers or accounting firms. This was a difficult cost to bear for many non-government schools and was clearly inequitable. Finally, the ERI method was an overwhelming disincentive for schools to raise income. The ERI reporting requirements meant that increases in a school’s private income could raise a school’s ERI score and reduce its federal funding. Even goods provided free of charge had a monetary value placed on them. In this way the ERI became a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Despite their policy backflip to keep the SES to appease voters at the last election, it is clear that the Labor government have ideological objections to the SES model. In 2000 the member for Lalor was quoted as saying:

The last objection to the SES model is more philosophical, that the model makes no allowance for the amassed resources of any particular school. As we are all aware, over the years many prestige schools have amassed wealth—wealth in terms of buildings and facilities, wealth in terms of … alumni funding raising, trust funds, endowment funds and the like.

She went on to argue:

… it must follow as a matter of logic that the economic capacity of a school is affected by both its income generation potential—from the current class of parents whose kids are enrolled in the school—and the assets of the school. The SES funding system makes some attempt to measure the income generation potential of the parents of the kids in the school but absolutely no attempt to measure the latter, the assets of the school. This is a gaping flaw …

The member for Lalor is certainly not alone. The member for Prospect said in 2004 that he preferred the ERI, or education resources index, and the member for Eden-Monaro was quoted last year in an article in the Australian as saying that the Labor government would:

… move away from—

the SES—

and get down eventually to a proper needs-based approach.

These comments indicate a clear ideological difference between the Labor Party and the coalition. The member for Lalor’s comments in particular show that the politics of envy still dominate thinking in the Labor Party. Labor still has not accepted that funding non-government schools is the best way to provide choice for Australian families. It is in this context that the government’s provision that requests sensitive financial information becomes suspicious. It is only natural to suspect that the intent of the Labor government review of school funding in 2010 will be to radically restructure the funding model of non-government schools along the lines of the old, discredited ERI model in time for the next funding quadrennium, 2013 to 2016.

Education should be about providing the right skills and a balanced perspective for our children. I have a son in year 11 who attends a non-government school in my electorate of Swan. I want him to have an education that provides him with the skills he needs so that he can follow the career pathway he chooses. I want him to have a strong grounding in reading, writing and arithmetic. As important as that, though, is that he leave school with a balanced perspective on the history of our nation, its future challenges and our place in the world order. I do not want him to have the Marxist philosophy that would be preferred by certain members of the ALP.

The member for Lalor said over the weekend that the coalition were against a national curriculum. We are not against a national curriculum—indeed, quite the opposite. We are for a balanced national curriculum that helps Australians gain nationally and internationally recognised qualifications and do whatever they want to do in life. What we are against is a curriculum designed by left-wing academics pushing their own agenda that does not fit with the values of our nation.

In conclusion, there has been much speculation in recent times that there is little or no ideological difference between the two major parties anymore. This bill should dispel that myth. This bill will impose stifling regulation on the non-government sector and reduce competition and choice in the education market. This bill represents all the things that we do not see or hold as the values of the Liberal Party and the coalition, and therefore I oppose it.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In last year’s election campaign, the education revolution featured very prominently. It now features in the contract that the now Prime Minister and all Labor candidates have with the voting public of Australia. The people of Australia, including those on the Central Coast, knew that our schools were not being properly or fairly resourced. They knew that the quality of education, whilst good, was not the best that it could be. They were fed up with our schools and our kids being used as political footballs in the corrosive blame game between federal and state governments. The now opposition has not learnt its lesson. The member for Sturt is still playing politics with our education system. The member for Sturt and the rest of the opposition are cynically trying to hold up important legislation that we are discussing today that will benefit our kids. They are deliberately misrepresenting the government’s position to scare non-government schools and divide the community.

The now opposition has a dismal record in relation to education reform when in government. Now in opposition, they are still trying to stop the government from getting on with the job. In 2007, we had a Liberal federal government that had raised its hands in surrender with regard to reform of our creaking education systems. They had come to the political realisation that it was a lot easier to write media releases blaming state governments than to embark on real reform in educational policy. We had a lot of talk through the years from the Howard government but precious little action on education direction. As a timely interjection in today’s question time pointed out, their great contribution to the education debate was flagpoles in schools.

The then government did not strike up a national conversation on how our schools would teach children in a digital world, on the fact that Australia was slipping substantially compared to world standards in maths and science and on funding that was not giving all Australian kids a fair go. In education, the only reforms the Liberals seemed interested in were the so-called culture war issues. Instead of addressing a brain drain that was seeing our brightest go overseas to add to other countries’ economies, instead of properly resourcing our tertiary education systems to give our kids a competitive advantage in a globalised world, the Liberals shirked these challenges and instead reverted to their obsessions from their Young Liberal days, like voluntary student unionism and ideological positioning on how history is taught. The last contribution that we just heard showed that this debate is still very much at the forefront of the Liberals’ thinking.

We see the opposition continue this ‘ideology before any actual change’ tradition. A Victorian Liberal senator is currently running in inquiry into educators’ personal politics in response to a Young Liberal campaign, a campaign copied and pasted from a right-wing think tank in the United States, a campaign preoccupied with boring and obstructionist culture war obsessions. This is what the opposition contributes to the debate in relation to education policy. In this inquiry, the former Prime Minister’s favourite historian, Keith Windschuttle, said:

As far as I can see, what this inquiry can accomplish is to simply express an opinion. I do not think you should actually do anything.

That is exactly what we have had from the Liberals on education policy for years. They have expressed opinions but have not actually done anything. Due to years of inaction, Australia was falling far behind world education standards. The former government did an incredible disservice to a generation of young people and to our nation. Their scorecard is nothing short of embarrassing. Look at what happened under the Liberals’ watch: we were ranked 18th in the OECD in percentage of GDP investment in education. Australian maths and science ranked 29th in the world. Public investment in universities fell by seven per cent compared with an OECD average of a 48 per cent increase.

Imagine for a second that we were talking about the Olympics rather than education. Imagine that, instead of winning the gold, silver and bronze, as our best swimmers were doing, we were ranking only 18th or 29th. Australians would be rightly outraged. At the last election, they were rightly outraged at the position that the Liberal Party took to that election, the position that they had for over 12 years in government and, as was seen in the debate today, the position that, sadly, they seem to continue to adopt. If this was the Olympics, we would demand that sports departments invest more in swimming programs from the earliest years. We would demand that our children be encouraged to become the best swimmers they could be as a matter of national pride. We would not allow ourselves to lose a competitive advantage and slip well behind in swimming behind the United States, China and—God forbid—the United Kingdom.

Similarly, Australians are not happy with the way things are in schools. It may not be because of statistics or because of any particular data, but, when I speak to the mums and dads on the Central Coast, they know that more can and must be done. The then opposition leader in 2007—the current Prime Minister—brought change to a debate that had become stale and too obsessed with ideological positions rather than what was in the best interests of our kids and our nation. The Labor Party gave the commonsense argument that there is an undeniable link between the strength of our economy and the strength of our educational systems.

Nowhere more than the Central Coast can we see that we need to have this educational revolution. Retention rates for the Wyong shire show that 44.3 per cent of students complete years 7-12. This is when the New South Wales average is 65.66 per cent. We are 20 per cent behind the state average in relation to retention rates. Not coincidentally, we have one of the highest unemployment rates in the state as well—in excess of 7½ per cent.

The Reserve Bank governor, Glenn Stevens, made the point earlier this year that there are capacity constraints in our economy because of the need to reskill. These warnings had been given to the former government on numerous occasions, but what did they do with education? They effectively cut funding. They did not look to the future. They did not say that there were going to be problems. Their approach was simply to slash and burn and look at reducing the federal contribution to universities and educational facilities.

On this side of the House, we believe in the education of the country. We believe in an education revolution. We believe that, in a time of great economic uncertainty and economic upheaval, Australia must make real reforms to our education systems. The Rudd government is committed to delivering an education revolution from high-quality and accessible early childhood education to quality schooling, from training and retraining our workforce to world-class higher education and research. Key priorities for the government include improving access to early childhood education and working cooperatively with states and territories. By doing this—and this is something that those on the other side still have not learnt; they still try and play the blame game—the Rudd government will ensure all four-year-olds have access to 15 hours of fun, play based early education a week for 40 weeks a year. The government will ensure our schools focus on achieving higher standards, greater accountability and better results. Delivering a high-quality national curriculum from kindergarten to year 12 will lift the standard of every one of our schools.

Having heard the contribution from the previous speaker, you would think that we were actually proposing some sort of Marxist revolution. The arguments that are coming from the other side are absurd when you consider the lack of contribution that they made in government and continue to make in relation to the education debate.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They’re more like the Marx Brothers.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has been pointed out that perhaps their side is the Marx Brothers rather than Marxist and they are getting a little confused.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Robert interjecting

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Dobell has the call.

Craig Thomson (Dobell, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Certainly we know that there is a three-ring circus on the other side. We keep seeing the ringmaster change, but we certainly do not see the policies change. The circus continues in relation to the opposition in the area of education.

The Rudd government is also investing up to $1.5 million per high school to create trades training centres in all of Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools and up to $1 million per high school to allow every Australian student in years 9 to 12 access to their own school computer with the aim of lifting school retention rates from 75 per cent to 90 per cent by 2020. As I said earlier, this is particularly important when you look at my electorate, where retention rates languish around 44½ per cent, well below the state and national averages, which shows that the opposition when in government certainly took their eye off the ball in terms of education on the Central Coast.

The Rudd government is investing over $1 billion in providing an additional 450,000 skilled training places over the next four years to help lift the productive capacity of the Australian economy. We are encouraging students to study and teach maths and science by halving their HECS and halving it again if they work in those fields after graduation. We are keeping our best and brightest in Australia by doubling to 88,000 the number of undergraduate students receiving a Commonwealth learning scholarship and providing 1,000 new Future Fellowships for mid-career researchers.

But today we are here to discuss the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. These bills are a key part of the education revolution and need to be put in that context. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill demonstrates the Rudd government’s leadership by providing for more than half a billion dollars to be spent over the next four years to establish evidence around what works and highlight good practice. By extending the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000, we provide appropriations to continue our election commitments, such as funding for additional teachers in the Northern Territory, in a bipartisan way and continue good programs introduced by the opposition such as the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program. This funding will also allow us to continue to work with Indigenous communities, philanthropic organisations, corporate leaders and national organisations to build the partnerships that are so critical to improving outcomes for Indigenous Australians.

The government is working with government and non-government education and training providers to achieve the very important goals of halving the gaps in literacy and numeracy achievements, halving the gaps in year 12 or equivalent attainments and halving the gaps in employment outcomes for Indigenous Australians. We also aim to give every Indigenous four-year-old in remote communities an opportunity to access early learning programs. We are establishing national collaborative arrangements that will assist us to collectively work towards these targets. However, the Commonwealth must maintain an ability to provide national leadership and perspectives to close these gaps.

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 provides Australian government funding for non-government schools for 2009 to 2012. It succeeds in part the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004, which provided funding for both government and non-government schools for 2004 to 2008.

In Australia, over many decades the focus of the schooling debate has been the competitive relationship between government and non-government schools. But the education system cannot simply be broken down into two groups, with a disadvantaged public sector on the one side and a highly resourced non-government sector on the other. The most cursory examination of Australian schools will tell you this simply is not accurate. There are schools that struggle with limited resources trying to serve disadvantaged communities in both sectors. There are independent schools in my electorate that struggle with resources just as there are public schools in my electorate that struggle. Funding is important, but a more fundamental debate is needed about how to improve the quality of school education for all students. We need an ambitious national strategy to improve our schools, driven by the goal of higher quality education.

To do this, the Commonwealth is working with the states through the Council of Australian Governments to develop a shared set of aspirations and policy directions which will provide the basis for school funding agreements and reform initiatives over the coming years. Working and consulting with non-government schools is a vital part of that process. The new framework will connect new educational investment in schools, teachers and families with challenging new achievement targets and clearer, more transparent reporting systems. New national partnership payments will encourage further improvements in national priority areas. The $28 billion provided in this bill is part of the government’s minimum $42 billion commitment for schools funding during 2009-12.

In this legislation, the government is honouring its election commitments to non-government schools. Those commitments are to use the existing funding formula based on the SES model and the existing indexation formula to set funding levels and to maintain or guarantee the current funding levels of all non-government schools during 2009 to 2012 to ensure that no school loses a dollar. The Australian government is working through COAG on a new national education agreement, which will deliver the funds promised to public schools. In addition, through the COAG process the Commonwealth is working on three new national partnerships to improve the quality of schooling, particularly in disadvantaged schools. These national partnerships will be focused on improving the quality of teaching, meeting the needs of disadvantaged school communities and improving literacy and numeracy.

A central focus in moving forward is improving educational outcomes for Indigenous students. The incorporation of a number of Indigenous-specific education programs in this bill is aimed at improving the capacity of non-government schools to accelerate the closing of the gap in outcomes for these students. The bill continues the general provision in schools funding legislation for the minister to make conditions in the agreements for Commonwealth funding for schools.

However, the current act introduced an unprecedented number of specific conditions for Commonwealth funding for schools. Whilst a number of these conditions have been met, superseded or abandoned by the bill, it retains the broad thrust of the educational outcomes accountability framework of the current act. There are now six conditions covering school performance: participation in national student assessments, participation in national reports on the outcomes of schooling, provision of individual school performance reports to the minister, provision of plain-language student reports to parents to include an assessment of the student’s achievements against any available national standards and relative to the student’s peer group at the school, provision of publicly available information about the school’s performance and the implementation of the national curriculum.

All schools and systems authorities must provide to parents or guardians of each child the student reports specified in the regulations. These reports must use plain language, include assessment of the child’s achievements in comparison with the child’s peer group at the school and meet any requirements in the regulations. The minister would be able to determine the format of such reports and how often they had to be provided to the parents. Parents will also receive reports from national literacy and numeracy tests, which will show student achievements against key indicators such as the national average, the middle 60 per cent of students and the national minimum literacy and numeracy attainment standards where these have been met. A continuous scale of achievement across 10 bands, from year 3 to year 9, with each year level reported in six bands, will mean that as students advance through the years of schooling it will be possible to track their progress in literacy and numeracy attainment.

The introduction of plain-English report cards is most welcome on the Central Coast. Parents have a right to know how their children are going at school. They need more clarity than knowing whether their kids are beginning, consolidating or established—that is, more than a graph, a line or a pie chart telling them how they are performing at school. This government is acting on this and that is why these bills are here before the House today.

Research and evidence show that the best way to boost productivity is to invest in human capital. That is why education is the pathway to prosperity. The link between long-term prosperity, productive growth and human capital investment could not be clearer from the extensive research that economists have been undertaking around the world in recent decades. The research demonstrates strong links between levels of education, levels of earnings and levels of productivity. OECD research shows that if the average educational level of working-age population were increased by one year the growth rate of the economy would be up to one per cent higher.

Again going back to my electorate, which is dominated by the shire of Wyong, when we have only 44.3 per cent of school kids in my electorate going through to year 12, when the state average is 65.66 and the national target is 75 per cent, we can see the problems, the disadvantages, that children growing up in my electorate have in terms of being able to get a job and a job that pays well. More importantly than that, we have the problem that the economy of the Central Coast and the economy of the nation have been affected by 12 years of inaction by the former Howard government in relation to education. It is time that education were more than just about putting flagpoles in schools. This bill is an important step in making sure that non-government schools are properly funded. It is an important step in delivering the education revolution that our kids deserve, that the parents in our electorates demand and that the Rudd government is delivering.

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to express significant reservations regarding not only the education revolution, which I find now dashed indeed on the Bay of Pigs, but the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 before the House. I understand the passage of these bills is required before the end of 2008 to provide the quadrennium Commonwealth funding for non-government schools from the beginning of next year—funding amounting to $28 billion attributed to the bills. Whilst the bills apparently preserve the total funding available to non-government schools, consistent with the Labor Party election policy, the bills introduce four key changes which were not announced as part of their policy—discussed later on and of significant concern.

My concerns are further raised when, at the exact same time as these bills are being debated, the Australian Education Union is campaigning on national TV for greater funding. Furthermore, last week the member for Throsby, a former secretary of the ACTU, stated in her speech in this place that ‘the current scheme’—referring to the SES model—‘lacks integrity’. This would all seem to point towards the real agenda—perhaps a wolf dressed in sheep’s clothing—of the bills: to abolish the SES model and return to a resource based model rather than a needs based model.

Historically, the federal government has taken responsibility for funding non-government schools and the states have taken responsibility for funding government schools. Non-government educational institutions, though, relieve enormous pressure from what we all know is the ailing state government education system presided over by moribund Labor state governments. Yet non-government schools have been growing at an enormous rate of some 20,000 students a year. In fact, in the last decade the public system has grown by one per cent—that is it. That is the faith the Australian people have in Labor state government schools: the public system has grown by one per cent, yet the private system has grown by a staggering 126 per cent. The question is: which schools do you think parents actually prefer? It would be interesting to do a snapshot of the Labor frontbench in this place, and indeed the backbench, as to which schools they prefer to put their children in.

By way of background, in 2001 the former Howard government introduced a measure called the socioeconomic status, or SES, which measures the socioeconomic status of parents whose children are enrolled in non-government schools. SES uses census data to link the student’s home address to determine the relative income of the student’s family. The school is then allocated an SES score, depending on the socioeconomic status of the families that attend the school. The higher the SES score, the lower the Commonwealth funding available to the school.

This model introduced a fair and equal playing field for non-government schools. It ensures that schools in less affluent areas that are unable to charge higher school fees due to surrounding demographics receive a higher rate of funding than schools in more affluent areas. The model has worked exceptionally well, acknowledging that any reduction in the overall funding to non-government schools has the ultimate consequence of negatively impacting Australia’s public education system. A reduction in non-government school funding would force non-government schools to increase fees and, as a result, force struggling parents to turn to the state education system—which, like everything else Labor state governments’ touch, is not in particularly good shape.

Unfortunately, the Labor Party has not always been the friend of Australia’s non-government independent schools. In 2004 the Labor Party, which included many of the present frontbenchers, went to the election with a schools hit list—planning to reschedule to remove funding from many private schools. That same year the Senate held an inquiry into Commonwealth funding for schools. Submission No. 33 was from our great friend the Australian Education Union—it is certainly a great friend of the Australian Labor Party. The Australian Education Union’s submission states:

The AEU has long opposed any funding to private schools.

If you want to know what the view of the Education Union is, and indeed that of their close compatriots the Labor government, there it is: the AEU has long opposed any funding to private schools. I guess their position cannot get any clearer than that.

Furthermore, the Australian Education Union’s Federal President, Mr Angelo Gavrielatos, was quoted on 17 March this year saying that the current SES model was unacceptable:

“I am not embracing the SES funding model as it currently exists,” he said.

“It has serious flaws. It does not measure the individual wealth of parents; it measures the wealth of the census area.”

I guess no-one has told Mr Gavrielatos that there are only 225 homes in a CCD or census area and that by world standards it is a very effective manner to recognise and measure the wealth of an area and the individuals in it. I think the real problem for the union and Mr Gavrielatos is that they go back to their position in submission 33—that is, they actually oppose any funding for private schools—and the SES model does not suit their ideological bent and dislike for private education.

At least this is absolutely consistent with Labor’s left-wing hardliners in the form of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Assistant Treasurer. They are both on record numerous times as strident opponents of the SES model. On 4 September 2000 the current Deputy Prime Minister was scathing in her attack on the proposed SES model, outlining a five-point attack on why it is deficient. This of course begs the question: why is it that everything Labor does has five points? One could surmise that it is because there are only five fingers on the left hand. On 20 August 2001 the current Deputy Prime Minister continued her ideological assault by saying:

... the last thing that this government does is distribute education moneys on the basis of need. This government—

that is, the Howard government—

for its funding for private schools, has adopted a flawed index, the so-called SES model, which does not deliver on the basis of need. We know that model is flawed, because it disproportionately delivers to category 1 schools—that is, wealthy schools.

When the SES model was rolled into its second quadrennium funding in 2004, this is what the now Assistant Treasurer had to say:

The regime established by this government and continued under these bills for determining the funding arrangements for schools is the socioeconomic status index—the SES index. This is a fundamentally flawed index. It replaces the Education Resources Index, which was much more based on the needs of the school and the capacity of the school to reach educational standards. I put this to the House: any regime which produces an outcome where the King's School has more needy students than Fairvale High School is a deeply flawed calculating system.

Why, every time the Labor Party speak about private schools, non-government schools and the SES model, do they always find the time to give the King’s School a kick in the guts? What is it about the King’s School that so infuriates the government and the other side of politics? What is it that annoys them? Is it that they actually could not get into the school when they were being educated or is it simply part of their ideological hatred of non-government schools, of the politics of envy we saw rolled out with the budget?

What it does clearly show, through the various speeches of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Assistant Treasurer and through what the Australian Education Union has said publicly in inquiries and media statements, is that this Labor government wants to get rid of the SES model. And part of this legislation is to prepare the way for that to occur. It would be nice if the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education stood up and levelled with the Australian people—to take a line from the current Prime Minister; although I fear that my three-year-old on a seesaw is more level than he and his government.

These bills seeks to make four changes which differ from the 2004 model. Firstly, the bills seek to make it easier for the minister to refuse or delay payments to schools—I am sure non-government schools are very pleased to hear that! Secondly, the bills introduce new requirements in school funding agreements to comply with the national curriculum by 2012. Thirdly, the bills alter the reporting requirements for schools, particularly introducing new requirements relating to information about financial viability. Fourthly, these bills remove the previous government’s new non-government schools establishment grants. These changes are paving the way for reduced support for non-government schools from the federal government. It is as simple as that.

I turn now to ministerial refusal. Currently, funding is administered from the Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, with the Minister for Education at its head. Section 15 of this bill gives the minister the power to refuse to authorise or to deny payments to non-government schools. The current subsections allow this to occur in the instance of an institution being wound up or if the institution is unable to pay its debts. The addition of subsection (c) of the bill gives the minister new reasons to refuse or to delay payments to non-government educational sectors with respect to auditing. I understand the reasons for introducing this clause to ensure the financial viability of an institution, but the clause also seems to suggest that if an institution is audited then it may, by virtue of the audit, be in a precarious situation.

The fact that the minister can base a decision on a presumption should not be justified cause to withdraw or refuse payment. The term ‘qualified audit report’ is also a very broad basis for assessing the financial viability of a school. Any time an auditor audits a school for reasons not related to financial viability, it appears the minister reserves the right to delay or refuse payment in cases where financial viability is not in question.

With respect to complying with a national curriculum, section 22 relates to the new requirement for non-government schools to comply with the national curriculum standards before 31 January 2012, yet the national curriculum has not yet been released and there is very little information regarding its make-up. We know it will cover areas of maths, science, history and English as the basics, yet section 31 of the previous legislation required compliance with curriculum related activities such as statements of learning in five areas. The different approach to these statements gives schools individual identities and gives parents a choice of different institutions. Currently the only information available regarding the national curriculum is the initial advice on history and science. The final documents will not be available until some time in 2009. While 2012 is the last year that the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 will support funding for non-government schools, it is also the first year that non-government schools must adhere to the national curriculum.

I contend it is irresponsible to introduce compulsory compliance to a measure in this bill when the curriculum is not even drafted in any way, shape, form or means. Section 22 also has the potential to severely damage schools offering an alternative curriculum. A parent should have the absolute right to determine which school their child will go to. Steiner and Montessori schools currently represent 17,500 students and offer alternative education philosophies. I have a Steiner school in my electorate, and it was a great pleasure to welcome them here to Parliament House and to show them around recently, yet this legislation would appear to put in jeopardy their philosophies and their integrity. Essentially, it may disallow the majority of the principles of these schools from being acted upon. Passing section 22 is akin to putting the horse before the cart in every sense, and that section should be deleted from the bill.

With respect to additional reporting, the requirements in section 24(1) of the bill bring into question the government’s commitment to maintaining non-government school funding for the four years following this bill. The new term ‘funding sources’, which schools would have to publicly report on, has the potential to pave the way for a remodelling of the current fair SES, which, at the beginning of my speech, I showed the Education Union, the Assistant Treasurer and the Minister for Education, the Deputy Prime Minister, simply despise.

Qualified audit reports can include reporting on everything from parents’ and friends’ lamington fundraising—certainly it will change lots of things in the SES, I imagine—right through to bequests. Every cent that can be associated with the school must be brought not just to the minister’s attention, as is currently the case, but to the public’s attention. The minister will have substantial powers to intrude on the finances of any non-government school and to spray those across the internet. I can only assume—with the minister’s and the Education Union’s pathological hatred of private schools and the SES funding model—that this information will not be used for the greater good of schools. I can see the financial support to schools from private sources being used against a school to reduce government assistance. I bring us back to the statement by the Education Union in Senate inquiry submission 33:

The AEU has long opposed any funding to private schools.

One has to question what the minister and indeed the Assistant Treasurer have against non-government schools that would make them want to spray all of their sources of income into the public arena. How will that add value to the SES process? How will that add value to schools funding? The only thing it does is provide the information to the Education Union because the government’s union mates want payback for an electoral win.

Finally, section 100 relates to the abolition of new non-government schools establishment grants. The previous legislation, the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act, allowed the minister to make grants available for the establishment of non-government schools where there was community and private sector support. Section 100 in this bill only allows for grants approved in 2008 to be received in 2009. The removal of these grants will cripple many attempts to get new non-government schools off the ground. That is, perhaps, exactly what the intent is, as this entire bill’s intent is to frustrate, harry and harass private schools and the SES funding model at every quarter. The bill also removes additional choice for parents in communities who choose non-government schools over government schools.

As I stated earlier, the enrolment in non-government schools is growing at a rate of 20,000 children per year. In the last decade government schools have grown by one per cent. Withdrawing federal government support for the establishment of new non-government schools will not only deny parents a choice of education but force parents to enrol their children in an overcrowded, underfunded state system. The Rudd Labor government needs to withdraw this section of the bill immediately.

The immediate impact of this measure on my electorate is that the federal government will withdraw any funding for the establishment of the Lutheran Ormeau Rivers District School—LORDS—that the current Queensland premier, Ms Bligh, approved when she was the education minister but is now not approving by hiding behind her farcical regional plan, which will not allow the school to be zoned appropriately. What is ironic is that before the moribund Queensland Labor government scuttled this school by hiding behind its regional plan, the school had already received capital funding from the federal government, and now this legislation before us today will take that source of funding away.

Considering all the available evidence, considering the public statements, considering statements at inquiries and statements in this House, only one conclusion can be reached: the Education Union does not like private schools and, as it stated in its submission, it does not like the funding of them. The current government does not like the SES model. The majority of this Labor frontbench went to the 2004 election with a schools hit list, because there are certain schools in the non-government sector that, frankly, they do not like. While this series of bills is important to move $28 billion to support the non-government system, the four changes that have been proposed have been insidiously inserted so Labor can commence the dismantlement of the SES funding model, so they can get as much information about non-government funding sources and give it to their mates at the Education Union. This Labor government, through these bills, speaks with a forked tongue. It seeks to give with one hand over the next four years, but, hidden within the fine print of the legislation, it certainly seeks to take with the other.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I take this opportunity to speak in support of the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. I do not know what bill the member for Fadden was speaking on, because it certainly bears no relevance to the bill I have read. Listening to his remarks, I find no basis for them whatsoever. I really wonder whether he has taken the time to read this bill.

Alan Griffin (Bruce, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Nice bloke, wrong planet!

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He must be, because he is certainly not on the same planet that I am on when I look at this bill and see the importance of it—a bill which, in fact, guarantees $28 billion of funding for all non-government schools, in turn enabling greater funding certainty and stability and remaining part of the government’s commitment of $42 billion to schools from 2009 to 2012. That certainly creates certainty for those schools, and certainly it is vastly different to the impression that one might have got from listening to the member for Fadden.

I do note that this bill has been referred to the Senate Standing Committee on Education, Employment and Workplace Relations, with a report to be brought back by 27 November 2008. I also note that the coalition have moved amendments to this bill and that they have accused the government of promoting the politics of envy, as the previous speaker has said, and have used other terms such as ‘ideological hatred’, ‘pathological hatred’ and ‘hit list’.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It’s the same template they’re all using. They can’t even make up their own speeches!

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Absolutely; it is the same template. I take personal offence at some of those accusations. As someone who has worked hard and visited all of the schools in my electorate at one time or another, and who works in close cooperation with all of the schools in my electorate—whether they are public or private schools—I have the utmost respect for all of the education providers that I have been associated with over time and for all of the teachers in that profession. For the accusations to be made by members opposite that are totally unfounded, I find that personally offensive. But it seems that they cannot let go of their own ideology when it comes to education. Their statements in respect to this bill are certainly baseless. In fact, when I read the bill, I find it totally impossible to understand the basis on which they continue to make those accusations. If anyone is trying to continue to promote divisiveness between public and private education, it is the members of the coalition. Certainly the member for Chisholm made some similar comments about that earlier, and I support every single thing she said about that.

Over the weekend, I took the trouble to speak to two of the principals of private schools in the electorate of Makin about this bill. Both were concerned that the bill had been referred to a Senate committee and therefore may be delayed, both supported this bill, and both wanted it passed as quickly as possible. I said in my first speech in this place that it is through education and politics that the world can be changed for the better, and so I am indeed pleased to be part of a government that has placed education at the forefront of its policy reform agenda. Notably, I am pleased to be part of a government that understands that learning commences at birth and that the formal education process should commence at preschool facilities. To that extent, the Rudd government’s commitment to building a stronger, fairer Australia that is confident and ready to meet our future challenges requires an education framework enabling our schools to supply Australia with the human resources that have the right mix of knowledge, skills and talents required to achieve world-class outcomes. To achieve world-class outcomes and take our country forward into the 21st century, we need an education system that will deliver not only excellence but also equity for every child at every school and at every level within our entire schooling system.

While this bill provides funding certainty for non-government schools, it is my understanding that Commonwealth funding for government schools does not require specific legislation and is negotiated through the national education agreement, which is to be finalised by the end of 2008. While this bill will provide non-government schools with the security and certainty required to continue providing their high standards, academic rigour, pastoral care and innovative use of information technology as part of the national reform, the bill is couched in a much bigger agenda in that it presents the same funding model that is provided to government schools, along with the new accountability and performance reporting framework that will enable all schools across Australia to contribute towards evaluating our national progress in education.

The Council of Australian Governments recently agreed to establish a new curriculum, and, as promised, the Rudd government is developing the curriculum in consultation with government, non-government education authorities, teachers, parents, students, professional organisations and business groups. The national curriculum will assemble for the first time curriculum essentials, curriculum content and achievement standards in key learning areas acquired from the best programs from each state and territory to give every child a chance to access a world-class curriculum.

I want to address my remarks on this bill specifically on the importance of the primary years of education and the importance of the primary schooling system to a child’s educational outcomes. For decades the focus of education has been on the latter or senior end of the process, with primary school education being seen as of lesser importance in the education process. Primary education is primary in its staging and primary in its importance. ‘Primary’ by definition is considered first rank of importance or value, immediate importance rather than secondary importance, or the chief, most important element. Educational outcomes of the secondary school or the university sector are frequently used by secondary schools and universities as self-promotion tools. There is certainly no denying that secondary schools and universities are very important in educational outcomes. But so too are primary schools. Yet there is far less recognition of the importance by society broadly and far less public self-promotion and competition amongst the primary school sector when compared with other education sectors. That may well change in the future with the growing awareness of the significance of good primary school education.

I want to refer to one of the comments the Australian Primary Principals Association make in their report on this matter:

It is important to note that the discussion of a national curriculum has begun with a consideration of what is appropriate for the senior secondary years. The needs of primary students rather than secondary students must provide the starting point for designing a national curriculum.

The Australian Primary Principals Association is the national voice for government, Catholic and independent primary schools, so it represents not one particular sector; it is right across all sectors of primary education.

The role of our primary and secondary schools has changed over the years, with schools today no longer being places where children are provided with an education in the academic sense. Schools are expected to educate; provide essential life skills; encourage creativity and innovation; install social values; recognise the preciousness of our individuality yet understand the importance of community citizenship; and provide counselling and often family support, referral and information. What were once predominantly parental responsibilities have today become shared responsibilities between parents and schoolteachers. What makes the teacher’s role even more demanding and more responsible is that schooling is in itself a major new experience for primary school children. Teachers often are unaware of the child’s ability and temperament, the child’s parent’s values or the child’s home environment and specific circumstances that have shaped the child. The child is still developing. For that reason the primary schooling years are vitally important and the teacher’s influence in preparing and supporting each child for their future is incredibly important.

Primary schooling is the time that builds the foundations to a child’s future, yet the resources we provide our primary school teachers and the remuneration that they receive are grossly inadequate and far from commensurate with their level of responsibility. Not surprisingly, in a recent nationwide survey of 160 primary principals from both public and private schools, it was reported that about two-thirds of the school principals believed that they were underresourced.

I want to quote from another section of the Australian Primary Principals Association summary that I referred to a moment ago. It says:

The staffing of Australian primary schools is emerging as a major challenge for the next decade. APPA—

that is, the Australian Primary Principals Association—

research shows that about one-third of primary school principals have been unable to appoint suitable teachers to fill vacant positions. The problem is more acute in schools in less preferred locations and in schools with significant proportions of children with special needs.

The same publication goes on to say:

The health and wellbeing of school principals has developed as an issue at an international, national and state level over a number of years. As reported in In the Balance, some principals doubted if they would continue in the job, even though they were not yet of retirement age. They expressed dismay at the quality of their personal lives and the transmission of these pressures on to their families.

We need to increase the number of male teachers in the primary school sector. It is interesting that we have seen a steady increment over the years in the percentage of female teachers in the primary school sector. In 1986, 71 per cent of primary school teachers were women. By 2006 the ratio was 80 per cent. A combination of underlying reasons has contributed to that decrease in the number of male teachers in the primary sector. We need to increase the number of male teachers in the primary school sector so that children can experience role models and teachers from both genders in their schooling environment. Both genders have much to offer children in their developing years.

There is clearly still plenty to be done in our schools. The most recent OECD testing results demonstrate that Australia’s average performance in reading and literacy worsened between 2003 and 2006. There were too many disadvantaged students performing below the OECD baseline. No doubt we have some excellent schools, but it is evident that performance and opportunities in education have been obstructed and held back by underachievement in the previous government’s policy directions. In contrast, the Rudd government has committed to make new resources available and consequently make some big differences to our Australian schools.

In my electorate of Makin there are over 7,000 students from 12 non-government schools and some 15,000 students from 40 government schools. These schools, along with all other Australian schools, will benefit from new resources and the new national education agreement that will set the terms of funding and accountability for all schooling for the following four years. The Rudd government is determined to improve education for disadvantaged students, which will end an era when children from low-socioeconomic and other disadvantaged circumstances have been left to fall behind in their education.

This bill provides automatic and maximum recurrent funding for a very high proportion of Indigenous enrolments in non-government schools. The Indigenous supplementary assistance indexation rates and remoteness classifications are aligned with mainstream programs, which will enable assistance to maintain momentum with the costs associated with education delivery. This bill also provides assistance to schools that have disadvantaged students who have literacy, numeracy and special learning needs; that require special training in languages or English as a second language for new arrivals; and that have a geographic disadvantage due to being in country areas.

This bill remains a major building block in the government’s national education agenda across both non-government and government schools. The bill recognises and respects the diversity of schooling available across Australia. High quality education should be available to all children at all levels of their schooling, wherever they live, no matter what background or circumstances that they come from and whatever education sector their school is in.

The bill provides funding certainty to non-government schools through the same socioeconomic status funding formula and indexation framework proposed for government schools, allowing time for appropriation and payment to non-government schools for January 2009. The bill will also enable adequate time for the states and non-government schools to put in place actions to bring about the outcomes that are desired across the entire schooling system. This bill will also focus on quality, transparency and accountability, consistent with the government’s commitments to ensure that resources will be targeted in a way that will best improve our education system. We need to evaluate and measure where our efforts are going, where we are best able to achieve and how we can improve so that we are able to take effective action.

Together, government and non-government schools that cater for students at all levels can gather information as a result of the government’s new policy focus. Schools, teachers, parents and school authorities will be able to access information that will enable the development of new strategies that will equip our students with the knowledge and skills that they require for succeeding in the 21st century.

Over the years, as I said earlier on in this speech, I have visited and worked with many schools in my community, both public and private sector schools. I have the utmost admiration for what those schools do and how each of them adapt to the specific needs of the school community that they serve. In particular, when it comes to the primary schools, I am not surprised that the Australian Primary Principals Association believes that policies that imply that one size fits all will not always work across Australia’s primary schools. Any policy, whether it is one about a national curriculum or one about performance standards, should always be designed with sufficient flexibility to enable the individual circumstances of the school to be taken into account.

I have been particularly impressed by the importance that the primary schools that I have visited, both private and public, place on caring for each other, caring for others in the world and caring for the environment. Our primary schools can shape the lives of our children and of our country. I thank the teachers and staff of the primary school sector for the work that they do and for their dedication. The Schools Assistance Bill is an important piece of legislation. It gives effect to one of the Rudd government’s key election themes, the importance of education to our nation’s future. I commend the bill to the House.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, a complementary piece of legislation. I want to note from the beginning that it is important in this debate that we do not engage in class warfare in education. Indeed, it would be a retrograde step to see measures contained within these bills ignite the class warfare that we have seen in previous education debates in this country. We are in the throes of an education revolution that was outlined by the government prior to the election, a revolution that is well underway at the moment. But in that revolution we do not see a return to pitting independent and private schools against public schools.

There are some sections of the proposed legislation before the House today about which there are some concerns in relation to that. I want to note that the member for Dobell mentioned the ‘Make education fair’ campaign. There is a sense that there is an ideological crusade that underpins a lot of the education reforms that the government is proposing. The ‘Make education fair’ campaign and the Senate inquiry that has been initiated are a response to educational bias within Australian. Noel McCoy, the President of the Federal Young Liberals, is to be commended for his attempt to inquire into educational bias within Australia.

When we look at the ideology that underpins a lot of what happens in education in Australia, it is interesting to note that the head of the Australian Education Union, who has been mentioned in this debate, Pat Byrne, said about education in Australia in 2005:

We have succeeded in influencing curriculum development in schools, education departments and universities. The conservatives have a lot of work to do to undo the progressive curriculum.

That quote underpins the ideological idea that is behind many of the measures contained within these bills. Indeed, the national curriculum will not be of benefit to people in Australia if it seeks to limit the choice of individuals in education and in educating their children. That kind of attitude is not helpful. There is a sense that some gloating is occurring. I do not think that we are achieving much in lauding our respective ideological positions in terms of educating children.

The independent and public schools that I visit within my electorate are all fine institutions. Indeed, I do not see a difference in the calibre of the people who are seeking to provide an education for children. They are all dedicated people. They are people who care deeply about the children within their care and who want to provide a high-quality education for them.

There are four major changes within these pieces of legislation that create some serious concerns that we need to discuss in this place and, if we can, remove them to ensure that the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 are good pieces of legislation. Section 15 changes the grounds upon which the minister can elect to refuse or delay payments and makes it easier for the minister to do so. Section 22 requires school funding agreements to comply with the national curriculum by 2012, as specified in the regulations. Section 24, which I want to address in particular, alters the reporting requirements of schools, and includes new requirements relating to information about the financial viability and funding sources of school. Finally, there is section 100, which removes the previous government’s new non-government school establishment grants.

I think in some of these changes which the government is seeking to make—which were not advertised before the election, which were not part of the government’s election promises or commitments and which were not outlined in their program for improving education in Australia—we see some of the ideological attempts to reframe education in this country. At the moment, the government is preparing an inquiry into education that is to report by 2010, and some of the changes in this bill, it could be argued, are preparing a certain set of criteria, a framing and priming of the issues surrounding education, in such a way that the government will then seek to make further changes in the area of education.

The concerns that we have with this legislation are pretty simplistic and obvious in the sense that the government is setting up education for further reform which it has not advertised to the public. One of the concerns we have is that the public dissemination of all funding sources—be they simple school fetes, raffles that schools hold, parents’ donations or any other kinds of financial information—is a very interesting step to take. That is information that is superfluous to the allocation of funding through the SES. If you examine why you would seek to make that information public—examine what the real agenda is—I find that you come to a conclusion that, if you make that information public, you are going to be discouraging the flow of money, capital and donations into education. In today’s complex world, you see that there are many choices for parents to allocate their funds. They can expand their houses, they can spend it on gambling, they can entertain themselves, they can take the kids away and there are plenty of holidays they can take themselves on. Many parents, particularly at independent and private schools, seek to put their kids into better quality education. They make a sacrifice. Many of them donate money to their schools. Many of them spend a lot of their time, effort and hard earned capital in funding their children’s education to a better level than it otherwise would be. It is a sacrifice that they make.

I think this will be a weakening of our system in Australia. The public dissemination of all those funding sources will make it less attractive to people who do not want to have their donations disclosed to schools. The contention surely could not be that these people are seeking to do the wrong thing by donating money to schools and fundraising for their children’s schools, whether it be through fetes or raffles. Surely the government does not need to be involved with how much money every single school fete in every school around Australia is raising every day of the week. It is a very odd contention. Surely it is something that will be used to set up further arguments in the future. I think we are going to see a return of this section 24 in future education debates in this place. If a school is fortunate enough to have parents who donate or is able to seek or encourage parents to donate to that school their money and capital, be it in property, money or assets, that school is able to build up and use that for the betterment of the education of its students. That is something that ought to be lauded, congratulated, applauded and, above all, encouraged by government policy, because the more money that can be diverted from the private sector into education, the better.

The government is not seeking to fund that shortfall if this does discourage donations to the education sector. Seeking for the first time that all non-government schools be forced to make available for publication their sources of funding, however big or small, will certainly weaken the entire system. It is superfluous under the SES funding model, so I think it begs the question: what funding model is the Labor Party seeking to change it to? I note that the Labor Party promised to support the SES funding model before the election, and we know there is this inquiry underway at the moment, but even with that promise—an election commitment that they would support this funding model and we would not see a shift away from it without significant improvement—in place, it could signal a return under this government to the bad old days of the private school hit list. That, we saw, was a concerted campaign by opponents of the SES model that was designed to shut down the SES model and bring back the discredited education resource index. I come from an electorate which often is viewed as more affluent and which has a high average income. There is hidden disadvantage within my electorate that a one-size-fits-all, needs based model cannot take account of. We often have to look deeper than that to see where the disadvantage lies even in the affluent areas within our community.

Changes to the system of donations and recording donations and details such as school fetes do not seem to achieve a great deal in relation to this bill. Changes to the grounds upon which the minister can refuse or delay payment could be seen as reasonable to introduce to ensure the financial viability of a school, but the subsection involved appears to presume that if an audit statement is qualified then it necessarily signals that a school’s financial situation is precarious enough to warrant the minister refusing or delaying payment. A qualified audit report is too broad a basis for assessing the financial viability of a school. It may be the case that there are grounds for an auditor to qualify an audit that does not go to the financial viability but instead to a hesitation about a school model, whether a financial hesitation or otherwise, and the change would allow the minister to delay or refuse funding in spite of a recorded financial viability. I think this would be a weaker outcome. If it is demonstrated through a proper audit process that there is financial viability, it does not appear that there is a great need to allow a minister more latitude in delaying or refusing funding in that case.

The new requirement that schools comply with the national curriculum is another source of concern in relation to this legislation before the House. At this stage we do not have a great deal of idea what the national curriculum in critical areas like maths, science, history and English will look like. There have been some framing documents released in the last few days and we have not yet had time to absorb some of those, but the history curriculum, I want to note, is being overseen by Professor Stuart McIntyre, a former member of the Communist Party. I raise that here, for some of those members who were not here for the debate, because the member for Dobell sought to raise the fact that they were always under accusations of being Marxist and that somehow the members of the opposition here are more like the Marx Brothers in the sense that we always accuse members of the government of being Marxist.

But Professor McIntyre was a former Marxist. Indeed his major works include histories of Marxism in Britain and a history of the Australian Communist Party, which is one of my personal favourites. There is nothing wrong with having a view. There is nothing wrong with having a Marxist view, I might record, other than that you might be wrong about a few important points in history. But, if you have a bias, then there is the concern in our national curriculum development that we do not allow bias or indeed one-sided views of history to be represented in our national history curriculum, especially when we are seeking to form a curriculum that we are asking all schools to comply with and reducing the diversity and choice of curricula within the country. So there are some concerns in relation to who is developing our curricula, and I hope that the member for Dobell notes that there are some former Marxists involved in this process.

There is a lot to be concerned about in relation to where this national curriculum will head. We do not have many documents except for the initial advices on maths, history and science, and the final documents are not going to be available until, we are advised, some time in 2009. Yet the bill before the House today seeks to tie school funding to that curriculum’s acceptance and, to me, that seems to be a particularly poor framework—to ask for schools to tie their funding to their curriculum acceptance of this bill without understanding what these curricula are actually going to be in relation to different theories of education, and there are different theories of education and different models of education. There has to be room for some diversity and there has to be room for choice in some curriculum outcomes. So, with the initial advices at this stage, it does not appear to be suitable to force schools to tie their school funding to the curriculum’s acceptance. We certainly want to know more detail and, with people like Professor McIntyre designing the history curriculum, we want to have a look at the detail before we ask schools to accept the curriculum outcomes.

Even if there were no controversy in relation to the framing of the national curriculum, I think this clause does elicit some concerns. Section 31 of the previous legislation required schools to commit to the curriculum related activities, such as statements of learning in five areas: English, mathematics, science, civics and citizenship education, and information and communication technology, but not specific curriculum. To begin with, I think that the national curriculum will now cover only four disciplines. It is not yet clear how prescriptive the content and materials in these areas will be or whether it will be in a framework in which the schools can develop their own content. Again, I think this is another key point: if this is not clear in this legislation, it is a bad outcome for schools all around the country. We do need to define how much latitude in content and materials schools will have within these four key discipline areas. I think that is a weakness of the proposed legislation.

Schools offering alternative curricula may well be in a difficult situation in relation to this legislation. There are some difficult areas of alternative curriculum that do need to be thought out in terms of alternative educational philosophies, such as Steiner or Montessori schools, which will face great difficulties in meeting the requirements within the proposed clause before us. The schools offer specific curricula to meet the particular needs of their student cohort, and I do not see that as a bad outcome. There ought to be diversity and choice within Australian education. There is a requirement for an overarching national curriculum, but there has to be a good understanding between these institutions that seek to offer alternative education philosophies of how they will interact with the national curriculum and that their funding will be assured under the new system. Even individual education programs at special schools could be affected under a very strict interpretation of this clause, but of course no-one in this place would hope that there would be such a strict interpretation of it.

Legislation operating at a state level is also able to accommodate alternative curricula to the standard state curriculum. The Victorian legislation requires a commitment to the national goals for schooling for the 21st century implemented through the Victorian essential learning standards or other curricula deemed as broadly equivalent by the register’s school board. I think that highlights that we do need to clarify how an alternative school philosophy offering an alternative education would fit in with the national curriculum that is being proposed by this bill.

As discussed, the funding source is also a great concern but, overall, I think the goal of many of the clauses within this legislation is not stated quite clearly in the bill. I do think that the government are seeking to make further reforms that they did not discuss in the election campaign. I am very concerned that they are seeking changes to the SES model and that this bill is in some way in preparation for those changes, to establish a system where they can make an easier argument and a more coherent case for radically altering the SES funding system. I do not think it would be a positive outcome. If that is the change they are seeking, they ought to come forward and say, ‘We are going to break our election commitment to support the SES funding model’—which is the commitment they gave before the election—‘and these are the reasons we are seeking to break it.’ I do not think we should be supporting legislation here as a backdoor way of changing the SES funding model.

The final area of change is the removal of the new non-government schools establishment grants. Over the last decade we saw that the previous government saw merit in increasing the viability of the non-government sector—encouraging new schools where there was a community demand and a private sector interest which warranted the aspiration that we supported in terms of new non-government school establishment grants. I think that is a worthy thing to recognise. The aspiration to start a new non-government school ought to be recognised by the government and assisted. We ought to have choice in education within Australia.

The legislation which allowed for the minister to make these grants was in part 6 of the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004, and the comparable section in this bill makes provision only for those schools approved in 2008 to receive grants in 2009. So, with the phasing out of these grants, which is going to happen immediately if this legislation is passed, Labor would appear to be returning to the position they took at the previous election—not the one that we have just had but the one before that—which was in their new schools policy, which was to make it more difficult to set up new non-government schools. Again, what is the agenda in relation to that? Why do we need to make it more difficult to set up new non-government schools? Why wouldn’t we continue what is a worthy program of allowing new non-government schools to establish themselves and offer choice of education within Australia? Again, that is not highlighted within this bill.

Overall, I do think there are some serious concerns in the four sections of this bill that I have outlined. There is a contention being made that this legislation is purely a funding mechanism. The bill does appropriate money, but there are a number of hidden barbs for the SES funding model in the amending bill that will be used in future education debates both outside and inside this place to radically alter the way we fund education in Australia. If that is the government’s agenda, they ought to come here and say so. If the government is seeking to make changes to the independent and non-government sector, they ought to come here and say so. I want to put on record my support for the independent and non-government schools in my electorate and across the country. We stand behind public and private—non-government and independent—education within Australia in the excellent job that they do.

Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a pleasure, as always, to follow the member for Mitchell. It is many a year since I last heard an argument along the lines of the Marxist conspiracy taking over our education system. It almost makes one nostalgic for the old ideological debates of the Cold War. It is heart-warming to follow the member for Mitchell and take that trip down memory lane.

The Rudd government was elected last November with a clear mandate for change. Australians had had enough of political posturing, empty rhetoric and cowardly buck-passing that only resulted in squandered opportunities and neglect. The nation voted overwhelmingly for a government that would provide long-term reform—a government that would focus that reform on building a stronger, fairer Australia. I am proud to be part of that government. The strength of this country will always lie in its people. Education is the most effective route to empowerment, and the better the quality of the education that this nation can provide its people, the stronger this nation will be. Our long-term prosperity is dependent on our productivity. A skilled workforce is vital to boost and to maintain productivity. Investing in the education of our children is investing in the skill base of the future and our economic growth. It is an investment for us all.

The Rudd government is committed to creating an education revolution. We are shunning the divisive policies of the past that saw private institutions pitted against public, state governments pitted against the Commonwealth and parents pitted against teachers. We are committed to revolutionising our education system through collaborative effort. It is a revolution that sees the community, parents, institutions and both tiers of government working together to ensure that high quality education is accessible to all Australian children and a revolution that focuses on individual student outcomes, not on where they happen to be studying.

Disadvantage tends to be cyclical in nature, and education is the best method of breaking that cycle. Education brings opportunities. Education leads to better jobs, larger pay packets and higher standards of living. A telling statistic is that each additional year of schooling is associated with a 10 per cent increase in earnings. Poverty is directly linked to criminal activity, health problems, family breakdown and social division. This drains our community’s resources, security and pride, which in turn fuels the cycle. Education is the surest solution to breaking the cycle of poverty by giving the next generation the opportunity to reach their full potential and achieve the fulfilment, social engagement and living standards they deserve.

In this government’s first budget, we allocated $19.3 billion to education initiatives. We have mobilised to set this revolution in motion, with millions already flowing through programs such as the digital education revolution and the trades training centres. The Rudd government’s education revolution aims to create not just a stronger Australia that will have the skills and knowledge to compete in the global economy but also a fairer society. We are working to improve the transparency and accountability of all schools at all levels. Unless we know what is working we cannot hope to improve the quality of our system. This government is not interested in cheap political point-scoring. We need to collect performance data to ensure that resources go where they are needed, to ensure that parents can make informed choices and to ensure the proper evaluation of program effectiveness. Resources need to be targeted. The 2006 National report on schooling in Australia highlighted the appalling disparity in educational outcomes between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students. Literacy and numeracy achievement rates showed a difference ranging from 13 per cent to 32 per cent in years 3 to 7. Thirty per cent fewer Indigenous students obtained year 12 qualifications than non-Indigenous students. In remote Australia, the figures are even more disturbing. English literacy and numeracy are the foundation for educational achievement in Australia. Without these skills, our children face an uncertain future with social exclusion, low socioeconomic status and personal frustration. Students who score badly in literacy and numeracy tests at year 9 level are more likely to be unemployed and, if they are employed, more likely to earn a low wage.

These problems are compounded for Indigenous students who have English as a second language. Attainment of a year 12 qualification or equivalent is another significant indicator of better employment prospects. It opens the doorway to further education that can provide not just the skills needed for workforce participation but also the confidence to rise to the challenge of a competitive environment. This government recognises the enormous contributions made by the Indigenous community to our nation. It also recognises the potential wasted by the inertia and complacency of our predecessors’ policies. We are committed to ensuring that our Indigenous community has the necessary tools to forge ahead. We want to assist those communities in achieving economic independence and ensure that entrepreneurial ventures are not hampered by a lack of skills and knowledge. As recent submissions to the House of Representatives Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs Committee have made clear, the most valuable contribution we can make to promote the success and longevity of Indigenous enterprise is an investment in education.

The Prime Minister opened this parliament with an apology to Australia’s Indigenous people. That apology was about us maturing as a nation, acknowledging the wrongs of the past and embracing a future of respect, dignity and equal opportunity for all Australians. As the Prime Minister stated, to achieve that future we need to forge a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians and to have at the core of that partnership a commitment to closing the gap in life expectancy, educational achievement and employment opportunities. These gaps are inextricably linked. This government is working hard with state governments and education providers to achieve the concrete goals of halving the gap in literacy and numeracy achievement rates within a decade and halving the gap in year 12 or equivalent attainment by 2020. My electorate of Port Adelaide has one of the highest population proportions of urban Indigenous people in South Australia. As their federal representative, as a member of this government and as an Australian citizen, I want to ensure that we as a nation do all that we can to achieve these long-overdue goals. The bill before this House will assist us in this important work.

The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 is complementary to the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and is part of the legislative upheaval that must form part of the education revolution. The Commonwealth and the states are working together to create the national education agreement. Until new arrangements are finalised, it is vital that we maintain our support of and show our leadership for the continuation and development of programs that improve educational outcomes for Indigenous communities. This bill allocates more than $500 million between 2009-12 for a range of targeted projects funded under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000. It will maintain commitments to successful programs such as Sporting Chance and the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program. It will enable the expansion of effective projects in the targeted areas of intensive literacy and numeracy programs for Indigenous students. In addition, it will provide professional development for teachers to construct quality individual learning plans for Indigenous students in need.

The bill allocates over $100 million for the continuation of the away-from-base aspect of Abstudy from January 2009 to June 2013. This will ensure that education providers can continue to offer intensive residential courses to Indigenous students as part of distance learning. More than $160 million has been appropriated for supplementary assistance to preschool and vocational education and training providers as a transitional arrangement until January 2009. This will ensure funding certainty and the continuation of services to Indigenous families while we implement further reform. This bill will reinforce our new framework of transparency and accountability. It will strengthen reporting structures to ensure that we have a greater understanding of where the gaps between Indigenous and non-Indigenous education outcomes arise and, even more importantly, why. Good government means practising what you preach. As part of our pursuit of transparency and accountability, the Prime Minister has undertaken to provide a report to parliament on the first sitting day of each year about closing the gap for Indigenous Australians. This underlines our commitment to achieving this vital goal after the years of callous neglect shown by the previous government. This bill assists the arrangements for that report.

The marginalisation of our Indigenous community has no place in modern Australia. This bill is part of a wider legislative upheaval that will see Indigenous education recognised as a mainstream education issue. This will give education providers more freedom to develop and use the programs that provide the best outcomes for their students and their individual circumstances. It will reduce red tape, increase flexibility and allow teachers to get on with the important job of improving participation, literacy and numeracy rates. It will also ensure equity of funding indexation arrangements.

It is not a revolutionary concept that education is the key to building a stronger society. What is revolutionary after the Howard era is implementing a strategy that actually provides meaningful reform and tangible results. The Labor Party have promised an education revolution and we intend to deliver it. This bill is a vital cog in the workings of that revolution. I commend the bill to the House.

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to be on my feet speaking on these education and school bills and particularly to follow the member for Port Adelaide. His predecessor, because of his former education experience, always spoke very strongly on education bills. I found myself agreeing with the current member for Port Adelaide, mostly because most of his remarks were addressed to the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, which is not particularly controversial. I found myself thinking back to 1996 and then to 1998, when I chaired the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Family and Community Affairs, and to my shock when, after I arrived at this place, one of the first inquiries that we did was in relation to Aboriginal health. I remember just how significant Aboriginal education was even way back then. I do not share the pessimism expressed by the member for Port Adelaide about the Howard years. We did an enormous amount in bringing that issue to the fore.

So I find myself not in disagreement on the Education Legislation Amendment Bill. Most of my anxiety is in relation to the cognate bill, the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. I noted that the member for Port Adelaide made reference to paranoias and ideological positions that are often taken. I was amused to read the editorial of the Age on Thursday last week. The editor introduced his editorial with this comment:

There are few matters that evoke as much passion or ideological division as the education of our children.

I do not have an ideological position in respect of the Schools Assistance Bill, but I do wish to express the anxieties that have been expressed to me by the schools in my constituency. There are 127 schools in the division of Mallee, and I am proud of every single one of them and the educational outcomes they achieve. Some of them are extremely remote and some of the primary schools have fewer than a dozen children, but the parents wish for that form of access for their children in isolated locations and they fight vigorously to keep their schools open. Of those 127 schools, 29 are non-government schools—primary schools and secondary colleges—scattered right across the north-west of Victoria. They have expressed some concern about what this bill gives the minister jurisdiction to do. I would like to put those anxieties on the formal record just to ensure that those fears are not realised—not my fears, but the anxieties that have been expressed to me.

It is interesting that, of those 127 schools, three are new independent schools that have been established since 1998. One of those is an Islamic primary school in Mildura. The other two are Christian primary schools. Parents had expressed a desire to have their children educated in that environment, where the value emphasis could be formally part of the school curriculum. Those new schools, in particular—having tried to get established through the previous period, when the Australian Labor Party were in government with the New Schools policy, which was effectively a ‘no schools’ policy—waited patiently for many years for the Howard-Fisher government to make it possible for those parents to have their aspirations realised and have schools operating to a curriculum that they felt best suited their children. They expressed anxiety at some of the provisions this bill introduces.

The Schools Assistance Bill is primarily an instrument for non-government primary and secondary education in Australia for the 2009-12 period and for appropriating $28 billion for that purpose. Passage of this bill before the end of 2008 is necessary to provide continued Commonwealth funding for non-government schools into January 2009. However, while the bill apparently preserves the total funding available to non-government schools, consistent with the government’s election commitment which they made in 2007, the bill introduces a number of changes to school funding agreements. This is where the concern that has been expressed to me from the non-government sector is generated.

This concern gets added to when they hear comments from senior government ministers, like the Deputy Prime Minister and other Labor members, in relation to their perceived opposition to a socioeconomic funding model, the SES model, which serves their purposes well. They are not huge capitally funded schools; they are small schools with 50 to 60 children. They express anxiety when they see in this legislation the power that a minister might have to interfere with a parental choice they make about the schooling of their children.

There are four main areas where this non-government sector can be potentially negatively impacted. Firstly, there are the changes to the grounds upon which the minister can elect to refuse or delay a payment. Section 15 of the bill makes it easier for the minister to be able to do that—I will go into that concern shortly. The second area is the new requirement for school funding agreements to comply with the national curriculum by 2012—and the anxiety and concern about changes has been expressed by many speakers already in this debate. It has been an interesting exercise, listening to the contributions from members—which drew me to that reference by the editor of the Age about the diverse ideological positions that people can have. The third point of concern is the alteration of the reporting requirements for schools, particularly new requirements in relation to financial viability. And the fourth point is the removal of the previous government’s new non-government schools establishment grant, which has benefited those schools that have recently been established. Let us go through these one by one.

It might be reasonable, as other speakers have said, that the minister could react to a qualified auditor’s report and either threaten to withhold funding or withdraw it completely. I would like to make the point that auditors—a bit like civil engineers—are very, very conservative people and they can qualify an audit report for all sorts of different reasons. It can be in regard to a school’s plans and strategy to invest capital so that it can improve its value, to make way for a new building they plan to construct in two years time. An auditor can express a qualified audit report warning of the dangers of that.

Duncan Kerr (Denison, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Pacific Island Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Kerr interjecting

John Forrest (Mallee, National Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What this bill does not make clear is to what extent a qualified audit can justify the minister’s threat to withdraw funding. That is the point I am trying to make. It is one thing if the future viability is clear—that it is not going to continue—and there have been terrible mistakes made. But a lot of things can happen before that point is reached. So I am making the point as expressed to me by the schools in my constituency. They want to know what extent of a qualified auditor’s report pre-empts or creates this outcome for them. As I say, auditors are often extremely conservative and very professional in the way they present their reports. That is a point that I put on the record. The interjection from the member for Denison could well be correct, but I want to make sure I am on the public record saying so on behalf of my schools.

The second point relates to the changes occurring to national curricula and the necessity to teach the four basic disciplines of maths, science, history and English. If they are the priorities, it would be a good outcome for me. I was fortunate when I was at school to love maths and science. I struggled a little with English, which is fairly clear from my contribution here, I imagine, but the nation desperately needs qualified technical people, and very often nowadays we have to import those people from overseas because we have not had that focus on making maths and science an exciting area for young people to take an interest in.

The framing document for this was recently released, so things are all up in the air with respect to the outcome for independent schools in my electorate if they want to place an emphasis on religious education—for example, Islamic schools that wish to reinforce their faith and value systems. Other parents have made a decision for their children to attend Christian schools and Catholic schools. They all want to know how a requirement that they comply with the national curricula will impact on the particular emphasis in their schools, a view which is very strongly supported by their parent communities.

The last point I would like to raise about the concerns expressed to me is the additional reporting requirements for schools in relation to their funding sources. Perhaps the member for Port Adelaide may have been generally correct when he asserted that this level of anxiety is closer to paranoia, but it does make one very suspicious of what is behind this substantive new power for the minister. The conclusion that I draw is that it is designed to undermine the SES model. Other speakers have made reference to that and my schools have expressed anxiety about it. And it is not right to say that coalition speakers raising this concern are simply paranoid. It is something that the new government is going to have to work on in its communication and consultation with the broad breadth of the school industry and education in general.

It was not helpful that in this debate the member for Throsby said that the SES model lacks integrity. Other government members, including the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard herself, and the Assistant Treasurer, have made comments about the SES index in particular. The Assistant Treasurer stated:

The regime established by this government and continued under these bills for determining the funding arrangements for schools is the socioeconomic status index—the SES index. This is a fundamentally flawed index. It replaces the Education Resources Index, which was much more based on the needs of the school and the capacity of the school to reach educational standards.

When my schools, which are not large, capital based schools, read comments like that from senior ministers, they automatically interpret them in plain English as a government intent on moving away from a model that served their interests very well.

This bill requires schools to report on their additional monetary support, and that support can come from a whole range of sources. It can come from the alumni of the schools themselves—former students who were so impressed by the start in life their school gave them that they make a contribution. It can be raised by parents clubs after hundreds and hundreds of fundraising activities. We have all been involved in those activities as our own children have gone through the education system. They are extremely hard work. Activities could include running the barbecue, cooking lamingtons, running school fetes and a plethora of other activities that people engage in to raise funds for their schools. In Mallee, often some of my smaller rural schools will use a form of share farming. They shear sheep and sell the clip for the school’s benefit. They might sell part of their crop, whether it is dried grain, grapes or stone fruit. All schools are involved in those activities. The government has this implied threat where it wants to know in detail where schools’ funding is coming from, and again I say that members of my school councils are expressing concern at the final direction of this new measure that the minister has proposed by the introduction of this bill. I am not opposed to the bills; I am just expressing those concerns on behalf of my constituency, which is my job as a member of the House of Representatives. I am delighted to put those comments on the record.

David Bradbury (Lindsay, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in support of the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. Before I address some of the points that I was intending to make, I will pick up on the comment by the member for Mallee about his supreme confidence in the conservative nature of auditors. I must say that, in the current climate, I find that somewhat surprising. Notwithstanding that, I think the point that needs to be made is that the powers to be given to the minister in relation to schools that have received a qualified audit report obviously only trigger the capacity for the minister to then undertake certain action. Whether or not that would occur obviously would be a matter for the minister to consider in the circumstances, and obviously it would be something that the minister would address with great care and diligence at that point. So I do not think that the degree of concern expressed by speakers from the other side is warranted, but these new powers are an important component of the underpinning principle of transparency that is also incorporated within the philosophy of the bills before the House.

This of course is a case of Labor implementing and honouring an election commitment. The then shadow minister for education and also the opposition leader at the time, on 9 October 2007, made a very clear statement in relation to the future of school funding under a future Labor government. That statement said:

As part of its Education Revolution, a Rudd Labor Government has committed to:

• Adopt the existing Socio-Economic Status (SES) funding model for the next funding quadrennium, from 1 January 2009 to 31 December 2012; and
• Make the four year 2005-2008 Funding Agreement and the current schools indexation formula its minimum starting point for the Commonwealth’s negotiations with the States, Territories, Catholic and Independent school systems.

The bills before the House implement those commitments. There can be no question about that. Indeed, notwithstanding the protestations to the contrary from some on the other side, I do not believe that anyone has seriously suggested that that is not the case. These bills do implement that commitment. That is something that I think is an important part of the Rudd government’s education revolution. One of the commitments that we made as part of those specific commitments was that we wanted to ensure that schools of various persuasions—whether they are government or non-government schools, in the form of Catholic or independent schools—were very much able to plan ahead with some certainty in relation to the levels of funding that they would expect to receive under a Rudd Labor government.

Clearly, matters of certainty are important. Schools that are not government schools have to operate in a fashion where they can make the various decisions that they need to make in order to pay the various bills that come in and to raise the revenue that is necessary. That funding certainty is something that is essential to allow them to continue to provide the service that they provide to students, and indeed to parents, and to do that in a way in which they do not have to start increasing fees in order to compensate for a lack of funding or an inability to plan for the future. So it is important that we deliver on this commitment.

One of the first things that I chose to do as the member for Lindsay was to organise a forum of school principals. In fact, I had two forums. The first forum related to secondary school principals and the second forum related to primary school principals. Approximately 20 principals attended the first forum of secondary school principals. It was a very interesting opportunity for us all to get together. A number of comments were made on the day. One longstanding principal who had taught at a number of schools within the area indicated that this was the first time in his many decades of teaching in the area that he had been invited to join in a gathering and discussion of that sort. That surprised me because, frankly, I felt that one of the first ports of call as a new member was to sit down and discuss with principals and various school communities the challenges, the needs and the aspirations that they have for local students within the community.

One of the points that I was at great pains to make was that I had deliberately chosen to invite the principals of all of the schools. It was not a case of having separate meetings with the principals from government schools and then a follow-up meeting with the Catholic school principals and then the independent school principals. I wanted to meet with all of the principals together, in large part to demonstrate that my commitment is to the educational future of all of the students within my community. So, too, the Rudd government’s commitment is to the educational opportunities and futures of students right across the spectrum. One of the important points that the Labor Party in opposition consistently made is that we believe that, ultimately, funding decisions need to be made on the basis of need. Sometimes there may be a correlation between need and whether or not schools happen to be government or non-government schools, but in my experience I would have to say that that is not always the case. Indeed, sometimes there can be schools—and I have seen many of them throughout Western Sydney—that may be low-fee, non-government schools that do not necessarily have the resources and funds available that some of the private schools in other parts of New South Wales have. I confine my comments largely to New South Wales because that is the extent of my direct knowledge of these matters. Some of the local schools that I have encountered that are low-fee-paying private schools do not have the same resources that many others have. In fact, there are some government schools, and in particular some selective schools, that I have observed that have some educational opportunities available for students that are not necessarily on offer at non-government schools. So I think it is important that when we are allocating funding we do so on the basis of need and that needs should be properly assessed in respect of individual schools.

There has been some consternation on the part of those opposite in relation to some of the transparency requirements, but I think it should be a given that, where public funds are expended in relation to non-government schools, there should also be an expectation that certain key measures are delivered upon in relation to the performance, reporting and ongoing compliance with broader objectives that the government might set for schools right across the spectrum that are in receipt of government funds. I do not believe that any of the requirements that are being proposed in these bills are in any way oppressive or unreasonable. Certainly in the discussions that I have had with principals and educators within my local community, none of those discussions have yielded any real concern about these matters. These are matters of accountability, and I think it is right that they are to be introduced as part of these bills.

I think it is important to reflect on the role that these measures play within the broader agenda of the government. We obviously talked a lot before the election about the education revolution and, now that we see the government approaching its first year in office, we have already begun to see some of the tangible results of that education revolution. I have to say that, in my local community, I was very pleased to see over 2,000 computers being funded under the first round of the digital education revolution computers in schools initiative. The fact that so many schools within my local community were funded under the first round—and, of course, the first round of funding gave preference to those schools that did not have such a high ratio of computers for students currently within their schools—and received such a significant complement of computers is evidence of the fact that the initiatives of this government are making some real gains in providing greater opportunity for local students within schools in my electorate.

I have to say that those computers was spread across the spectrum. Funding decisions out of that first round meant that government, Catholic and independent schools were recipients of funding. In one sense I think that that too is evidence of the fact that need is not always able to be ascertained in a very simple and crude way by having a look at whether or not the school happens to fit within the ambit of being a government or non-government school. One of the aspects of my particular philosophy in relation to educational funding is that I think it is important that we do respect the desire of parents to send their children to particular schools for a particular faith based reason. I think the strong history of not only the Catholic school system but also other independent schools within our education system that are very much focused on providing an education within the context of an individual’s faith is something that should continue to be supported. Indeed, that has been largely a matter of bipartisan policy, at least for many decades, and I am certain that that will continue.

In relation to the fruits of the education revolution, I mentioned earlier the digital revolution, which has been of great value to many local schools in my community. I also note the focus of this government on trade training centres. Clearly, education is one of the most significant areas of policy that we in this place are engaged in determining. That is the case because for so many people educational opportunity can open doors to future prospects in life that they may never have otherwise been able to realise. The Labor Party of course historically, and this continues to be true today, has been the great party of delivering opportunity to people. When it comes to educational opportunity, one fact that I reflected upon recently, if I can just turn my thoughts to tertiary education, was that in my local community approximately two-thirds of all of the students that graduate with a university degree from the University of Western Sydney are the first in their family to have received a degree. That is a significant figure in really demonstrating the fact that opportunities over the last few decades have been expanded to more and more people within our community, allowing them to go on and broaden the extent of their education.

One of the things that I like to try and stay focused on in this debate is that, whilst university education does provide people with tremendous opportunities, universities are not the only place where young people—or older people, for that matter—are able to receive the opportunities that they may need it order to realise their potential. I think one of the great things about the Rudd government’s commitment to building trade training centres in schools is that it sends a very clear message to people within the community, particularly young people and students, that the pursuit of a trade is not in any way less respectable or less desirable than the pursuit of a university education. This is particularly the case when we consider the current climate we have been in for the last few years where emerging skills shortages have been such that tradespeople have been increasingly in great demand. It is important for us as a nation not only to skill ourselves up in our universities but also to ensure that we have the tradespeople and the other skills that are necessary to provide for our economic prosperity. That is why I think our commitment to trade training centres is very much a key part of the overall education revolution.

The education revolution begins in early childhood education but it does not operate only in a direct line through school directly to university and TAFE; it also provides other opportunities that might branch out in other directions in order to allow individuals to realise their potential by harnessing their respective talents. As a measure that is put in the context of the overall education revolution, I think this commitment, delivering on our election promise to maintain levels of funding for non-government schools, is something that will provide the ongoing reassurance to many parents, particularly in my local community, that this is a government that is committed to continuing to govern for all Australians and to providing educational opportunities to all Australians.

I note from the comments of those on the other side, and in particular some of the comments of the shadow minister, that there have been certain amendments proposed. Indeed, the moving of these amendments even potentially threatens the passage of this legislation. I think it would be a great shame if those on the other side were to vote against these proposals, because in doing so they would be blocking the funds that we are looking to make available for non-government schools—indeed, the $28 billion of funds that we are looking to make available over the quadrennium to non-government schools.

I saw in the Sydney Morning Herald this morning an article under the heading ‘Private school funds at risk, union warns’, and in that article Mr Watt, the Federal Secretary of the Independent Education Union of Australia, was quoted as saying that the delay—he was referring to the potential delay that could be caused by the coalition choosing not to support the bills—would ‘put funding for teaching jobs in the private sector at risk’. In the article he went on:

“The IEUA has long supported the need to reform the current Federal Government SES funding model,” he said.

“The previous Federal Government’s approach to the funding of schools was not transparent—it was a tragedy that a proper and open review was not conducted by the Howard government in 2007.”

I think those comments should be borne in mind, and certainly I hope that those opposite reflect upon them, because to do what it appears they are attempting to do—that is, to make political points that frankly are without substance, because we are delivering on the election commitments that we made, and those commitments provide for a sustainable and prosperous future for non-government schools—would be a great shame and would really throw into question the opposition’s ongoing commitment to working with this government to deliver educational opportunities for all Australians. So I call on those opposite to have a good hard think about whether or not they want to block these bills. Certainly I am very pleased to stand up and speak in support of these bills and I commend them to the House.

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. I am privileged to have been in the House of Representatives since 1996 and during that time I have seen a bit of water go under the bridge. I have seen the Labor Party in opposition and I now see them in government. During the term of the Howard government I saw the Labor Party philosophy and their position on various matters of public policy, one of them being education. I saw for many years the Labor Party railing against, and voting against support for, private schooling. I have become, in my old age, just a bit cynical, and I just wonder—

Scott Morrison (Cook, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Housing and Local Government) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Morrison interjecting

Peter Lindsay (Herbert, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Defence) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is that unfair, the member of Cook? I just wonder how fair dinkum the Labor Party is about changing its spots and now saying that it supports choice in education. There is a bit of evidence to support my cynicism—and we have seen it go through the parliament very recently—in the form of the Labor Party’s attack on private health insurance. Again, that is a matter of choice. The former government felt very much that choice should be available to the people of Australia and that we should not seek to influence which service people take up—they should make their own decisions.

We very much supported the notion of private health insurance because if people paid a component of the cost of providing their health it took them out of the public system and they were able to get the benefits that they wanted to pay for. Of course, we saw hundreds of thousands of pensioners scrimping and saving to have their own private health insurance at a time when they really needed it. And we have seen the Labor government take action through the parliament very recently which will see pensioners having to give up their private health insurance. This is the ideology that you get with the Labor Party. And it is driven basically, I guess, by the union movement. The public sector nurses do not want us to have a successful private system and we are seeing moves to gradually take that private system away.

So that is why I am cynical about the bills before the parliament tonight. We have said that this is an attack on choice in education, dressed up in another way. It is the ideology of the teacher unions coming through. There is all sorts of evidence for that, and there can be no better evidence about the ideology that exists in education than in my home city of Townsville. We have the best performing Australian technical college in the country. It has 300 students. It is providing magnificent outcomes. It is providing the best training for apprentices that you could possibly have, and Labor are in the process of closing it for ideological reasons. They want this sort of education to go back into what they call trades training centres in schools.

What are trades training centres? They are nowhere near being a patch on an Australian technical college. They will be a small addendum to a school, with no money provided, as I understand it, for the capital cost. It sounds great to say that there will be a trades training centre in every school in Australia. Yes, there will, but the outcomes from those trades training centres will be nowhere near the outcomes that an Australian technical college could achieve. It was certainly a great disappointment for my community, who knew and understood how good the technical college was, to learn that we may well see the demise of that particular institution.

We have also seen, as part of this debate, comments from the member for Lindsay about the digital revolution and the education revolution. Goodness me, digital revolution! Whatever happened to the national broadband network proposed by Labor? It could have been up and running today—now—but there is no prospect of it even starting yet. That is a fantastic revolution, isn’t it? If I were the member for Lindsay I would not be in the Australian parliament skiting about the digital revolution. In fact, it is the digital disaster. What about the education revolution? Where is it? You have to ask yourself about all of these concepts and see if there is any substance behind them.

The member for Lindsay also said that the amendments we are proposing to these bills threaten the passage of the legislation. They do not. This is the Parliament of Australia. The Labor Party can accept the amendments. The amendments are sensible. As the member for Cook observed over the weekend, Labor is treating the parliament with contempt. We saw it again with the Deputy Prime Minister today refusing to debate the Senate amendments on a bill, saying: ‘We’re the government. We’re going to have our way. We don’t care what the Senate thinks.’ She said that even though the Green senators, the Independent senators and the coalition senators all voted for the amendments. That is pretty high-handed. It is as if parliament were irrelevant.

We also saw that here in question time. The opposition asked sensible questions. They were not politically motivated; they were sensible questions at a time when this country needs a strong opposition asking sensible questions. What did we get? No answers. I think people are starting to realise that the government just simply does not answer questions. The whole tenet of a parliament in the Westminster system is that the government must be accountable to the people through the parliament. In the great democracies of the world question time is one key way you can have the government accountable to the people through the parliament. We are not seeing that happen here in the Australian parliament. You wonder how relevant the parliament is when the government seems to think it can thumb its nose at the parliament and get away with not answering questions.

The amendments we are proposing to these bills look at the attack on choice in education. Local non-government schools in my electorate certainly face an uncertain future under the changes proposed in this legislation. Schools like Annandale Christian School, which is a fantastic non-government school—I love going there; the people are so beautiful and the kids are so polite—Calvary Christian College, Townsville Grammar School, St Margaret Mary’s College, St Patrick’s College, Ignatius Park College and the Cathedral School of St Anne and St James, which I should mention or I will be in strife, are genuinely threatened by the changes made in this legislation.

Of course, the funding that is going through is welcome. The legislation has to be right. Granting extra power to the minister to delay or end funding for non-government schools because of an audit qualified for non-financial reasons is a silly public policy to have in this legislation. Surely, the Labor Party can see that. How can you leave a school with no funding if it suffers an audit qualified for non-financial reasons? The minister can just withdraw the funding. I appeal to the Labor Party: have a bit of sense about this and do not continue along those lines. It has been made very clear in other debates about the required adherence to a national curriculum that, without the flexibility, it puts at risk some of the special non-government schools. I think Labor members too will feel some disquiet about that.

We have the ability to force non-government schools to comply with a requirement to inform the minister of every single dollar that they make, including at the local chook raffle. How bureaucratic is that? The funding of schools under this legislation is not determined by those sorts of factors and yet the Labor Party wants to know how much the local school makes at a chook raffle. We should be about less bureaucracy, not more bureaucracy. We should be about not requiring bureaucracy at all if the information is not going to be used. I think Labor colleagues may feel some disquiet about that. I will be supporting the amendments that will be sensibly moved by the opposition. I hope that my Labor colleagues will support those amendments as well.

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Education is the key to the future of this country. That is a simple idea that I believe and that this government believes. That is one of the reasons why we made education a core economic issue at the last election and that is why we have put it at the centre of the government’s agenda this year. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 before the House today represent a major step in that education revolution. We are committed to building a world-class education system for all Australians.

The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 provides for the continuation of funding for a range of targeted programs and projects under the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000. This funding goes to improving Indigenous education outcomes and assisting the communities and schools in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—something I certainly support.

Recently I was on a tour at the technical college in my electorate, and there was a group of Indigenous students who were studying at Rostrevor College also there. They were at the technical college having a look at the commercial kitchen and some of the trade courses there. They had come from outback Western Australia, from Kununurra, from Darwin and from Arnhem Land, and it was a tremendous opportunity for them not just to improve their education but also to give them an idea of what was on offer in other parts of the country. So it is a tremendous part of the bill and something that I would certainly commend.

The Schools Assistance Bill represents the government’s commitment to providing funding certainty for every Australian school, no matter what type it is, no matter where it is and no matter how many students it has. In determining schools funding, the government has dispensed with the old politics of the past—and we heard references to the old politics of the past from the member for Herbert. We have dispensed with those politics and made good on our election commitment—that is, that the current SES funding agreement model for 2005-08 with its formula has been the minimum in determining funding for the next funding quadrennium from 1 January 2009 until 31 December 2012. There is going to be minimum upfront funding of $42 billion for all schools over that period and funding of $28 billion for recurrent and capital assistance to non-government schools specifically delivered by this bill. So every school in Australia will get certainty and will be able to plan for the next four years and beyond.

I think it is good that in this bill the government is adding to what schools are getting and not taking away. It ensures that schools like St Mary Magdalene’s School in Elizabeth South, St Columba College in Andrews Farm, St Joseph’s School in Clare, the Horizon Christian School in Balaklava and the Trinity College North campus, which had 80 students in the national parliament just last week, can continue to provide top-quality educational opportunities to students. Despite what the opposition say—both while they were in government and now—the Rudd government is here to add to funding for schools, not wreck them; to lift all the boats; and I think that is an idea that is just sensible and responsible.

The funding provided for by this bill includes an Indigenous funding guarantee as well as reforms to Indigenous supplementary assistance to make sure that schools that cater to Indigenous students receive the support they need and continue to receive that support. The funding in this bill also provides for targeted assistance for the teaching of languages other than English, fir English for new arrivals to Australia, for literacy and numeracy for students with special learning needs as well as for students in country areas.

Many of the non-government schools in Wakefield make a particular effort to support Indigenous students. I think the northern suburbs have got about 50 per cent of the urban Indigenous population of Adelaide. So this funding is certainly welcome in my electorate. This bill will ensure a streamlined $239.1 million fund for Indigenous supplementary assistance is put in place, ensuring that every Indigenous student attracts supplementary funding that is indexed and gives schools greater flexibility in how they cater to the unique needs of Indigenous students.

It is something that is fairly close to my heart. One of my best friends in high school was a fellow named Jimmy Karpany. He was a very smart person but left school in year 10 and, when I reflect back on it, I think it was probably because he and his brother were the only Indigenous students in my high school. He later went on to university and became a very fine police officer. When I think of these measures, I think of him. Tragically, he passed away in a car accident about a year ago, so I would just like to take this opportunity to remember him in this speech.

Importantly, this bill makes school infrastructure funding a priority. Bricks and mortar, facilities, ovals—all of these things are essential to schools functioning and are a key part of the education revolution. This bill delivers over half a billion dollars for this purpose through the capital grants program. This just adds to the education revolution. I do hope that schools like Xavier College, Craigmore High School and the new regional Catholic technical college in Elizabeth can benefit from this infrastructure funding, as well as from funding through the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program. I know they are looking forward to applying for that funding. Both government and non-government schools, I believe, can have a big impact in creating skilled school leavers in the north. I think one of our biggest problems is that we have got areas of acutely high youth unemployment in my electorate. But, not so far away, we have areas like the Barossa Valley which have virtually zero unemployment, so they have problems getting skilled labour. So that is an area that we hope these funds will have some impact on.

This package of funding comes from a government that is determined to fund our schools and to see that that funding works—that it works for teachers, parents and students. That is why the funding is linked to the requirements in the national education agreement, which is currently being finalised by COAG, to make sure that non-government schools are as accountable for their performance as government schools. This link will make sure that non-government schools are involved in meeting the three key national priorities that are central to the strength of the education system: improving the quality of teaching; raising outcomes in disadvantaged school communities; and delivering a new era of transparency that will help to guide parents, teachers and policymakers in making the best possible decisions for our schools.

The central element of transparency is ensuring that there is a simple but effective framework to assess schools’ performances. This bill provides for such a framework so that parents and students know how their school is performing. This will help to ensure that we can all understand how a school performs over time and in relation to schools serving similar communities. This will not lead to the creation of simplistic league tables, which I think have been fairly disastrous in the United States, but instead it will lead to an effective education system that can identify and address the needs of students and schools that might be at educational disadvantage. To identify these risks this bill provides for five simple activities that are essential to achieving transparency. That is five activities, in contrast to the excessively bureaucratic approach of the previous government.

The key activities as a part of this revolution in transparency are: national testing, national outcome reporting, provision and publication of individual school information and reporting to parents. These requirements will apply to all schools in Australia, public or private, and are fundamental to ensuring that parents know how their child is progressing at school and that we as a parliament and a community know where additional assistance is required.

They are really a straightforward set of concepts. National testing in literacy and numeracy will continue for students in years 3, 5, 7 and 9 but will also reach beyond the basics and include such important areas as civics and citizenship and information technology literacy. The results of national testing will be a part of the national reporting requirements of schools and these reporting requirements will also provide information on important aspects of schooling more generally, such as attendance and year 12 attainment. Attendance is a particularly important issue and it is one of the things that I was most shocked about. I have regular meetings with the Education Union in my electorate and one of the more frightening things that came through bits of anecdotal evidence that teachers gave me was that attendance is a big problem, particularly in the transition from primary school to high school. It is an area that we need to focus on.

The collection of this information is important if we are to make sound policy decisions that are about addressing educational disadvantage. Such information will be important as we work with state governments, particularly the state government of South Australia in my case, to make sure that local schools see the rates of truancy drop and the rates of year 12 completion rise in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. As I said, that has been a particular problem in some of these schools in the northern suburbs of Adelaide. Once we have that information we can start to make evidence based allocations of resources to ensure that no Australian is excluded from the opportunity of—or, I might say, the obligation of getting—a great education.

Without information we cannot make realistic assessments about which schools need more support and which schools have discovered something that works. This information is essential in directing those education resources to where they are needed most and in promoting education ideas and concepts. Often it is the teams in the schools and the leadership in the schools that inspire better students. Without this critical information I know it will be those with the most marginal educational opportunities who suffer, who are ignored and who are denied the resources they are entitled to on the basis of their need. The bill also requires more information to be available to parents, including report cards that are in plain language and that provide an accurate assessment of how a child is progressing. These reports will include reference to students’ achievements against key indicators, including the national average, and will allow for a meaningful way of tracking students’ progress through their time at school.

Finally, the bill requires that schools follow a range of accountability procedures from simple requirements for information to be available about a school’s mission and values to the reasonable expectation that non-government schools will successfully complete their independent audits. These are all sensible expectations of the community and reflect the government’s approach to education—investing in opportunity, increasing transparency and delivering better results. When the national education agreement is concluded, government and non-government schools will get their first idea of funding. This framework will ensure that our schools are more transparent and accountable, that parents have a much better idea about how their child is performing and how their school is teaching and that policy makers will have a much better idea how to direct resources. These bills are an important step on the path to a world’s best quality education system and I commend the bills to the House.

Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. I begin by saying that the coalition has a strong record in delivering results for both public and independent school sectors in Australia. The results speak for themselves, whether in large capital grants, smaller grants or other funding mechanisms. Right across Australia in the cities and in the country there are living examples of the former government’s commitment to quality education—quite often in funding essential programs and infrastructure that incompetent, lazy and neglectful state governments had either refused or been unable to fund.

As has been noted by many of my colleagues, the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 introduces some new requirements about which the opposition is quite concerned. These new requirements have generated significant concern within the non-government education sector already—namely, the requirement of complying with the national curriculum, which we have not even seen yet; the changes to the reporting requirements for schools, particularly as they relate to funding sources; the removal of the former government’s non-government schools establishment grants; and the powers granted to the minister in relation to refusing or delaying payments to non-government schools.

This bill reopens the debate about parental choice in schooling in Australia. There is a hidden agenda here, none of which has been dispelled by Labor’s sudden and questionable conversion to the merits of the SES formula. Sadly, old habits die hard for the political extremists who put their theoretical socialist agenda before common sense. We are witnessing the return of the politics of envy and we have to ask: did it ever really go away? When the former coalition government brought Catholic systemic schools under the SES funding agreements, Cardinal Pell said:

The socio-economic funding model fits in well with the Church’s concern to make education available to all Catholics and especially to families on low incomes who make up the bulk of our schools’ clientele.

In other words, when Labor members wax lyrical about Scotch College, the Kings School or Xavier College, they miss the point entirely. A flourishing network of low-fee Christian and independent schools has opened up right across my electorate and indeed right across Australia. Those schools provide the choice in education that parents want. That is why their enrolments are growing. But the Labor Party think choice in education is a dirty word. Certainly we on this side of the House think very differently.

Every journey starts with a first step. And the measures in this bill could well be the first step towards Labor revisiting their envy soaked 2004 schools hit list. Mr Latham may be gone, but the ideological battleground is still well and truly alive for those on the other side of this House. The ghost of the former member for Werriwa remains in this place, channelled perhaps most forebodingly in the current Minister for Education. She was after all his numbers man and now she wants to revisit his disdain for the independent, Catholic and low-fee Christian school sectors.

My fellow colleagues have pointed out that the current Minister for Education had previously bemoaned the former government’s immensely successful SES funding formula—the socioeconomic status formula—as ‘a flawed index’ which ‘does not deliver on the basis of need’. Earlier in her career, in a speech in this place, she bemoaned the SES formula based on her own five objections. Four of them had policy grounds, but the fifth was the most telling, where she focused on her own ‘philosophical’ objections. It is here where the true nature of Labor’s obsession against the independent school sector comes home to roost. But it would be entirely unfair to quarantine the Labor Party’s attacks on the SES formula to just the Deputy Prime Minister. We had the member for Throsby last week say that the current SES scheme ‘lacks integrity’. We had the awkward moment for Labor in the last election campaign when their candidate for Eden-Monaro said the SES was a ‘ridiculous postcode system’. The member for Prospect—now sitting on the government’s frontbench—must have got his speaking notes from the Deputy Prime Minister when he said in 2004 that the SES model was a ‘fundamentally flawed index’.

Do we really need to delve any further to see that Labor has form on criticising the SES model? Their rhetoric on schools funding is there for all to see. There is a clear pattern of disturbing commentary against the model of school funding put in place by the former coalition government. Now the Labor Party want us to put all that behind us and simply believe them when they say there are no risks to school funding from this bill—in spite of their serious indifference to the SES model. All their pronouncements make very clear that the Labor Party’s real agenda is to abolish the SES model and to return to a resource based model, rather than a need based model. This would be a disastrous step for education in this country and students right across the independent and Catholic system would be worse off.

My fear is that there will be a revivification of the sectarian wounds of the past. This is the ideological battleground where the Deputy Prime Minister herself is most comfortable. And she has form. In the past, she gave her time to helping the MUA in the wharfies dispute despite being John Brumby’s chief of staff at the time. She threatened the business community when she warned business groups against becoming propagandists for the Howard government—saying they could get ‘injured’ if they campaigned in favour of Work Choices. She threatened the private health sector when they sought assurances on the private health insurance rebate. And now she is in charge of an education bill worth some $28 billion over the 2009-12 period for the non-government school sector. Is it any wonder parents across the nation are concerned and worried at what this minister will do to the schools to which they send their children?

The mandating of conformity to the new national curriculum without exception troubles us because we feel it is unfair to force schools to adopt a curriculum that has not yet even been seen. This is not even touching on the concerns that may well eventuate in the near future with ideologues such as Marxist historian Stuart Macintyre along with critical literacy guru Peter Freebody in charge of the task of framing the national curriculum. The requirement that non-government schools make available for publication all of their sources of funding will do nothing to promote transparency and will have everything to do with making life difficult for non-government schools. The fact that such information is superfluous to the requirements to calculate the SES funding simply highlights this and makes you want to ask why they are imposing such onerous conditions on schools. Why do they want them to waste their time providing such information when it is not even essential?

In closing, the opposition have highlighted the very serious concerns we have with this legislation and accordingly moved amendments. It would be nice and it would show some common sense if the government were to seriously consider these amendments, but in light of the Deputy Prime Minister’s past form and that of many of her colleagues that is, sadly, highly unlikely. The great losers—and some people on the other side know this—will be the students of this nation. It may well take many years for the damage that is done to be recovered. I will obviously be making known my concerns with this legislation to my local schools and will continue to seek their feedback.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to make my contribution and voice my strong support for the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. The Schools Assistance Bill will appropriate $28 billion and provide funding certainty for non-government schools from 2009 through to 2012. This bill is very important for the 16 non-government schools in my electorate of Solomon because it provides funding certainty. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill will see the continuation of the appropriations from 2009 to 2012 for a range of targeted programs and projects that support improvements in Indigenous education outcomes and assist in closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians. These improvements will see more funding flow to Indigenous students.

Our government’s commitment to Indigenous affairs is focused on closing the substantial gaps that exist between the socioeconomic outcomes of Indigenous and non-Indigenous populations. In the Prime Minister’s national apology to the stolen generations back in February this year, he said:

Today’s apology, however inadequate, is aimed at righting past wrongs. It is also aimed at building a bridge between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians—a bridge based on a real respect rather than a thinly veiled contempt. Our challenge for the future is to now cross that bridge and, in so doing, to embrace a new partnership between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians … But the core of this partnership for the future is the closing of the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians …

Education and closing the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians are two issues I am absolutely passionate about. As a very proud father of five Indigenous kids, I am totally committed, just like all my colleagues are, to succeeding in these two crucial areas.

By way of background, education is a subject that has always been very close to my heart. Both my parents are teachers, my sister is a teacher and I have almost finished a teaching degree. Collectively, there is a combined teaching experience of over 80 years. My grandmother was also a schoolteacher. Most of this teaching experience has been gained in the Territory. There is a great wealth of knowledge in Indigenous education. In fact, my father was the principal at Karama Primary School for many years—10 to be exact—and was in charge when the school won a national award for excellence in Indigenous education. At the time, the school had 145 Indigenous students out of a total student population of 510. Under the leadership of my father, the school implemented innovative staffing and education practices by raising the ratio of Indigenous staff employed in the school to reflect the fact that almost one-third of the student population came from Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander backgrounds.

In 2006 the gap in the national benchmarking test results of Indigenous and non-Indigenous students for years 3, 5 and 7 in reading, writing and numeracy was somewhere between 13 and 23 per cent. The Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 seeks to address these figures, because more needs to be done to accelerate the pace of change if we are to achieve our challenging targets—halving the gap of literacy and numeracy achievement, halving the gap in attaining year 12 or equivalent and halving the gap in employment outcomes for Indigenous Australians. The government is working with government and non-government education and training providers to achieve these targets. We are establishing national collaborative arrangements that will assist us to collectively work towards these targets.

However, the government must maintain an ability to provide national leadership and perspective to close the gap. This bill will provide more than $500 million over the next four years to facilitate this leadership by establishing the evidence around what works and highlighting good practice. This funding will allow us to continue to work with Indigenous communities, philanthropic organisations, corporate leaders and national organisations to build the partnerships that are so crucial to improving outcomes for Indigenous Australia. This bill provides appropriations to continue our election commitments such as funding for an additional 200 teachers in the Northern Territory. We are also going to ensure that good programs such as Indigenous work mobility programs and Indigenous leadership programs continue. Together, we also aim to see every Indigenous four-year-old in remote communities have the opportunity to access an early learning program. This bill will reduce the red tape and improve flexibility for education providers to focus on education outcomes for Indigenous Australia.

During the election campaign, Labor made it clear that Australia needs nothing less than an education revolution—a substantial and sustained increase in the quantity of our investment and the quality of education for all Australian youth. This is required at every level of education, from early childhood education through to the education of mature age students. Education is the platform of our economic future. Our prosperity rests on what we commit to education now.

One thing I learnt from my parents is that education is not something that you just go through the motions with. Education is not something that you just do to win an election. Education is the commitment we make for the society that we want to become. Unfortunately, for a long time in Australia there has been a debate focused on competitive relationships between government and non-government schools—a very counterproductive ‘us versus them’ debate. Unfortunately, only today the National and CLP senator for the Northern Territory, Nigel Scullion, got on radio and mischievously resurrected the old divisive ‘us versus them’ school debate. When discussing the bill on radio today, the senator cast doubts about the future of the very hardworking and committed non-government schools in Darwin. In suggesting that schools may close as a result of this bill being passed the senator is doing nothing more than misleading people and playing politics with education. Let me assure the good people of Solomon that this government recognises there are different pathways in providing high-quality education. In fact, this bill actually gives funding certainty to non-government schools.

This government believes educational experts in consultation with the community, rather than politicians, are best placed to develop a world-class national curriculum. As promised by the Rudd Labor government, the new national curriculum is being developed transparently and in consultation with government and non-government education authorities, teachers, parents, students, academics, professional organisations and business groups. There are schools around Australia in both the government and non-government sectors that struggle with limited resources.

Funding is important, but a more fundamental debate is needed about how to improve the quality of school education for all students. We need an ambitious national strategy to improve our schools, driven by the goal of higher quality. To thrive in the future, we need a schooling system which delivers high-quality education for all students regardless of their address or their school. Since the beginning of 2008, the Rudd Labor government has been working through the Council of Australian Governments to develop a new framework for investment and reform in Australian schools. The COAG reform framework means that, for the first time, all governments in Australia will agree to a single set of objectives, outcomes, outputs and, hence, educational priorities and reform directions for the education system. This will result in a national education agreement to be finalised through COAG by the end of this year. This will provide future Commonwealth funding for government schools.

This legislation provides the funding arrangements for non-government schools. Separate non-government school legislation for 2009-12 is required to ensure that funding will be appropriated in time for payments in January 2009. As well as meeting these commitments, the legislation will make important changes to funding for Indigenous students in non-government schools. This legislation gives funding certainty to schools in Darwin and Palmerston, with a focus on quality, and it applies transparency and accountability requirements. For parents to fully understand the choices they make for their children, we need to be more transparent and consistent so that they can examine their options. In order to target resources in a way that will improve the education system, we need richer sources of information. We need to know where efforts are bearing fruit and where they are not so that we can take effective action. For schools, teachers and education authorities to learn which strategies work in which circumstances, we need comprehensive information about both performance and circumstances.

With the states and territories, our government has announced the establishment of the New Schools Assessment and Data Centre. The data centre will ensure performance and other information about early learning outcomes for every school is effectively analysed and used to inform program implementation. Within a year, we want to see increased information on individual student performance available to Australian parents and, within three years, a report that shows not just how their child is doing but how their child’s school is performing compared to similar schools. This framework will mean consistency of reporting on the variables and the outcomes that are relevant and important in understanding the effectiveness of schooling. They include national test results and participation in international assessments and they include aspects of the student population like socioeconomic status, numbers of Indigenous students, numbers of students with disabilities and numbers of students learning English as a second language. This framework will lead to better informed parents, better informed policy makers and a better informed public debate. The framework will also require reporting on the income streams into schools so we can properly analyse what difference extra resources make. All of these are consistent with Labor’s election commitments to deliver an education revolution, provide funding certainty for non-government schools and, most importantly, ensure that no school is disadvantaged.

The Schools Assistance Bill 2008 is a major block in building a fair, transparent national framework for schooling. It will help create a basis for reporting and accountability that is consistent across all schools in all sectors. Perhaps the most significant initiative in the bill—and one that seeks to provide enhanced support—is contained in two linked programs: the Indigenous Supplementary Assistance, ISA, program; and the associated measure, the Indigenous Funding Guarantee, IFG, program. The ISA program will provide almost $240 million dollars for four streamlined programs that provide funds for supplementary recurrent assistance schemes, homework centres, Indigenous tutorial schemes and English-as-a-second-language schemes for Indigenous language speakers. Funding is allocated on a ‘per Indigenous enrolment’ basis, with remote area loadings and indexation of funding built into the program. The IFG program is a transitional measure that will ensure non-government providers have their funding maintained at 2008 levels. This capped guarantee scheme means that providers who might otherwise lose funding under the new arrangements will not lose precious resources.

In my own electorate of Solomon, measures such as the Indigenous Tutorial Assistance Scheme are vital tools that serve a real need. I am delighted that, for many Indigenous kids in Darwin and Palmerston, non-government schools will have an in-school tutorial program funded at a level that supports quality learning outcomes. These tutorial schemes help our local Indigenous students stay on track in class and assist with the completion of homework. These are programs that work, and I am extremely happy to see them receive funding security.

I have 16 vibrant, energetic non-government schools in my electorate. They deliver quality education to thousands of kids in the Darwin and Palmerston area, from the early learning years through to the primary grades and the all-important secondary grades. I love visiting the schools, and I will name a few of them: St John’s College, where I went as a student for five years; St Andrew’s Lutheran School, where I did the hokey-pokey a couple of weeks ago with the children in year 2 and was a very big hit; O’Loughlin Catholic College, where I have assisted them with their football side; Marrara Christian College, where my father still works from time to time and where I unveiled a plaque for their new basketball area; Palmerston Christian School, which is another very well-regarded and respected private school; Kormilda College, which does a fantastic job in enabling kids from remote Indigenous communities to board and get an education; and the Essington School in the northern suburbs of Darwin, out on the peninsula of Nightcliff, where I had the great privilege of opening their fete recently.

I speak to the students, teachers and parents. They tell me about their schools and their communities, and I am always impressed by the quality of the young people that our schools produce, the professionalism of the teaching staff and the dedication of the parents of the students. It was only a few weeks ago, as I mentioned earlier, that I went back to St John’s College to present some awards. It was quite a humbling experience to be back and to speak to the school. It was also great to catch up with the principal, Sister Philippa, her fantastic staff and of course the kids. In fact I met up with my old woodwork teacher, Mr Noel Muller, and his wife, Carol, and it was amazing how many of the people who taught me some 22-odd years ago were still there, still getting around and still educating after all this time. I must admit there was a little bit of reminiscing about the old days, and things came back. We had come a long way: we did not have air-conditioned class rooms back then, but now they have these interactive smart boards. If it is anything like my computer in my office, I probably would not be able to use it.

I recently also had the privilege of advising the principal of Marrara Christian College, Mr John Metcalfe, and the principal of Kormilda College, Mr Malcolm Pritchard—two very dynamic, non-government schools in Darwin—that their schools were successful in obtaining funding for trade training centres. Kormilda College and the Northern Territory Christian College were successful in obtaining up to $1.5 million each. The training centres will provide metals fabrication and a construction training workshop along with an engineering studies centre for students from St John’s College, Marrara Christian College and Kormilda College. I would like to take this opportunity to thank the staff of all those schools in my electorate and congratulate them on the fantastic job that they do.

The Prime Minister said in his address to the National Press Club in August this year:

… I want people to understand that our reforms are essential to Australia’s future—because quality education is good for our economy, good for our community and good for individuals. It will help create jobs and higher wages, and will create better opportunities for all Australians.

The Government wants the next generation of Australians to be the best educated, best skilled, best trained in the world.

We don’t apologise for this ambition—

and we stand by this commitment. He went on:

Today, we take one further practical step towards achieving the education revolution that Australia needs.

One step further to building a stronger, fairer and more secure Australia, and one capable of handling the great challenges of the 21st century that now lie before us.

I absolutely agree with him.

In conclusion, it being the start of Carers Week, I thought it would be appropriate to mention carers and the fantastic jobs that carers do within our communities. My mother is involved in a carer role: there is a young guy with cerebral palsy within our family, and Mum is doing some respite care with him. We certainly have an affiliation with what carers do. Certainly it was a great pleasure today to be down at Old Parliament House for the opening of Carers Week. We acknowledge the carers; we certainly respect the contribution they make to our community. A lot of it is unpaid work: it is 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks of the year. They do a fantastic job and they should be honoured and respected for the job that they do.

As far as education is concerned, this is a good bill: it is good for Australia, it is good for Australian kids, it is good for Australian communities, it is good for Australian families. Education should be something where we do not have an us against them or a private schools against public schools against independent schools way of thinking. This model will look after all schools to give all children the best chance they have got—that is, a solid education to make sure they do well in their lives and fulfil their potential. I commend the bills to the House.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to make it perfectly clear—as I have in the past in this chamber—I am not an apologist for either private or public school systems, but I am a fierce advocate of choice and equity in education. I represent a provincial seat with two major population centres with private and public schools, with a number of smaller towns that are fortunate to have their own schools, and country areas where the schools are quite often the essential centre of the community. My kids have gone to both types schools; I am familiar with both systems.

At first blush, to many the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 will seem like a continuation of the coalition’s policy—and in some part it is. I can see the member for Solomon has stayed in the chamber, and he laments that it looks like the resurrection of the private schools against public schools debate. When you get down to the fine print in this bill and the various covenants laid down in a series of conditions for grants, it is in them that you see the real intent. Is it any wonder that Senator Scullion wanted to alert the people of Darwin and the Territory?

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I bet you not one of them closes!

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They may not close, but I think they are going to have a much more torrid time than they did under the previous government. Let me give one example. The establishment assistance grants were made available by the previous government to non-government schools. There was $500 per full-time student equivalent for the first year of the school’s operations and $250 per full-time equivalent in the second year. That was very important in getting non-government schools established and, quite often, it was helpful to the state system because it was in an area where perhaps you could not justify two state schools but where you could justify a state school and a private school. Under this bill, that provision has been thrown out. I would say to the member for Solomon: that gives you no worries?

One of the most contemptible aspects of the previous Labor government’s regime—I am talking about the Hawke and Keating governments—was its implementation of the so-called new schools policy. In effect, it was the exact opposite; it was a no new schools policy. It was a surreptitious measure of Susan Ryan’s to limit the number of non-government schools, and any objective observer would say that was the intent and that is what happened. One could be pardoned for believing that we are moving back that way. I ask the member for Solomon: why else would you contemplate reintroducing it if you did not have some secondary intent in doing so?

Of course, we have a number of conditions laid down for SES funding, too. I will not go into all of those, because they are quite extensive, but I will pick out a few. They say that you must agree to testing, benchmarking and assessment. I am not against those, but it is interesting that when we first proposed that in the first half of the Howard government’s regime it was bitterly opposed by the ALP and the teachers union, as was one of the other conditions: that school reports had to be fair in their assessment of students—that they could not use generalities, they had to use real assessment tools—and that the reports had to be understandable to parents. That was opposed, too. Now these things are coming in. On top of that, there is the further condition that they must accept the government’s curriculum. I will come back to that later, because I have some reservations on that.

In dealing with the SES, while nominally being adopted by the ALP at the last federal election, it is clear that they are in a mood to water it down. Several Labor MPs in speeches on the public record opposed the spirit of the SES, including the member for Prospect and the member for Eden-Monaro. They were quite unapologetic in their view. If we go back one further election, we had the spectre of Mark Latham and his infamous hit list of private schools—schools that were seen to be sufficiently well endowed to be punished for their success or for the generosity of their P&Cs or their old boys associations.

I remind the government that the capacity to fundraise is not limited to non-government schools. It is open to any government school association to do the same thing. Indeed, I have a number in my area that have been highly successful in raising funds for school facilities—in fact, two assembly halls. It is no mean feat for any school, private or public, to raise that sort of money. Why then would you punish the non-government school for the generosity of its school community, given that the same parents who have helped raise this money also pay fees over and above their voluntary contributions to the school?

The requirement in the bill that schools must report all forms of income is quite insidious. Quite apart from giving competing schools insight into what other schools are doing, it is an infringement of commercial-in-confidence. If the government knows that the school has a particularly highly motivated P&C which raises quite a deal of money for a school, or an old boys association that is providing sports equipment and the like, or a local committee running bingo for the benefit of the school, what business is that of the government? That is over and above work done by the community. I have personal experience of all three of those. Some of my kids went to a school in Bundaberg that raised money through bingo. The old boys of the boarding school I went to got together and raised money for a rowing shed and skulls and all that sort of paraphernalia so that they could get into the Head of the River and those sorts of sporting events. Having seen that firsthand, I would be horrified that schools would have to account for that sort of thing to the government.

Where does the government’s intrusion into the privacy of a school stop? If I were cynical I would say that having this sort of information on the public record would be used by Labor further down the track in modifying the SES funding. And what would the method be? First, flush it out; second, demonise it, which Latham did; third, win public sentiment through the politics of envy—‘What about these rich schools of Kings and this and that?’—and then, with Lathamesque aplomb, change it. Sadly, for his sake, he did not get the chance to do it.

Let me now deal with the philosophy of SES funding. The formula which is used is based on the socioeconomic status of the various census collection districts in Australia, and all the students are placed in the CCD areas. That means that a school that has these CCDs under its influence receives money according to the socioeconomics of the kids who come from those CCDs. Nothing could be fairer than that.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Why do 80 per cent not do it?

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They do.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Perrett interjecting

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Moreton will not interject outside of his place in this chamber.

Paul Neville (Hinkler, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They do. It is quite simply that the CCDs are the basis upon which funding for those schools is paid. That is a fair system. It is also an encouragement to some of the more affluent schools to take on a cross-section of less affluent kids by way of scholarships or reduced fees or whatever it might be. That enriches the profile of their school and it gives other kids the opportunity to go to good quality schools.

Under that system, when the coalition government was in power, the schools that drew students from challenged communities could get up to about 70 per cent of the cost of educating the student. That certainly still placed a burden on the family—30 per cent for people from low-socioeconomic areas was a big effort. The ones who have been bleating about the more endowed schools should recognise that those schools serving the wealthiest communities ended up with only 13.7 per cent of that figure—of course, the schools in between moved on a sliding scale. That system deliberately left school fees and the school’s assets out of the equation, because, as I said before, it would unfairly penalise parents for spending their own time and money on the kids’ education.

Under the former coalition government, a record amount of funding was delivered to state schools. For many years, Labor state and territory governments failed to match the level of school funding provided by the coalition government. For example, in 2006-07 the states and territories increased their funding to state schools by an average of 4.9 per cent, while the Australian government boosted its funding by 11 per cent. At that time, if the states had bothered to keep pace with the Commonwealth’s investment, there would have been an extra $1.4 billion available for funding our state schools.

In this argument, and in all others, we must recognise that taxation, whether it comes from income tax, the GST or state taxes, comes from the pockets of the average taxpayer. The ultimate test of fairness is seeing where the money ends up after going through the state and federal systems. In the 2005-06 financial year, recurrent government spending per student—that is, the funding of pupils—in state schools averaged $11,243 per student. In the non-government schools, it was $6,287—nearly half. Total funding to state schools for the same financial year was $2.3 billion from the Commonwealth, $23 billion from the states and an estimated $1 billion from parents, a total of $26 billion. Funding for the private schools was $5.1 billion from the Commonwealth, $1.8 billion from the states—pretty measly, I might add—and $4.7 billion from the parents in school fees and through the enhancement of the schools in the other ways that I mentioned before, a total of $11.6 billion, less than half the funding.

Let me move now to literacy. I must admit that I am concerned about the requirement that schools entering into a funding agreement with the Commonwealth must implement the new national curriculum in mathematics, science, history and English. Let me qualify that: if it was the core curriculum, I would agree with it. But, until we see the extent of these requirements, there is a doubt in people’s minds that this will be an all-embracing thing which will decide absolutely everything that is taught in the classroom. I agree with consistency of content and testing. I have serious doubts, however, that the national curriculum being developed by the government will deliver that.

Firstly, parliament has little idea of what the national curriculum will look like, because the framing documents have just been released for some scrutiny. Secondly, the philosophies of a number of the people spearheading the creation of these documents are political in the extreme. For example, the history curriculum is being overseen by Professor Stuart Macintyre, a former member of the Communist Party—not that there is anything wrong with that today, I suppose. But it does give an insight into his background. His major works include histories of Marxism in Britain and the history of the Australian Communist Party.

In the English curriculum, we have Professor Freebody, a leading advocate of critical literacy—whatever that means—in Australian English courses. According to Professor Freebody, literacy education is not about skills development and not about deep competence. That troubles me. Although we have only just laid our eyes on the framework crafted by Professor Freebody, I have to say that I simply do not accept that being literate does not require a person to have skills or competency. Literacy is the very foundation of all future learning. Once a child can read and write, they can go on to higher levels of learning and they have the ability to teach themselves without guidance.

A large number of people come into my office from businesses around town tell me that kids find it difficult to put the simplest letter together, that they cannot punctuate and do not know where to use a capital letter, a comma, a semicolon or whatever. That troubles me, too. Literacy goes beyond literature to functional expression. If that is failing then we all fail. I acknowledge that various learning difficulties or disabilities will always prevent a percentage of people from acquiring basic literacy skills. But any attempt to dumb down the national curriculum by suggesting that literacy is not at the core of literacy skills is quite outrageous.

Parents are urged to read to their children, our teachers bust their guts to give their students the best education possible and the community in general laments declining literacy standards. And if competency and skills are not fundamental to reading and writing, why are there national campaigns for the Reading Writing Hotline for people who need a helping hand with their literacy? This runs in contradiction to the government’s own policy. I urge those drafting these frameworks and those working on the development of the national curriculum for English, history, science and mathematics to set the bar high, not low, in spite of the apparent rush job in getting this material together.

The government knew that this bills had to be passed by the end of this year to ensure some continuity of funding for non-government schools, but the framing documents have only recently be completed and this parliament is expected to pass this bills with scant scrutiny of those documents. Worse still, the government is saying that if it does not get its way on these bills it is going to pull them. That is a form of blackmail that I have not heard before in my life.

I would like to talk briefly in the minutes remaining about the so-called education revolution. One of the great benchmarks of this revolution was going to be every child in secondary school having a computer. Then it was going to be every child in year 9 onwards; then it was every child in years 10, 11 and 12; then it was going to be a computer between two children. Now it will be implemented if the states can employ the requisite levels of electric power to be able to run the computers. What a bleeding indictment of Labor governments across this country. It is an indictment that they cannot even get three-phase power into schools to run such things as computers, the modern office equipment that kids have to learn how to use and even things like air conditioning in hot areas.

Under our system, Investing in Our Schools, I used to go up there, and it was simply marvellous to see what you could do. At $600 a computer, you could get 20 computers into a primary school in a little country area for about $12,000. It was a joy to go to those schools, and if it had been left to the Labor state governments they would still be waiting for them. You, Deputy Speaker Scott—not that I want to involve you in a political way—would know that only too well, having 52 major towns in your electorate.

Finally, I come to Australian technical colleges and the new trade training centres in high schools. I am ambivalent about this. All schools do have trade training centres—or didn’t you know? Haven’t you been around your high schools in the past? Some might argue they could be at a higher standard; some might argue they could have some more technical equipment. One particular school in my electorate, Kepnock State High School, had a principal, Siegy Schmieman, who was an absolute wizard at getting good equipment for his schools. He did not need a government trade training program to do that.

Why would we want to close down the Australian technical colleges? It just makes me wonder if the Labor Party has heard about the school-to-work transition, because this is an important feature of getting kids work-ready. There are two fine examples of that—I have not got time to describe them—in Toolooa State High School and Tannum Sands State High School in Gladstone, where school-to-work transition was mastered at a very high level. I do not think that these trade training centres are going to add a lot to that.

I support the amendments to this bill and I call on the government to treat all schools fairly in the process.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I want to clarify my background. My authority to speak about education comes not from the fact that my children went to school—I only have a three-year-old, and he has not gone to school yet. It comes from 11 years of teaching in private and state schools and five years of being a union organiser in private schools as well. In the interest of clarification to the member for Hinkler, I was a candidate in the 2004 election, so I did have a bit to do with the previous ALP education policy. I assure those opposite that if anyone is trying to blow the class war dog whistle it is not this side of politics. We have a very simple education policy which is about giving the best education to all students in Australia. We are not trying to revive a carcass that is long dead. With that background, I rise to speak in support of the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 and the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. The former will secure funding for non-government schools until 2012, while the latter will help improve education outcomes for Indigenous students throughout Australia. I will address the Schools Assistance Bill first.

This bill provides $28 billion for recurrent and capital funding for the non-government school sector and, in doing so, honours the government’s election commitment to continuing the existing indexation arrangements known as socioeconomic status or the SES funding system. It was touched on by some of the previous speakers in that it utilises the CCDs, the census collection districts—the smallest data collection districts used by the Australian Bureau of Statistics—of the parents of the children enrolled at the school. It was interesting to hear the member for Hinkler outline how a school that he was connected with had deliberately targeted people with low socioeconomic status to artificially inflate the SES rating for that school. It is certainly something that I had heard rumours about, but it was interesting to hear the member for Hinkler say that it was a targeted activity in some schools.

Under that system, the higher a school’s SES score, the lower the per-student funding rate—in other words, the wealthier a school community, the less it received in government funding. That was seen to be a reasonably fair initiative; every fair minded person supports the aims of such a funding arrangement. I say the aims of it because, as I inappropriately interjected earlier when I was away from my place, the system did not quite work. So many schools, approximately 80 per cent or so, are funding maintained schools. Still, the aims of it—judging a school by the wealth of a parents—are something every fair minded person would support.

However, in the lead-up to the last election the Rudd government made a commitment to bringing about an education revolution in all Australian schools, public and private, Catholic and independent, city and country. We wanted an education revolution to take place in all of these schools. We were not interested in what the sign above the school said or what religious symbol was over the school entrance; we wanted to make an assessment of what was best for the school community irrespective of where students came from. Our education revolution is about raising the quality of teaching in our schools, ensuring that all students, especially those in disadvantaged areas, are benefiting from schooling. It is also about improving the transparency and accountability of schools. Transparency and accountability are not swearwords.

The legislation before the House establishes a platform to help meet these objectives in the non-government schooling sector. As a condition of funding, all schools will be required to sign up to the national curriculum by 2012. The National Curriculum Board is currently developing this curriculum. I was interested to read some comments from the member for Warringah in an article in the Australian from 13 October under the heading Call to study more British history. The article said:

OPPOSITION frontbencher Tony Abbott wants school students to study more British history, saying Britain has shaped the world and should get the credit for it.

The National Curriculum Board today will release a draft curriculum which places a greater focus on world events in history classes.

Mr Abbott said he was in favour of world history but said the focus should be on Britain.

“People have got to know where we came from, they’ve got to know about the ideas that shaped the modern world, and in a very significant sense, the modern world has been made in England,” he said in Canberra.

                  …              …              …

“We are a product of western civilisation, in particular we are a product of English-speaking civilisation.”

It is certainly interesting to see the member for Warringah’s focus on understanding world history and the important role that the English, particularly, played in world history. He does talk about the British at one stage but he seems to focus on the English; that is no disrespect to the Welsh, the Scottish or the Irish. Unlike the member for Warringah, I believe that we should have a particular world focus. I was doing a bit of research for this and asked: why do we have a subject called English? Charles Dickens certainly did not study English. Shakespeare certainly did not study English. He spoke English but he never studied English; he might have had a bit of Latin and a bit of Greek and some of the other classics. But if we delve down into why we study a subject called English, one suggestion is that it might be from Thomas Macaulay’s speech back in 1835, ‘A minute on Indian education’, where he stated:

We have to educate a people who cannot at present be educated by means of their mother-tongue.

He was talking about the fact that the British were colonisers. One of my former lecturers, Helen Tiffen, in her book The Empire Writes Back states:

The study of English has always been a densely political and cultural phenomenon, a practice in which language and literature have both been called into the service of a profound and embracing nationalism.

There is a suggestion from Batsleer’s work in 1985 that the:

... historical moment which saw the emergence of ‘English’ as an academic discipline also produced the nineteenth-century colonial form of imperialism.

Viswanathan suggests that:

British colonial administrators, provoked by missionaries on the one hand and fears of native insubordination on the other, discovered an ally in English literature to support them in maintaining control of the natives under the guise of a liberal education.

From this it can be seen that basically the colonial administrators of places like India saw that the culture, particularly the literature of England, was something that could be used to help control the natives, so to speak. That is why they came up with this suggestion: ‘Rather than teach Latin or Greek, why don’t we come up with a subject called English?’ So, back in the early 1800s, they turned to the professors at Oxford and Cambridge and said, ‘What should be the works in the canon? What are the significant works of literature that the good citizens of India should be studying?’ So the chairs of Oxford and Cambridge at the time—in the 1830s, 1840s or 1850s—said, ‘Obviously the poets we studied when we were young are very important.’ Who had they studied? Of course, they had studied the Romantic poets—Coleridge, Shelley, Keats and Wordsworth. That is why, in the schools of South Africa, Zimbabwe, the Caribbean, India, Pakistan or Australia, every student, certainly in the 1960s and 1970s, studied Wordsworth’s The Daffodils. Every student studied the same works of literature as deemed appropriate by the dons of Oxford and Cambridge in the 1800s. Of the schools of English, one was created in Oxford in 1893 and one at Cambridge in 1917. That is why we need to unpack the member for Warringah’s comment about why we need to focus on English. Obviously he was a loyal student of English history and maybe of English literature, I am not sure—I know his football team allegiances; I cannot speak for his literary allegiances—but we have moved on quite a bit since then. Unlike the member for Warringah, I believe in an Australian literature. That is why I am a strong supporter of the National Curriculum Board. It is a great way to look at the flavours of Australia, of our national dish. I think we have moved on a bit from roast beef. I think we now have some Australian flavours in our national dish.

Damian Hale (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Barramundi.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Yes, barramundi—I will take that interjection from the member for Solomon—and there are lots of other flavours. In fact, while we do have a national dish, obviously Queensland is a bit different from the Northern Territory, from Western Australia, from Tasmania, from Victoria et cetera, so we will still need to have the local flavours in this national dish, be it barramundi or something else. We still need the other types of literature that are peculiar to certain areas, because obviously a student from the middle of the Northern Territory is not quite the same as a student from the middle of Sydney.

As a former teacher of English, I am a strong supporter of this government initiative and, as someone who still has a lot of friends who are teaching English in private and state schools, I can say that people are quite excited about this initiative. As I touched on with the history of the subject which we now call English and which we take for granted, it has changed quite a bit from its original intent to now being all but the lingua franca of this part of the world. The subject of English was just as much about learning about English or British culture as it was about the study of a language.

Back in the 1800s the British understood the importance of culture as a unifying force and, perhaps, as a controlling force, so it is appropriate that more than 100 years later we do the same in Australia, that we step up to the idea that things have changed since Federation. At the time of Federation Australian citizens were basically British citizens. Now Australian citizens have a different dish in front of them, hopefully. The horse and buggy days are over and we need a much more palatable national dish for the digital age.

The bill before the House also introduces a number of other conditions on funding to ensure greater accountability and transparency in the sector. As a result, Catholic, Anglican, Christian, Muslim, grammar, Jewish and independent community schools will all be required to do some quite straightforward things that are aspects of accountability and transparency. Firstly, they will have to participate in national student assessments and reports on schooling outcomes. There is nothing controversial in that, despite the suggestions from those opposite. Secondly, they will have to provide individual school performance reports to the minister and plain language student reports to parents. What is controversial about that? What is sinister about that? Nothing at all. Thirdly, they will have to make publicly available information about a school’s performance. I should stress that these are not new initiatives. Every decent school is probably already doing a lot of these things, such as providing plain-language student reports and making information about school performance publicly available. If you get on the web and look up the schools in your electorates, you will find that most schools—state and private—are already doing many of these things.

This bill before the House also contains a new financial accountability measure requiring schools to report all funding sources. These funding conditions are about ensuring that parents and school communities can have a clear picture of how their school is performing; then they will be able to compare like with like. The small Catholic primary school in the middle of the bush that I attended will not be compared with Brisbane Grammar—it is in the middle of the city with different resources. It is more important to compare like with like and let parents make assessments about how their school is performing, especially with regard to the funding sources available to that school. The Minister for Education will be able to make informed decisions about which schools are succeeding and which ones need more support to lift their standards. This bill only addresses funding for non-government schools as public school funding will be negotiated at COAG and delivered through the national education agreement.

The Rudd government is serious about ensuring our kids get the best education possible and we are committed to a new era of cooperation to achieve this aim, not the old turf wars of the past. The national education agreement will provide the same measures for accountability for government schools as this bill provides for non-government schools. As I said at the start, the Rudd government is committed to making decisions based on the students, not whatever sign is above the school gate. Many teachers from my electorate have expressed some concerns to me about grading schools. However, there is agreement that the community benefits from comparing like schools with like schools in similar environments, and this will transcend their concerns. I stress that this is not about league tables. On occasions, it is hard to assess the great work of people like learning support teachers or the people that put extra time into sport, music and those things. This is why we are not a government that is about league tables. I have got some incredible schools in my electorate, including places like Southside Education, which has a significant Aboriginal population. A lot of their students are people with special needs. There is also Milpera State High School, which is basically the first school that people attend when they arrive in Brisbane as refugees. Even places like Yeronga State High School have significant migrant populations as well.

I now turn to the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008. The bill is a key part of the Rudd government’s efforts to halve the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in reading, writing and numeracy within a decade. To halve the gap is a great commitment. Indigenous education, school attendance and school retention rates are simply not good enough and we must do more to support Indigenous communities to improve education. I saw this in my five years of being a union organiser with the Independent Education Union. I got to go to a lot of schools—predominantly Catholic schools, obviously, but also Anglican schools and independent schools like Wadja Wadja High School and the Murri School. They are both Aboriginal independent schools. Wadja Wadja is west of Rockhampton and the Murri School is across the road from my electorate in Acacia Ridge. It is great to see how this initiative will flow on to these schools.

This bill amends the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 2000 to provide more than $760 million for Indigenous education programs. Of this investment, $160 million will go towards preschools and vocational education and training providers working with Indigenous students. This funding will come into effect in time for the new school year. Away-from-base Abstudy payments will receive $109 million, which will help fund education providers with Abstudy recipients who are undertaking distance education, and $505 million will fund target initiatives to boost Indigenous education. This will deliver (1) an additional 200 teachers for the Northern Territory; (2) three boarding facilities in the Northern Territory; (3) the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program introduced by the opposition; (4) the Indigenous Youth Leadership Program; (5) the Sporting Chance Program; and (6) other targeted initiatives. I commend those opposite for the Indigenous Youth Mobility Program, and I do so in a fair dinkum spirit of bipartisanship. It is a great initiative.

The above points are only part of the government’s $1.5 billion investment in Indigenous education over four years. As we saw with the apology on my very first day in the parliament, symbols are very important but actions speak louder than even the most noble of words. That is why it is important to be able to back up words actions. The bill before the House also contains a number of reporting requirements for the minister to ensure that open and accountable government is taking place. The minister will be required to report on outcomes such as Indigenous enrolments in preschool, progress on the National Indigenous Literacy and Numeracy Strategy and the year 10 and year 12 retention rates for Indigenous students. Indigenous families will be able to go on the web and find out how the school they intend to send their children to is progressing. The Prime Minister will also report on progress on closing the gap for Indigenous Australians on the first sitting day of parliament each year.

This bill proves the government is serious about improving Indigenous education. We do not believe it should sit in the too-hard basket any longer. All Australian children deserve the same education opportunities regardless of their parents’ bank balance or where they live. It is all part of the Rudd government’s education revolution to raise the standard of education around the country. This commitment includes a half-billion dollar investment in early childhood preliteracy and prenumeracy; halving HECS for those studying maths and science at university and then halving HECS again if they choose to pursue a career in teaching or working in maths and science; a new national curriculum in the core subjects of maths, science, English and history; a new national action plan on literacy and numeracy; $2.4 billion in education tax refunds; and a $1.2 billion digital education revolution to give every year 9 to 12 student access to a computer. We are investing $30 million to boost education for Indigenous children in remote areas, including a trial linking family and welfare payments to school attendance. This is the plan the Australian people voted for and it is the plan we are committed to delivering. The bills before the House are another step along the way to achieving this education revolution. I commend the bills to the House. (Time expired)

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is my first opportunity to speak on legislation following my maiden speech. I thank you for the opportunity to speak on important bills. As it is joint bills being discussed, I will start with the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008, which I welcome. I think the minister and the government are doing the right thing in providing additional funding for Indigenous education. I think one of the great legacies of the Howard government was the intervention in the Northern Territory last year because it finally recognised that what we need to get right in the Indigenous communities in our country is firstly the law and order battle and then educating the young kids—because, as we all know in this place, education empowers people to build a better and brighter future for themselves. I think that intervention is a generational battle, and the generational battle will be won in the field of education, so I support the move of the Education Legislation Amendment Bill.

On the other hand, the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 does worry me to a degree. There are four parts of it which concern me, and some of my colleagues have raised issues, not least the shadow minister for education, the member for Sturt, who has raised these arguments in this place. The four changes that I think are most concerning are the changes to the grounds upon which the minister can elect to refuse or delay payment under clause 15, which make it easier for the minister to do so; the new requirements in school funding agreements to comply with the national curriculum by 2012, as specified in regulations, which are in clause 22; alterations to the reporting requirements for schools, particularly new requirements relating to information about financial viability and funding sources under clause 24, which are probably the most concerning aspect of this bill and which I will touch on a little bit later; and removal of the previous government’s new non-government schools establishment grants under clause 100, which again troubles me.

Of course, the SES funding method, which is the fairest method for funding private schools, was introduced by the previous government. It was never one that was liked by the other side of the House, it would be fair to say. In 2004, when the previous leader of the Labor Party and the Deputy Prime Minister’s political hero—at that stage—was the leader of the Labor Party, we had the famous private schools hit list, which probably reflected the true views of those on the other side at the time. What they did last year, of course, was to cover up some of those true views very well and introduce policies which appealed to middle Australia, making it look as if they had changed their clothes on this issue. However, what this bill does is to start to build the case to reintroduce the private schools hit list.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The old dog whistle!

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, you’d know about it! It does so as I described in the third point that I made, on the alterations to the reporting requirements for schools, particularly new requirements relating to information about financial viability and funding sources. The previous government received this information. I pay tribute to the Parliamentary Library for the Bills Digest they released on this, which says:

Previously, the financial information that was collected was treated as commercial-in-confidence and, therefore, individual school financial information was not released. However, the Bill—

this bill—

contains another new provision which empowers the Minister to ask for reports about individual school information in a way determined by the Minister. Potentially, under this provision, the Minister could make these reports publicly available.

We all see the game being played here by the Deputy Prime Minister, which is, of course, to get the information from King’s College—which is the Labor Party’s favourite attack point on this issue—and release it publicly as part of an argument to say, ‘You’ve got to reduce the funding for these schools; you can see King’s College have this massive benefactor,’ when we know that what they are really trying to do is to undermine the choice in the Australian school system. They are trying to undermine the private school system, which has always been the Labor Party view.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Didn’t Whitlam bring in funding for private schools?

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, we will go back to 2004 and the Deputy Prime Minister’s former political hero.

Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Sidebottom interjecting

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Mayo has the call.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you, Mr Deputy Speaker, for your protection. Back in 2004 we had a true Labor policy, and I think Mark Latham represented those true Labor principles. Certainly the Deputy Prime Minister thought so at the time; she was quite enamoured of the former member for Werriwa at that point. Let us remember what that policy did. It changed the SES funding model.

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You’re the voice of the future, are you? You’re the visionary?

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Moreton will desist from interjecting.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Again, thank you for your protection, Mr Deputy Speaker. I think it is important that the Australian people see where we are stepping with this bill, because what we are seeing here is a very clever lawyer tactic. I give the Deputy Prime Minister credit; she is a very good performer in this House. I must say that in this House I have had the opportunity to see her acting as the Prime Minister for a couple of days in question time, and she certainly does a much better job than the incumbent. She is very good at building a case, and I think that in this case that is what she is doing: she is building the case and getting the information there so that, at a later stage when it is more convenient or there is a big enough case for her to drop that out there, that is what she will do. It gets to what the Labor view on public versus private is. The Labor Party do not like the private choice; they are not interested in the private school system. They want to make it as hard as they can for parents to send children to private schools. I think that that is what that clause is largely about.

The other section which concerns me greatly is the removal of the previous government’s position on new non-government schools establishment grants, which of course gets to the same point—that they are not keen on these private schools being built and developed. That gets back to the true colours of the Labor Party. I think nothing reflects it better than a couple of key quotes from the Deputy Prime Minister. On 4 September 2000, before her frontbench time and when she was trying to reinvent herself for government and so forth, she said in this House—I think you were here at the time, Member for Braddon:

The last objection to the SES model is more philosophical, that the model makes no allowance for the amassed resources of any particular school. As we are all aware, over the years many prestige schools have amassed wealth—wealth in terms of buildings and facilities, wealth in terms of the equipment available, wealth in terms of alumni funding raising, trust funds, endowment funds and the like.

So this is what this is all about.

I heard the member for Moreton in his previous remarks mention he went to a regional Catholic school, I think he said, or a regional private school. I did too. I went to St Joseph’s College in Mildura. I think we should protect that choice. My parents sacrificed a lot to be able to send me to a school—which you would never class in the King’s College type of costs of school.

Further, the Deputy Prime Minister went on:

... it must follow as a matter of logic that the economic capacity of a school is affected by both its income generation potential—from the current class of parents whose kids are enrolled in the school—and the assets of the school. The SES funding system makes some attempt to measure the income generation potential of the parents of the kids in the school but absolutely no attempt to measure the latter, the assets of the school. This is a gaping flaw ...

This was the flaw that the schools hit list attempted to address in 2004. It is where the Labor Party will go back to. This is the step along the way. This bill is part of the case building up to when they want to re-introduce the schools hit list. The Assistant Treasurer, on 1 December 2004, again on the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Bill 2004, said:

The regime established by this government and continued under these bills for determining the funding arrangements for schools is the socioeconomic status index—the SES index. This is a fundamentally flawed index. It replaces the Education Resources Index, which was much more based on the needs of the school and the capacity of the school to reach educational standards.

That was the old system, based on attacking private schools. Colonel Mike Kelly, the new rising star on the Labor side who won the seat of Eden-Monaro last year—and I congratulate him on that—in the Australian in November last year referred to this ‘ridiculous postcode system’ for funding schools that is ‘totally crazy’. He went on to say:

So it’s a ridiculous approach to looking at the needs of schools and we’ll move away from that and get down eventually to a proper needs based approach ...

We have a case building on the other side—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Eighty per cent of schools are funding maintained.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right. In this bill, they are funding. And I pay tribute to the Deputy Prime Minister for doing that, but what she is doing is building the case for when it is more politically convenient to reintroduce the schools hit list. That is where they want to go. That is the Labor Party’s intention and that is where we will go.

We are 12 months into the so-called education revolution. In October it seems appropriate to talk about the education revolution. This is the revolution that replaces computers in schools—the second-hand computer scheme in South Australia—but then does not actually keep up with them. It is little wonder that even the New South Wales government saw through that one. The education revolution has failed without firing a shot—as the member for Sturt said today. This is all part of getting back to the old Labor beliefs that Mark Latham outlined so convincingly in 2004. We should not forget what the member for Kingsford Smith, the Minister for the Environment, Heritage and the Arts, said during last year’s election. He said that when they got in they would just change it all. This is what it is part of: ‘We will just change it all. We will get back to what we really wanted to do.’ This is part of the guise that the Australian public had pulled over their eyes last year from Kevin07—

Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He really enjoyed the 2004 election campaign. He’s reliving it in his speech.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, it is part of a case. Member for Moreton, you might be embarrassed by it. I understand. But this is part of the case. We are back to building part of the case which is back to the attack on private schools. This legislation is about reducing choice. Otherwise, what is the point of the provision for asking for schools to report financial information to the minister? More importantly, what is the point of the provision to allow the minister to release this publicly? Maybe the minister in her final remarks can answer that question, because it seems to me a very strange provision to have in the bill, unless you intend to release that information publicly. And, if you are intending to release that information publicly, what is the point? I ask the member for Braddon to ask the Deputy Prime Minister that question.

I imagine this will elicit a response from those on the other side. We all know what this is about: it is about supporting their friends and allies at the teachers union. Ultimately that is what we are getting back to. This is what we are building to. The education union certainly does not like private schools.

This brings me to standards. Standards are something I think are extraordinarily important in the education system that we are building. I have two young children and I certainly want them to go to schools where they report on a basic A to E report card and where the parents are able to glean from the reports basic information about how they are going, not political correct mumbo jumbo where eight criteria are ticked and the students are asked to self-assess. I think what the education system needs is good strong competition where kids who do well are rewarded; kids who decide that they want to go off into trades and so forth also have the ability to do so. We need an education system based largely on choice and reward for effort. This bill does not do that.

While I support the bill’s intent of providing the funding to the private education sector—because, of course, this is dealing largely with the private education sector—I do not support the provisions which allow the minister to report on the additional fundraising sources that private schools are able to use. I think it is important that the minister address those questions in her final remarks.

The bill also makes some changes to the grounds upon which the minister can elect to refuse or delay payment, making it easier for the minister to do so. It might be reasonable to introduce this clause to ensure the financial viability of the school, but this subsection appears to presume that, if an audit statement is qualified, it necessarily signals that the school’s financial situation is precarious enough to warrant the minister to refuse or delay payment. That raises questions about what the need for that provision is.

The new requirement that schools comply with the national curriculum raises questions in my electorate with schools such as the Montessori school at Aldgate, which will have trouble complying with the section which requires that the five areas of statements of learning are met: English, mathematics, science, civics and citizenship education, and information and communications technology. I think it is very important that that issue be dealt with, because it raises some questions from some of the schools in my electorate.

In summing up, I think this bill has some fundamental flaws, particularly the section which relates to reporting on funding sources. It raises questions on why the minister is undertaking to do so. I think this is getting back to the old Labor days of 2004 with the Latham-Gillard combination back again. I support the member for Sturt’s amendments to the bill.

Debate interrupted.