Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the debate be adjourned.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the debate be adjourned.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that this bill be now read a second time. I call the member for Sturt.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is certainly disappointing to members on this side of the House that the government has not agreed to adjourn debate on the Australian Education Bill 2012. On the weekend the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth attended a protest outside the office of the Premier of New South Wales. The protest concerned school funding and the minister apparently joined with about 50 present to call on the New South Wales government to immediately release details of their school funding changes.

It is absolutely remarkable—for the past year, we have been calling on the minister to release the details of the new funding model and he has refused to do so. We do not know who will pay or what per cent they will have to pay. We do not know what impact these changes will have on schools and we do not know whether they will force school fees up, further adding to the burden on parents. For the minister for schools to suggest that the New South Wales government should release costings is staggering hypocrisy, and the evidence is this bill we are debating today.

The Australian Education Bill 2012 contains absolutely no detail as to how the government’s new funding model will operate. The government have already flagged that very substantial amendments to the bill will be necessary after the next meeting of the Council of Australian Governments. We have not yet had the opportunity to consider any recommendation that might arise from the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment inquiry into this bill. I find it most odd that the government do not wish to consider any of the inquiry findings before this debate even begins and I find it more peculiar that the member for Melbourne would vote against adjourning the Australian Education Bill when he has put himself on the inquiry into it. He wants it debated before he has even considered the submissions that have been made and before the public hearings, which have been scheduled to commence this Friday. I know that coalition members look forward to engaging with schools and their sector representatives in order to hear what they have to say about the bill over the coming months.

The Australian Education Bill was described by the Prime Minister as the most important bill of 2012, yet the bill is just nine pages and 1,400 words long. It is full of words that signify hope and aspiration for schooling, words that nobody could disagree with, but it lacks any detail at all of how the Prime Minister’s goals for schooling are to be delivered. Because of this the coalition does not oppose the bill in its current form. How could we? As it stands currently, this bill has no financial impact and is not even legally enforceable. It would have to be one of the few bills introduced in the history of this parliament that are not legally enforceable. The paradox of this bill is that the parliament is being asked to legislate a change in law that has no legal enforceability. It is utterly absurd. Only this government could introduce a bill that contains at its heart a paradox—legislation that has no legal enforceability. The coalition will wait for further details from the government on both the financial impact and the future regulatory arrangements that will apply to schools before we finalise our position on this bill.

Given the government has outlined their aspirations and goals for schooling, I too wish to take this opportunity to outline to the House the coalition’s own set of principles that underpin our values for schooling. These principles will guide us as we continue to further deliberate on the bill as it is updated. The coalition has 10 broad principles that we believe should underpin any approach to school funding and reform. We also believe that future government funding should be provided through a direct legislative relationship with schools or school systems and that school communities require funding certainty. These are the matters that I will speak about today, and I will move the following amendment to the Australian Education Bill at the end of my speech:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House is of the view that:

(1) the Objects of the bill should be amended to read:

(a) families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs;

(b) all children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education;

(c) student funding needs to be based on fair, objective, and transparent criteria distributed according to socio-economic need;

(d) students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling;

(e) as many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems;

(f) schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students;

(g) every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government;

(h) schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future;

(i) parents who wish to make a private contribution toward the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment; and

(j) funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding toward education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.

(2) the definitions in the bill should be supplemented to define a non-systemic school as a non-government school that is not a systemic school, and a systemic school as an approved school that is approved as a member of an approved school system; and

(3) the bill should provide that the current funding arrangements be extended for a further two years, to guarantee funding certainty for schools and parents."

Now I wish to outline how each of our principles for schooling will inform our thinking as this bill is updated by the government. The first coalition principle is that families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs. The coalition explicitly acknowledges that no two schools are ever the same and that parents choose an education for their child based on myriad different reasons. There are hundreds of reasons that inform choice for parents in schooling. These include academic reasons, religious reasons, the school's location, the values and ethos of the school, and the teaching methods of curricula, often including the extracurricular activities offered, such as sport. We are lucky to have a diverse range of schools in this country.

Broadly speaking, there are two types of schools—government and non-government schools. Government schools are defined in this bill under part 4, and I quote the definition from the bill:

government school means a school in a State or Territory that is conducted by, or on behalf of, the Government of the State or Territory.

Non-government schools, on the other hand, are not operated by the government. In 2011, according to the ABS, there were about 2.3 million students attending government schools and 1.2 million students attending non-government schools. Non-government schooling in Australia is very diverse, and non-government schools serve a wide variety of communities. Accordingly, the way in which these schools are recognised by government is critically important if we are to properly acknowledge the needs, values and beliefs of Australian families.

Catholic systemic schools, for example, operate very differently to some independent schools. The largest non-government systemic school system in Australia is the Catholic school system. It has 1,704 schools, 723,000 students and 83,000 staff. About one in every five Australian students attends a Catholic school. Under the current funding arrangements Catholic schools are mostly systemically funded by the Australian government in recognition that they share a common ethos. This means that the funding they attract is provided by the Australian government to the state or territory Catholic education commission for local needs based distribution between Catholic systemic schools. The Catholic Education Diocese of Cairns, for example, outlines the Catholic education ethos as follows:

The mission of Catholic schools is to be more than providers of high quality education, advancing the common good of Australian society. Their belief in the ultimate intrinsic value of each student is based on a distinctive educational vision inspired by the example and message of Jesus Christ.

Through their culture, ethos and mission, and through the commitment of their staff and their educational programmes, Catholic schools demonstrate that there is no separation between learning and living the Christian life.

Catholic schools teach that a life lived in the love of God and in the Christian community service of others has purpose and meaning.

The diocese then goes on to explain:

Research shows that parents and students choose Catholic schools for reasons including:

Some 60 independent Catholic schools are not systemically funded, which means, unlike systemic schools, they receive Australian government funding directly. For example, some of the Jesuit Catholic schools are recognised as independent schools by the Australian government for the purposes of funding. There are also over 1,000 independent schools in Australia. Independent schools can also be connected to Christian denominations—for example, Lutheran schools, Presbyterian schools, Seventh-day Adventist schools, Greek Orthodox schools, Uniting Church schools and Anglican schools, just to name some.

Some schools are non-denominational Christian schools, like Pembroke School in Kensington Park, located in my electorate. Pembroke is a coeducational school with an enrolment of 1,600 students, including 130 boarders. The school takes pride in offering a second language commencing in the junior school, being Spanish. They also offer the well-recognised International Baccalaureate Diploma, which requires the study of a foreign language. Then, of course, there are non-Christian independent schools such as Jewish schools and Islamic schools.

Independent schools are unique and attractive to parents not just because of their religious beliefs. Some parents are attracted to the educational curricula offered at the school—for example, the alternative curricula offered at Montessori schools or Rudolf Steiner schools.

There are also many non-religious independent schools. They operate for community reasons and are often established by community groups. These schools might cater for students with a disability, be Indigenous community schools or be schools that cater for students at risk with social or other behavioural issues. One such community school I visited recently is the Albury Wodonga Community College in Wodonga, Victoria. This principal's story is an inspiring one. The school principal enrols the students from the Albury-Wodonga region who are most at risk of not completing their schooling. The community college is an independent school, but it also offers adult learning, childcare services and vocational training qualifications.

This school enrols young people who previously dropped out of their schools due to alcohol or substance abuse, or for other reasons like domestic violence at home. This independent school principal takes in the most difficult students that neighbouring schools either will not, or do not have the capacity to manage. For the model of learning he has adopted, based on programs he had seen work in Maori communities in New Zealand, the principal is supporting and engaging these students not only to finish school but he is also helping them to turn their lives around through broader education, leading to employment opportunities.

I spoke to one single teenage mother who shared with me that she felt that she had only been able to finish year 12 because of enrolling at the Albury Wodonga Community College. As the childcare centre was co-located with the school it meant she was able to study during the day but also visit, feed and attend to her baby as she liked during breaks, or even during class. Having enjoyed completing her studies at the school, she had then been able to progress to undertaking a vocational training qualification at the same college.

Community schools like the Albury Wodonga Community College are a good reminder that non-government schools really can turn lives around for some of the most disadvantaged students in Australia. Recognising and adequately resourcing both government and non-government schools and students are equally as important if we want to address educational disadvantage in this country.

As yet, the government has not included definitions in this bill that accurately recognise the diversity in the non-government school system. In the current Schools Assistance Act there are over 70 definitions relating to schooling. Accordingly, funding is distributed amongst schools based on these definitions, and sometimes funding flows through various authorities dependent on how they are defined under the act and recognised by government. The Australian Education Bill 2012 has just five definitions.

While the government has made clear it intends to update the bill as the detail of a new funding model is worked out, it is obvious that the five definitions in the bill, as they stand now, do not adequately capture the richness and diversity of Australian schooling. At the very least the Australian government must explicitly recognise and define the difference between a systemic and non-systemic school. That would later allow funding to flow from the Commonwealth to non-government system authorities if they are systemic, or direct to the school if they are not systemic.

This was highlighted in the Gonski report, and I quote:

Public funding for school systems would be provided to system authorities for distribution to their schools. There would be an expectation that systems would be publicly accountable for their decisions on the redistribution of that funding. Non-systemic schools would receive funding directly from governments.

In line with the Gonski report recommendation, and in order to better recognise the role diversity plays in our Australian education system to meet the needs, values and beliefs of Australian families, I hope the government will agree with our amendment, which I outlined before.

The second coalition principle is that all children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education. The Prime Minister suggested three goals for this bill; these are outlined at part 1. The first goal includes, and I quote:

… for Australian schooling to provide an excellent education for school students …

The coalition strongly supports this goal in the bill as it is consistent with our values for schooling. The third coalition principle is that student funding needs to be based on fair, objective and transparent criteria distributed according to socioeconomic need.

The bill as it currently stands provides no detail as to how funding will be distributed. We simply do not know how the new funding model will be created, how it will operate, how much individual schools will receive, how this funding will be calculated and what other obligations will be placed upon the sector. Until such as time as the new criteria is added into the bill the coalition cannot make an assessment of whether we think the funding arrangements will be based on need or are fair, objective and transparent.

The fourth coalition principle is that students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling. Sadly, this is not the case for some students, such as those with a disability. The Gonski report found that the funding arrangements for students with a disability are unfair and inequitable. The coalition sincerely hopes that the government will act on this finding and do something about it as the bill gets amended in the future, as we propose with our education card, which the shadow minister for finance will remember from the last election.

The fifth coalition principle is that as many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems. The coalition notes that this bill suggests that a new National Plan for School Improvement will include reforms in the area of empowering school leadership. But beyond listing a description of reform direction, the bill does not provide any further information about planned reforms to school and principal autonomy. The coalition looks forward to examining the detail of the government's reform agenda in this area as they are added to this bill during the debate.

The sixth coalition principle is that schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students. Again, the government suggests that the new National School Improvement Plan will include transparency and accountability measures. However, there is only one small paragraph in this bill dealing with the issue. The paragraph suggests that the schools will be made more accountable to the community, but does not specify how.

The seventh coalition principle is that every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government. The coalition believes that every child is deserving of some government support toward their education. Given that parents pay taxes, it is only fair that every child receives at least a basic grant from the government. Past Labor leaders have not supported this principle and have not supported students in so-called 'wealthy schools' being eligible to receive a basic grant toward their education. Many interpreted the statement in the Prime Minister's speech at the National Press Club on 3 September last year regarding a citizenship entitlement as a reversal of past Labor policy. The Prime Minister said:

The Australian Education Act will erect our nation’s support for a child’s education as one of the entitlements of citizenship.

Yet, there is no mention of a citizenship entitlement in this bill, which the coalition believes there should be in order to reflect that every student should be entitled to a basic grant.

If the government agrees to our amendment, that seeks to acknowledge explicitly that every child should receive a citizenship entitlement for education through the form of a basic grant from the Australian government, it will address this government oversight.

The eighth coalition principle is that schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future. This bill does not specify any detail about school funding. States, school systems and schools are becoming increasingly uncertain and some have expressed great frustration that they are unable to plan beyond the end of this school year.

For example, the education minister in Western Australia said just days ago:

It continues to be disappointing and frustrating that the Commonwealth is still yet to provide the states with any proposed funding model, particularly in light of the Prime Minister announcing the date for this year's federal election yesterday, an announcement which is meant to provide the electorate with certainty.

A school principal running a school in the federal seat of Mayo wrote to me recently highlighting this uncertainty. He said:

My Board is somewhat anxious given there is no information as to our State and Federal Government funding sources … beyond 2013. Given we are an employer of some 91 staff, and we are in a growth phase and attempting to plan building and expansion over the next 20 years, I am at a loss as to the advice to provide my Board.

Schools are becoming increasingly anxious about their future funding arrangements. As such, I have given my assurances to the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth that he can count on the coalition's support to extend the current funding arrangements—including the same quantum of funds plus indexation—for a further two years in the event this should turn out to be required.

The ninth coalition principle is that parents who wish to make a private contribution toward the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools be penalised in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment. The bill as it stands provides no information as to how private income will be treated under the government's new funding model. I know the member for Menzies has an electorate replete with non-government schools that are full of parents who are making a contribution of their own private income for the education of their own children yet have no recognition from this government.

While it is clear where both the Australian Greens and the coalition sit on the issue of private income, it is far less clear where the government sits on it. I can only speculate that Labor's policy on this area will be made clear as the bill is updated with new information about the school funding model. Rumour has it that the government are due to largely retain the socioeconomic status—SES—funding methodology introduced by the Howard government for non-government schools as part of the new funding arrangements. This is despite the Prime Minister having suggested many times on the public record that she opposes the SES methodology. For example, in a second reading speech the Prime Minister gave in the year 2000 on school funding she said:

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 fundraising, trust funds, endowment funds and the like.

She went on to say:

… 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 …

If the government have in fact reversed their previous policy on private income they may well have to work with the coalition to get the bill through the House, given the Australian Greens do not support SES methodology. The Greens have long argued that school assets, including income raised through school fees, should be taken into account when determining the need for public funds.

The 10th principle is that funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding toward education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality. As the bill has not yet been updated with any details on conditions to be placed on schools in return for public funding, we can only wait until the bill is updated in order to assess whether the new arrangements will minimise administration costs for schools.

Some non-government school sector authorities—for example, the Catholic Education Office in the Diocese of Parramatta—have expressed concern that the government may impose a range of conditions on the new funding model through the National Plan for School Improvement, which may have the potential to increase the administrative burden on teachers and limit flexibility in driving school improvement at the local level.

To conclude, no-one would disagree with the notion that we would like Australia's schools to be the best in the world. Under Labor's education revolution our schools have fallen further and further behind in international testing in literacy and numeracy, which deeply troubles the coalition. One hopes that Labor's 'education crusade' might fare our students better than the failed 'revolution'. But until the full details on how the new plan is to be implemented by jurisdictions, including how the key elements of the plan are to be monitored, are presented to this parliament we reserve our final judgement.

The Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth has completely and manifestly failed to outline to the school systems—to the Catholic system, to the Independent Schools Council of Australia and to all the other systems such as Lutheran, Orthodox and so on—what this bill will actually mean for students. And yet the government has had the Gonski report since November 2011. A new funding model is due to begin on 1 January 2013. The sector needs much more time to implement a new school funding model. There is no possibility that the government can implement a new funding model even if they get agreement with the states, with the Independent Schools Council of Australia and the National Catholic Education Commission at the COAG in April. They need to pass these bills with a new funding model in what is left of this parliament by the end of June. And schools are expected to implement a new funding model in a six-month period. Usually schools around Australia are given at least a year to change their systems in order to cope with a new funding model. This gross uncertainty that is being introduced into the school education system in Australia is causing real anxiety amongst principals, administrators and parents.

The coalition have been very upfront about our position on education. We have said from the beginning that we will support a model that does not increase the school fees paid by parents in either government or non-government schools across Australia because we do not believe that now is the time to be putting further burdens on parents of school aged children. The government has not given such a commitment. The Minister for School Education uses weasel words to say that no school will be worse off. But, when pressed on whether that means no school will be worse off in real terms, he runs from the debate. He is incapable of giving a straight answer because he is following the lead of his Prime Minister, who is in exactly the same boat.

The government's approach to school education has been all about a mirage, an education revolution that wasted billions and billions of dollars on overvalued school halls. Nobody in the coalition opposed more infrastructure for schools. But we did not want to see parents and schools ripped off as they were in states like New South Wales under the Building the Education Revolution. So embarrassed was the Prime Minister by the failure of the Building the Education Revolution that when she announced the 2010 election she did not even mention it in her speech to the National Press Club, so traduced had it been by the rorts and rip-offs, particularly from the New South Wales government and other governments around Australia of the Labor persuasion.

So we approach this bill with an open mind. We are disappointed that the Standing Committee on Education and Employment has not had time to report before it is considered. I look forward to the debate, particularly from our side of the House, on the impacts of this bill on our students across Australia.

As I flagged in my second reading speech, I move:

That all words after "That" be omitted with a view to substituting the following words:

"whilst not declining to give the bill a second reading, the House is of the view that:

(1) the Objects of the bill should be amended to read:

(a) families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs;

(b) all children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education;

(c) student funding needs to be based on fair, objective, and transparent criteria distributed according to socio-economic need;

(d) students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling;

(e) as many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems;

(f) schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students;

(g) every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government;

(h) schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future;

(i) parents who wish to make a private contribution toward the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment; and

(j) funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding toward education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.

(2) the definitions in the bill should be supplemented to define a non-systemic school as a non-government school that is not a systemic school, and a systemic school as an approved school that is approved as a member of an approved school system; and

(3) the bill should provide that the current funding arrangements be extended for a further two years, to guarantee funding certainty for schools and parents."

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the member for Sturt moved an amendment that all words after 'that' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Australian Education Bill 2012. This bill outlines the government's national plan for school improvement. It is fundamentally the start of reform to our education system, which will ensure quality teaching and provide transparency and accountability at our schools. We want every Australian child, no matter where they live or which school they attend, to receive the best quality of education. We want to ensure that every child gets the best start in life and that no Australian child is left behind.

This legislation represents the first step in adopting the recommendations from the Gonski review into school funding. These recommendations are based on providing adequate funding for the needs of each individual student to help them reach their full potential. This is not only an exercise in delivering quality education but, very importantly, also an exercise in delivering real equity in our education system. Besides equity, one of the main goals of this reform is to ensure that our education system is competitive globally into the future. The fact that we are setting ourselves the target of being in the top five nations of the world in academic outcomes in reading, science and maths by 2025 very much indicates that we will achieve productivity in the future. Providing our young people with the highest possible levels of education and training will ensure our international competitiveness and prosperity for the future.

This is not something that should be subject to politics. This should be something that both sides of the House wish to champion. Equity and fairness in the education sector is very significant for disadvantaged areas of the nation. Regrettably, my electorate of Fowler is one of the more disadvantaged areas in the country. The unemployment rate approaches twice that of the national average while income is about two-thirds the national figure. Much of my electorate relies on inadequate public transport to travel large distances to work. Here again, this is where a good education is vital to improving people's opportunities and to enable them to aspire to and acquire secure, well-paid jobs. It all starts with a good education.

Besides being one of the most disadvantaged electorates, my electorate is the most multicultural in the whole of Australia. Two-thirds of the constituents in my electorate were born overseas. That is 2½ times the proportion for Australia as a whole. Australia as a nation is only second to Switzerland among the OECD countries in the proportion of population born overseas. Three-quarters of my electorate speak two or more languages, therefore, my electorate is one in which this has an impact on the lives of migrants and refugees. For migrants, access to a good education is the most significant advantage that a new country can offer them. Education provides them not only a pathway to a better life for themselves but, more importantly, better opportunities for their children. It explains why so many of those who excel in education at all levels, primary or tertiary or vocational, are from first or second generation immigrant families. They understand the difference between success or otherwise in an economy such as Australia's is a good education.

There is no denying, and much has been put about it in newspapers to date, that the western suburbs of Sydney will become a major battle ground, a contest of ideas, as we approach the 14 September election.

I am still very confident that once people in my electorate and in Western Sydney generally start to think about what a change in government will mean they will realise that only a Labor government can deliver on education and other services that are important to their wellbeing and their children's wellbeing.

People will think long and hard about the wisdom of taking a chance on the Liberal Party in Western Sydney because their counterparts are already in at the state level. They came to power two years ago with airy promises to do a range of things for Western Sydney and, indeed, made the Premier the Minister for Western Sydney. Instead, what did we get? A state government that has set about carefully planning to carve up existing education arrangements in New South Wales by savagely cutting $1.7 billion from state, Catholic and independent schools and from TAFE colleges. If you want to see a government that is not committed to Western Sydney look at what they are doing and look at what that means for the communities that the minister at the table, Minister Shorten, and myself represent in Western Sydney. These cuts will inevitably involve larger class sizes, fewer learning resources and an increasingly demoralised teaching workforce. This is a stark difference in philosophy. We are committed through this bill to looking at greater funding going into education while in New South Wales Liberal Party is taking money out of the system as fast as it can.

New South Wales voters will judge for themselves the actions of the O'Farrell state government—actions that clearly run directly opposite to the promises they made at the last election. They will certainly come to the realisation that the same fate awaits them but on a much larger scale should the country ever be saddled with a government led by Tony Abbott.

The Liberal Party clearly does not care about Western Sydney. Nothing demonstrates this more than the recent plan to dump 5,800 tonnes of hazardous radioactive waste from Hunters Hill to a facility in Kemps Creek near my electorate and certainly very close to that of my colleague the member for McMahon. Barry O'Farrell himself admitted in the past that this radioactive waste was seven times the acceptable limit. The waste was certainly too dangerous and too unsafe to be kept and stored in the North Shore where it originated, but it was considered appropriate to dump it in Western Sydney—to dump it in our backyards.

While the Liberal Party is looking for ways to cause additional grief to the already disadvantaged parts of Australia, this Labor government continues to invest in fair access to vital resources such as a good education. This year alone the Gillard government will invest $13.6 billion in our schools, which is almost double the spending of the Howard government in its last budget and a more than 50 per cent increase over that period in real terms. The Digital Education Revolution has now seen computers for every Australian student between years 9 and 12. In my electorate alone that represents an astonishing 8,500 computers. The National Broadband Network will truly revolutionise the delivery of education at all levels across Australia, particularly in regional and rural areas, by giving students access to quality resources and technologies no matter where they live.

The Gillard government is the first Australian government to seriously tackle inequity in the social composition of those students who are attending university. It is doing so by rewarding tertiary institutions that make genuine progress drawing students from disadvantaged areas and social groups. Labor is the only party that has shown any interest in building vocational education and training systems to be delivered for people from all sectors of the workforce. Compare that to the Liberal track record. Do not forget it was John Howard's government that abolished the Australian National Training Authority, slashed funding for skilled vocational training and tried to set up its own National Training Agency in competition with TAFE. In doing so it could only be established provided it followed the principles of Work Choices—in other words, it implemented individual contracts for teachers.

He sought to politicise the TAFE system merely for industrial relations purposes.

This was coupled with severe cuts to vocational education and training, a move that the Liberal state governments in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland have been all too quick to follow. Deputy Speaker Murphy, do you see a pattern here? Under Liberal governments we see the curtailment of opportunities for ordinary workers to progress through skills training. It took a Labor government to reverse this haemorrhaging of funds to the VET system. This Labor government has put more than $18 billion into vocational education and training since 2007. This figure dwarfs the commitment made by any previous government.

In contrast, the Liberal Party in various states, including New South Wales, is destroying our once internationally renowned vocational education system. As quickly as the federal Labor government put the money in, the state Liberal government is promptly taking it out. Our TAFE teachers are currently facing job cuts and redundancies due to widespread casualisation. It is more than likely that we will see the loss of 800 TAFE jobs in New South Wales alone. TAFE students have already seen a 9.5 per cent increase in their fees and an astonishing price being allocated to some of the courses. This will capture your imagination, Mr Deputy Speaker. I only found out last week that if you studied fine arts—

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise on a point of order in relation to relevance to this particular bill. It concerns federal funding for schools and is nothing to do with state based funding for TAFEs.

Chris Bowen (McMahon, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

On the point of order, Mr Deputy Speaker, the member for Fowler is being particularly relevant. He is talking about education funding. He is being more relevant than the shadow minister was in his contribution.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the amendment be agreed to. I call the member for Fowler.

Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

With respect to those opposite, I know it is embarrassing to hear the fact that the Liberal government in New South Wales, in the face of an education revolution, sees fit to take $1.7 billion out of the system—not only for the state schools, Catholic schools and independent schools; it is right across the whole education system, including TAFE.

People are entitled to see the difference between the philosophies of the respective parties, particularly as we are moving toward an election later this year. As I was saying, they have a track record, whether it is in this place or with their counterparts in state and territory governments, of acting in a way which has been deleterious to education.

It is quite clear that in terms of these cuts, in terms of politicising education, they are taking the view that this is not something they see as clear and vital for the future as we on the Labor side of politics do. We know, as many in my electorate know, that the difference between success and otherwise in a society and country such as Australia starts fundamentally with a good education. On our side of politics we are totally unapologetic about that. What we invest in our schools is not only developing children now but it is those kids, who will benefit from those resources from the education that they receive—hopefully, 2025 will see them within the top five per cent of the globe—who are going to steer the prosperity of this nation. Those opposite should get out of the way and let us get on with the job. I commend the bill.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the member for Sturt's amendment. But I am gobsmacked that we are debating the Australian Education Bill 2012 now, and I must say that I am somewhat personally insulted that we are doing so. I am the deputy chair of the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment. This bill was referred to us during the recess. We called for submissions during the break and are due to commence hearings on Friday; we have not even started our inquiry into the bill. I have put aside three days of my valuable time next week to chase the hearings around Australia. In 2010 there was a hung parliament, and the member for Lyne negotiated his deal to support the government according to his new paradigm: the parliament of cooperation and consultation; the parliament that would let the sunlight in. There was a reform of standing orders, and a more important role was given to the House standing committees. Much more legislation has been referred to the committees as a result, and my experience is that they have worked very hard to try to deal with the legislation. Yet, on this bill, it appears that the government does not really want to hear what the committee has to say at the end of its deliberations.

Standing order 143 says:

After the first reading but before the resumption of debate on the motion for the second reading:

(a) a motion may be moved without notice to refer a bill to the Main Committee for further consideration as provided by standing order 183;

or

(b) a determination may be made by the Selection Committee as provided by standing order 222 to refer a bill to a committee for an advisory report. The determination may specify a date by which the committee is to report to the House. After an advisory report has been presented to the House, the bill may then be referred to the Main Committee …

The tabling of this bill is clearly in breach of standing orders. The government should wait until the committee has reported. Not only does the government not want to hear what the members of the opposition have to say after the committee's hearings; it does not want to hear what the member for Kingston or the member for Deakin or the member for Robertson or the member for Petrie—even though I am not sure whether she is still on the committee—have to say either. The government obviously does not want to know what the member for Melbourne has to say. He co-opted himself onto the committee for the inquiry and then voted today to bring on the debate. Perhaps the government does not want to know what the government members of the committee have to say because it is already known what they are going to say: they will be told to toe the line. So what is the rush in bringing the bill forward?

This bill is the government's response to the much-vaunted report by David Gonski. The Gonski report is 319 pages long, and one of the recommendations in it which has caused the most difficulty for the government is that funding be increased to education by an amount in excess of $6 billion per annum and that the funding be met 30 per cent by the Commonwealth and 70 per cent by the states and territories. Among the other big recommendations of the Gonski report is that each student be allocated a standard resource, which would then:

… include a 'per student' amount, with adjustments for students and schools facing certain additional costs.

Furthermore:

Base funding would be set for every student at the amount deemed necessary to educate a student in well-performing schools, where at least 80 per cent of students achieve above the national literacy and numeracy minimum standard.

The report suggests the base amount could be about $8,000 per primary student, and about $10,500 for secondary students.

There would be extra loadings for disadvantage such as disability, low socioeconomic background, school size, remoteness, the number of Indigenous students, and lack of English proficiency.

The report says at least 10 per cent of student funding in non-government schools should come from private contributions. The minimum public contribution would be set at between 20 and 25 per cent.

That is what Gonski said; let 's have a look at what is in the bill. Sadly I must report that there is very little in the bill and that what is in the bill are platitudes, aspirations and motherhood statements. The education sector's reaction to the tabling of this bill has been at best muted and bewildered; in fact, an argument could be made that the education sector does not want to buy a fight with the government. The sector is completely underwhelmed.

There are five main points in the bill, and I will paraphrase them. The first is, 'We should develop a plan.'

I thought that is what the bill was supposed to be—a plan. But, no, it says that we should develop a plan. It says that teachers should have good skills. Really? Good grief—teachers should have good skills! That is a revelation, isn't it? That really rips the skin off the back of your hands. It says we should have quality learning, but does not offer any strategy; it just says we should have it. It says we should develop benchmarks. Wow; that is a breakthrough! It says that funding is the most central issue of the Gonski report, and you think that the government would offer something to respond to those recommendations in the Gonski report. Sit down everyone here—they all are—and take a deep breath, because here it is: it says we should develop a funding model with the states. No wonder the education sector is underwhelmed.

After getting through that challenging agenda comes the coup de grace on page 9. Bear in mind that there are just nine pages in this bill. I have been sitting on a similar inquiry into the APVMA, and the bill there extends to over 300 pages. So 300 pages for a regulatory regime for pesticides and 10 pages—just 10 pages; 1,400 words—to overhaul our entire school education system. It must be said that the school education system needs some attention, because recent surveys show that, despite the billions of dollars spent during the school halls program and the billions of dollars on the computers in schools program, Australia is in fact going backwards. But, as I said, the coup de grace is on page 9. I quote:

This Act does not create legally enforceable obligations etc.

Et cetera! It goes on to say:

(1) This Act does not create rights or duties that are legally enforceable in judicial or other proceedings.

(2) A failure to comply with this Act does not affect the validity of any decision, and is not a ground for the review or challenge of any decision.

Well, the government has really stuck its neck out there, hasn't it? There were 41 recommendations in the Gonski report and it did not even attempt to address any of them—none of them.

The bill does not say where the $6 billion comes from annually. It does not address the Commonwealth-state ratios. It does not say how the government will meet its commitment. It gives no modelling showing how any changes will affect individual schools. It does not say at what level will a standard resource be set; in fact, it does not even say there will be a standard resource.

So the bill says nothing, and even that nothing is qualified—if anyone can actually read anything creative into it they are wrong—because the bill explicitly states that the act is not legally enforceable. It says nothing and means nothing and yet is so urgent it must short-circuit the procedures of the parliament. It cannot wait for the report from the House of Representatives Standing Committee on Education and Employment. It cannot even wait for the inquiry to start. In fact, the only reason for any urgency here is for the government to try to tick some political boxes because the Prime Minister said that her government would respond to Gonski by the end of last year. It had to get something out. So, coming ready or not, like kids playing blindfold—'Coming reading or not'; and government definitely was not ready—here comes your policy.

Without the benefit of the committee's findings, rather than to oppose the bill outright or just wave it through because it is meaningless, I do support the member for Sturt's amendments as a genuine attempt to try to assist the government to put some meat on the bones of this bill. A mendment (1) state s :

(a) families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs;

(b) all children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education;

(c) student funding needs to be based on fair, objective, and transparent criteria distributed according to socio-economic need;

(d) students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling;

(e) as many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems—

a very important tenet—

(f) schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students;

(g) every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government—

a point that the bill just does not address—

(h) schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future;

(i) parents who wish to make a private contribution toward the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment; and

(j) funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding toward education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.

Further, we have moved for clearer definitions and commitments to different types of schools and groupings to ensure that highly efficient and reputable organisations like Catholic Education are still able to manage their own budgets and that other independent schools will not have their funding channelled through the states to be manipulated as they see fit.

We stress that the legislation must address the disincentives to schools—schools who want to improve themselves either by raising funds to support their efforts or just plainly raising the standards—lest they jeopardise their government funding. This is another very important point, Mr Deputy Speaker. You can imagine how schools are feeling concerned about the fact that if they get off their backsides, and if their community and their parents decide to help them, they may well be penalised by seeing a reduction in the funding that they will receive from the Commonwealth.

Because of all this uncertainty, we call for the government to extend the current funding arrangements for another two years—and we will support the government if they should choose to do so while all this is being sorted out—and for guarantees to be given ensuring schools do not lose funding in real terms. In fact, the Queensland education minister, Mr John-Paul Langbroek, has said:

We've had absolutely no detail about numbers … We don't have a model from which we can work and we also don't have any idea about what state contributions are supposed to be, let alone whether we can afford them.

No wonder the schools are looking for guarantees.

It is difficult to really debate the contents of this bill when it says so little. It is difficult to disagree with the bill, because it does not actually say anything and it is, as I said, platitudes and motherhood statements. If nine pages of homework by the education minister is the best he can do in a little over 12 months, perhaps he should go back to school as well. Where is the commitment to the standard resource? This is the central tenet of the Gonski report: there will be a standard resource. There is no commitment from the government. Where is the commitment from the government to grant freedom to schools to appoint teachers of their own liking? On this point I note that religious schools, for instance, may well want to appoint teachers from their own religion to teach children, teachers that reflect their own moral standards, but there are no guarantees within the bill that schools will be given this freedom. Where are the guarantees that will ensure that schools are not penalised for trying to help themselves? How can they be sure that if they motivate their community and their teachers and if they adopt new and interesting teaching techniques they will not be penalised?

This bill is so typical of this government insomuch as we have seen before the MO of the grand announcement—'We are going to solve the problems of the world. We will have peace in our time. We'll flesh out the detail afterwards'—as we have seen with the NBN and project after project rushing to meet a press deadline rather than the government developing its policy and bringing something that is fully researched to the parliament —and nothing could be less researched than this bill.

John Murphy (Reid, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Before I call the member for Shortland and before the member for Grey leaves the chamber, I would like to share some advice that has been provided to me by the clerk in relation to this debate. It is in accordance with the standing orders, not as you have suggested. I have familiarised myself with standing order 148 and so should you. I call the member for Shortland.

Jill Hall (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am glad, Mr Deputy Speaker, that you have pointed that out to the member for Grey because I was sitting here thinking what an extraordinary contribution to the debate it was that I was listening to. One that was not based on fact. A contribution that really had no relevance to the Australian Education Bill 2012 that we are talking about here but which referred to an adjournment to an amendment that was nothing more than a motherhood statement and platitudes. It was one of the most disappointing contributions to any debate that I have had to sit in this chamber and listen to, particularly when we are talking about something as important as the education and future of young Australians. What it also said to me is that the opposition is unable to adopt a constructive approach to any issue, even an issue as important as education.

One of the most precious gifts we can give our children is a good education, an education that prepares them for life and gives them the opportunity to enjoy all the benefits that a quality education provides: choice and opportunity. It is the key that unlocks the door and guarantees a person a good quality of life and, generally speaking, educational attainment equates to better jobs and higher income. Furthermore, as a nation, Australia needs an educated workforce for a strong economy and also to position itself in the world.

The legislation before us today creates a framework to ensure Australia's schooling system will be in the top five international performers in reading, science and mathematics by 2025. Through this bill students, regardless of their circumstances, are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach their potential. There are five core reform directions of the national plan, and this is all about implementation of the National Plan for School Improvement. Those five core reform directions are: quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, transparency and accountability, and meeting students' needs. It is based on and built on collaboration between the states, territories, the non-government sector and the Commonwealth. To listen to the previous speaker, one would think that this was all done in isolation—quite the contrary. This has been developed through enormous consultation and, in addition to the consultation with the groups and bodies I have already mentioned, it has also been done in consultation with parent groups, educational unions and representatives of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders.

This new funding model that will be implemented is based on a benchmark amount that accounts for the costs associated with providing higher quality education, and loadings which address the educational costs associated with the disadvantaged—something the members on the other side of this parliament have never considered in any legislation that they have presented to the parliament. This is an undertaking to all students in all schools that they will have this access to an excellent education, to reach their full potential and to have opportunities and choices in the future. It is needs based and determined to reduce the educational disparity to all students, including those in regional Australia. It is also about achieving a national goal of being placed in the top five nations in the world, as I have already mentioned.

This plan came out of the Gonski review, which was the first review that has been undertaken by any federal government in the last 40 years, something that those on the other side of the parliament shirked and moved away from or refused to undertake when they were in government.

I put to the House that over the past decade Australian students, because of the opposition's failure when they were in government to address this, have declined. Students have fallen from second to seventh in reading and fifth to 13th in maths in the international PISA exams. We on this side of the House do not think that is good enough. We think we should be right up there in the top five in all areas, and that is what we want to work towards.

The National School Improvement Plan will deliver more money and resources to every school in the country. A new skill-funding system will be based on the recommendations of the Gonski review. This is about a framework; this is about implementing the recommendations. It is a new way of funding every school that will guarantee all our schools are getting the money they need to do the job. There will be higher standards for teachers, with at least a term's classroom experience before graduation. Teachers will get extra training in managing disruptive behaviour and dealing with bullying, and there will be more powerful principals. There will be better My School information to make sure no school falls behind.

I add that the Howard government did not implement any reforms when it was in power. What the Labor government has done is provide more information to parents. Every school will have a school improvement plan which outlines the steps that the school will take to improve student results, and students who need extra help to improve their results will get it. The school improvement plan will be part of the national drive to ensure we win the educational race in the Asian century, which is very important. There will be extra money for schools. The Gonski review recommended around $6.5 billion in today's figures, and this is the ballpark: this is what we need to negotiate between the states to put in place a fair share from both the Australian government and the states.

I come from New South Wales, and in New South Wales the state government—the O'Farrell government—has demonstrated a lack of commitment to education. Rather than putting money into education it has been ripping money out of education. That impacts on the amount of money contributed by the Commonwealth as well because there is a ratio between the state and federal dollars that are invested. I find that very disappointing. It has had an enormous impact on the schools in my electorate. I have been approached by both the non-government sector, an independent school, Catholic educators and the public system, and they have all expressed their dismay at the lack of commitment to education by the coalition government in New South Wales.

Here in the House tonight we have had demonstrated to us visually that it is not only New South Wales where there is a lack of commitment to education but also here in the federal parliament. Here in the Australian parliament we have heard how the opposition is negative and committed to saying no to reform on education. We have heard weasel words. We know on this side of the House that at the end of the day the people who are going to be affected negatively are the students in our schools—those young children who look to government to ensure that they get a quality education. It also impacts on us as a nation because we need to compete globally, and the only way we can really do that is if we have an educated workforce that is able to go out there in the international market and put Australia in the position it should be.

In my electorate of Shortland there have been a number of improvements since Labor came to power. There are 20,000 students in the electorate in 48 schools now, since the state government amalgamated two of my schools. There were 114 BER projects worth nearly $90,000. There are 7,589 students who have received computers under the Digital Education Revolution; I hear every day how that has benefited the students educationally. There are two trade training centres benefiting 11 schools of which four are in the Shortland electorate. The planned Australian technical college on the Central Coast that did not eventuate has been devolved into the local high schools. That, along with the trade training centres, has really benefited students in an area where there is quite a lot of disadvantage. It is providing them with opportunities that they would not have had otherwise, because of the distances they need to travel.

In addition to the programs I have mentioned, there is a trade training centre at Catholic schools within the area. This has also benefited students enormously. Literacy and numeracy national partnerships programs are in St Brendans Catholic school and St Pius in Windale, which has the lowest SES of any school in New South Wales. Other schools that have also benefited enormously from this program are: Gorokan Public School, Gwandalan Public School, Lake Munmorah High School, Mannering Park Public School, Windale Public School, Gateshead Public School, Gateshead West Public School, which has amalgamated with Gateshead, Northlakes High and Northlakes Public.

The school chaplaincy program has benefitted many schools including: Belmont Christian College, Gorokan High School, Northlakes High School, Swansea High School, Budgewoi Public School, Gorokan Public School, Belmont High School, Belmont North Public School, Warners Bay High School, Kahibah Public School and Whitebridge High School. In addition to that program, which is well and truly appreciated by those schools, I give special mention to Floraville Public School, which received nearly $6 million from the government—$5.95 million, to be exact—under the capital program and this funding has been truly appreciated. I must admit the state government did put some money in: not even half a million dollars, $460,000. It is a school that has made a really big commitment to education. I have seen the school grow under the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments.

This government has made a real commitment to education. The BER program was appreciated by the schools in my electorate. It was put to me by principals that it is once-in-a-generation investment in education, along with the computers, the trade training centres and all the other initiatives that have delivered a better quality education. These programs have made education more attainable. Now we have before us this bill that is going to move Australia forward in the 21st century. It will provide all students attending all schools opportunities that they have not had in the past. This is very good legislation, and I implore those on the other side of the House to rethink and support the legislation. (Time expired)

Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Education Bill 2012 is an extraordinary bill and this is an extraordinary debate, because we are discussing a bill which expressly says that it does not create rights or duties that are legally enforceable. I believe that this will be unique in Australian history: a discussion in this chamber of a bill which does not appropriate any funds and has no legal impact. We are also debating it at a time when the House of Representatives is inquiring into the bill; we are receiving submissions and hearing evidence beginning this Friday. So it is extraordinary on two counts: a bill with no legal impact and a debate when an inquiry is underway.

The bill, however, does allow us to comment on school education and the proposed Gonski reforms, because at least the intent of this bill is to establish a framework for school funding—not that it has any legal impact, but the intent is there. There is a great deal to discuss in relation to school education, the necessary reforms for school improvement and whether the Gonski proposals will actually make any difference. My fear is that the proposed reforms—what little we know of them—will cost billions but make little or no difference to educational outcomes. Worse, they will penalise schools, particularly Catholic and independent ones, that are already doing very well.

There are two things that the government's reforms seek to do: first, to introduce a new school-funding system, particularly for non-government schools, where the federal government has primary responsibility; and, second, to improve the outcomes of all schools. The government directly links the two together, suggesting that there is a solid causal connection between funding and outcomes. This belief that there is a direct causal connection is indeed the foundational principle of the Gonski report and of the government's direction.

The bill itself adopts the language of Gonski, suggesting that 'funding will be allocated according to a formula that calculates an appropriate amount for every school in recognition of the costs of providing a high quality education'. The assumption is that if the school has the 'appropriate' level of funding—whatever that is, and it remains undefined—then school outcomes will automatically rise. This assumption, which underpins the government's entire approach, does not stack up. There is a considerable body of research that shows that large amounts of money can be spent on education with little impact on outcomes. Indeed, one can examine Australia's own school performance over the last decade. We have increased school funding by 41 per cent in real terms but have gone backwards in standards both in absolute terms and relative to other nations. The Catholic school system in Australia does better than the public school system even after adjusting for socioeconomic backgrounds, and this is despite the Catholic school system operating on 10 per cent fewer resources than the government school system. Finally, some remote Aboriginal schools will have funding of $60,000 or $70,000 per student but have catastrophic outcomes. Clearly funding does not directly equate to better outcomes. Funding is, of course, important, but it is not the essential determinant of outcomes, and to suggest that the answer to our failing standards is simply to give all schools the 'appropriate' level of funding, as Gonski and the government suggest, is not based in reality.

What does matter in relation to funding, however, is certainty and fairness. The current SES system, introduced in 2001, is not perfect and can be improved, but it does provide those two things. It provides certainty for four years in advance based on a model that is non-corruptible. It also provides fairness in that it gives more funding to schools that cater for poorer communities and less money to schools that cater for wealthier communities. Importantly, this funding is indexed according to the real costs of education increases—the AGSRC index, an indexation rate that Labor fails to commit to.

Also importantly, the model does not disadvantage parents who wish to spend more on their kids' education through higher fees. The government has not only criticised this model since it was first announced but made out that it is the worst thing ever passed in this parliament. Indeed, Stephen Smith, when he was shadow education minister, called it the 'destruction of our egalitarian society'.

Of course, Labor's criticism of the SES system was always more about politics than about substance. The fact that it has taken Labor 13 years, including six years in government, to put up an alternative funding model suggests that the SES system may not be all that bad. If it really were the destruction of our egalitarian society, why did Labor commit to extending the SES funding system from 2009 through to 2012 when it was in government, and then extend it again for a further year to the end of 2013?

Despite the government's rhetoric, I have concerns that the new funding model that the government will eventually put up for scrutiny will fail the fairness test. I am particularly concerned for low-fee Catholic and Christian schools, which cater for more than 20 per cent of all Australian students. Their funding is likely to be cut in real terms, meaning higher fees for parents already struggling with cost-of-living pressures. We have not seen any detailed modelling from the government, but the modelling undertaken by the state and territory governments and non-government school authorities reveals that some 3,254 schools would have funding reduced under the Gonski formula. This would include several schools in my electorate, including St Luke's, Our Lady of Lourdes, St Jude's and Holy Trinity.

The reason the schools will have funding cut is twofold. First, the Gonski model is based on schools charging fees that Gonski believes parents can afford, even if the school deliberately keeps fees low to make it affordable to all. Second, the government will not commit to AGSRC indexation. Over time, therefore, schools will lose funding in real terms. I encourage schools who are following this debate to do the mathematics. A school could potentially get a small boost to funding in year 1, but if the indexation rate is lower that boost will quickly be lost for every year thereafter. Indexation is critical and the government will not commit to the current formula. I also suggest that Catholic and other religious schools stay vigilant in relation to their right to employ teachers of their own faith. This is a principle that should be in the bill, but it is not. As members will know, Labor and the Greens have form in trying to remove this right. There are other principles that should be included in this bill, and the amendments which Christopher Pyne on behalf of the coalition has put forward should be adopted.

I mentioned that the intent of the government's reforms is to do two things: to introduce a new funding system and to improve student outcomes. Let me now come to the second part of this: student outcomes. We have a serious problem in this area. We are now the lowest performer of any English-speaking nation at year 4 level. We are ranked 27th in year 4 reading. We are ranked 18th in maths and 25th in science. The Grattan Institute notes that, in Shanghai, the average 15-year-old maths student is performing at a level two to three years above his or her counterpart in Australia. The average 15-year-old is 15 months ahead of Australian students in science and 13 months ahead in reading. Similarly, in Hong Kong, Singapore and Korea, 15-year-old students are now one year in advance of Australian students in maths and about half a year in front in science and reading. We are entering the Asian century, yet we are not keeping up with Asia's education standards.

What needs to be done? The research is remarkably clear. First, we need higher quality teaching. Research shows—indeed, the research of the member for Fraser—that a student with a top 10 per cent teacher learns at twice the pace as a student with a bottom 10 per cent teacher. Any person who has been a parent intrinsically understands this. The government acknowledges the desire for higher teacher quality, but its measures will be ineffectual. Its main effort is the teacher professional development standards, which is a huge bureaucratic exercise that will do little to improve teacher quality. Teacher quality will only improve if four things are done—first, attracting higher quality people into teaching. We, unfortunately, have seen a collapse in teacher entrance standards in recent years. Up to 21 per cent of students entering teacher education courses have an Australian tertiary admission rank, or ATAR, below 60, which is the lowest of all the categories listed in government reports that collate this information. In the world's leading performing systems, they only recruit students from the top 20 to 30 per cent of high school leavers, and this should be the model also for Australia.

The teacher education faculties also need to be improved. We have serious concerns about some of the quality there. Some of the things they have been teaching in the past have not been based on evidence—for example, even teaching teacher graduates how to teach phonics rather than just whole language in reading. In some cases, they are almost like quasi-sociology departments rather than teacher education faculties. We think these faculties need reform and they need reform where there is closer connection between schools themselves and the faculties, where some of the leading schoolteachers can be teaching the next generation of teacher graduates and teachers.

Third, there needs to be ongoing feedback from other teachers to constantly improve the existing cadre of teachers. It seems bleedingly obvious to do this, but it is not consistently being done in all schools, and the research says that it makes a big difference. Finally, lifting teacher quality requires being rigorous in moving on those who are underperforming. The Grattan Institute finds that, if the bottom 14 per cent of teachers were replaced merely with average quality teachers, we would have the best performing system in the world. I am not suggesting that those underperforming teachers immediately be removed; what I am suggesting is that many school principals find that there are teachers in their schools who they struggle to move on because it is very difficult to do so.

Teacher quality is most important. The second thing that needs to be done is to have a more rigorous curriculum. The standards of our school children cannot exceed that set in the curriculum. I have previously mentioned that many of the countries in the region are now performing well in excess of Australian standards. I think our curriculum needs to be more rigorous. We need to benchmark it against the leading nations in the world, and we should be keeping up with those leading nations.

Finally, we need more autonomy for school principals to hire, fire and manage their affairs—that is, to be more like non-government schools in that regard. We need to give the school principal the ability to manage their school and then be accountable for the outcomes. No leader of any organisation can be accountable for their outcomes if they cannot properly manage its affairs.

Many other things could be done to improve the outcomes for students in Australia, but these are the essential things that underpin the coalition's position: improve teacher quality; improve the rigour of the National Curriculum; and, finally, give school principals and school communities more autonomy to get on with the job they are supposed to be doing.

We know what needs to be done to improve outcomes, but it needs the courage to implement it. I am far from convinced that the Gonski reforms will have any real impact, but they will cost the taxpayer billions of dollars, and those billions of dollars at present are all being put onto the government credit card. I suggest to the government that they closely examine the proposals that the coalition has put forward: to lift teacher quality, to increase the rigour of the curriculum and to give school principals greater autonomy. If they do those three things I think we can be assured that we can lift school education outcomes once again and be in a position to get Australia back into the top-performing countries in the world, from a school education perspective.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In my opening remarks I want to quote Sir William Deane. The quote was included in the newsletter from my son's school, St Edward's Christian Brothers' College, at East Gosford, on the Central Coast. Sir William Deane showed great leadership in this country and he articulated very clearly that we can tell something about a community by how we treat people. He said:

You can tell the worth of any community, any nation … by how it treats its weakest members.

We can talk about the weakest members in our society in a range of areas, but as a former teacher and as a mother, I think there is expertise about understanding very deeply that when your child is weak at school or performs weakly at school you know there is a life of disadvantage ahead for them.

Who indeed are our weakest members? From the Gonski review we have a much clearer picture about what that constitutes—it constitutes our weakest students. That presents a challenge to us as a government that seeks to enable people to have access to high-quality education.

In terms of what the Gonski review delivered—which I might say was the first major review of the whole of schooling in 40 years, and not surprisingly the last one was done under Gough Whitlam's Labor government—we found a very disturbing fact. Apart from all of the detail, this is right at the heart of the finding: Australia has a very significant gap between the highest- and the lowest-performing students. In fact, this performance gap is far greater in Australia than many OECD countries, particularly those with high-performing school systems. One of the most alarming statistics that came to my attention was that in the reading literacy area the gap between Australian students from the highest and lowest economic, social and cultural status quartiles were found to be the equivalent of almost three years of schooling. So, if you came from a low economic, social or cultural group you could attend school for all 13 years and finish year 12 and still be three years behind your counterparts.

I have heard much of what has been said by the opposition speakers—the member for Sturt, the member for Grey and the member for Aston. The member for Aston has claimed that the three simple things he articulated at the end of his speech will fix up the Australian schooling system and everything will be okay. The reality is that there is no simple solution to the challenges that have been discovered by Gonski and that are borne out when we compare our data with that of the OECD. A simple argument like teachers needing to be able to teach phonics as being the key for making successful readers exposes how inadequate the member for Aston's understanding is of the complex nature of teaching and getting kids to read. Teachers need every single tool in their toolbox, phonics certainly being one of them, but that alone is no solution to the literacy challenges we are facing in this country.

In addition to that miserly view of what needs to be done, we have had the fear campaign of the other speakers, particularly the member for Sturt, who in his usually strident voice has come in here with a litany of things to be frightened of. 'Be afraid of the future', he almost says—'Be afraid of increased funding. Be afraid of Gonski.' He articulated that the whole of education has 'completely and manifestly failed'—I think those were his words. This hyperbole, this exaggeration, this creation of fear and negativity is something we have seen before. We saw it in the lead-up to the carbon price, but we saw that reality land, and the fear that was generated by those opposite dissipated, because the reality of investing in that structural change has brought about significant positive outcomes for the Australian people.

In the same way, and using the same methodology, we see the opposition in here today creating fear, alarm and a sense of concern about this significant change, which is designed to put more money into education to assist students and enable them to be more and more successful, making sure that we do not leave young Australians behind.

So, in some of this time that I have been allocated to speak on the bill, I do want to get onto the record what it is that we are seeking to do, which is articulated very well in the preamble to this bill, 'A bill for an act in relation to school education and reforms relating to school education, and for related purposes', in the first comment:

All students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach his or her full potential so that he or she can succeed and contribute fully to his or her community, now and in the future.

A pretty common statement that I reckon parents would be making as they are dropping their kids off would be, 'Yes, that is what we believe we should be getting out of education.' Yet those opposite are going to oppose this bill. In our preamble we also say that:

The quality of a student’s education should not be limited by where the student lives, the income of his or her family, the school he or she attends, or his or her personal circumstances.

And that is exactly what is proposed in the Australian Education Bill: to attend to those critical things.

For those who might be listening to this debate as they are driving home, maybe having picked up the kids from school and running around to try and do extra things with them—

Stuart Robert (Fadden, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Defence Science, Technology and Personnel) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

And they'd have nothing better to do than listen to this!

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member interjects and says that Australians might have nothing better to do than listen to this, but the fact is that Australians do listen to the radio; they do understand that important things are being transacted here today and we should not be making light of the fact that this Australian Education Bill—

Mr Robert interjecting—

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was a good-natured interjection, but there will not be any more.

Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

is actually going to change, significantly, the outcomes for those people who have been left behind in a system that was not adequately funded.

This bill will ensure that there is a base level of funding that we know is generally associated, with many, many students, with enabling their success. But there will be other critical dimensions for which there will be additional funding provided, particularly in the areas of kids who come from a low-socioeconomic background. And why does that matter? Because the reality is: when kids get to school they are all at different levels, and it is important that we attend to that difference.

In some of the classes in which I taught my students as they were getting ready to become teachers, I used to show them a video of students approaching their first day at kindergarten. There were two extremes shown in the video. One was of a young boy whose parents were highly educated professionals who lived in a city with access to lots and lots of educational material. He declared that one of the most fun things for him to do on the weekend was to go to a museum and explore and experience that museum. In contrast was another little boy, the same age, born in the same country. He was asked if he liked to read. He was an excited young boy, and he indicated that he wanted to read. But when he went to get his 'books', the things that he pulled out were actually the flyers that had been delivered to the letterbox. They were his books. They were his only books. And his attempts to read were very, very noble. But we cannot begin to think that those two young men were approaching school with the same level of capacity to engage with school—the same level of cultural capacity and cultural assets.

And the fact is: when teachers get those kids in their first year at school, they need the resources to be able to do the job. It makes my skin crawl to hear the teaching profession so maligned, with simplistic solutions: 'If we just raise the score', or 'If we just do this', or 'If we just do that', we will fix the whole problem; 'It is all the teachers' problem.' Many, many teachers—indeed, I would hazard to say, the majority of teachers—want to do a fantastic job but have been debilitated over many years by being unable to access the level of support that they need, the level of support they need for professional development, the level of resources they need to be able to deliver the type of curriculum that individual kids need, the type of resources they need to respond to the different levels of kids in their classrooms. At the earliest age, when you have not got those resources to interact with young people, you end up creating a completely inequitable system where the tail-end drags the whole thing down, and that is what we are seeing, sadly, in our results compared to our competitors internationally.

We are saying with this piece of legislation that where you go to school should not be a problem. The quality of education should not be limited by a school's location, particularly for those schools in regional Australia. This government understands that regional Australia has been overlooked for far too long, and certainly was during those sad years of the Howard government.

In terms of health, we can see statistics that show that people have been dying of cancer in the regions far more than they have been in the cities because of the failure of the coalition to invest in infrastructure to provide access to proper treatment. In the same way, kids in regional schools have not had access to what they need. In health, this government has put in 26 regional cancer clinics. And in this bill we seek to put in the remedy to the distress of students, parents, teachers and the whole community of people in regions who know that their kids deserve a fair go but they are just not getting it. We are ready to redress that. We are ready to put money on the table. We are ready to negotiate to ensure that every Australian has a fair go, a fair crack, at a good education, and those opposite are determined to oppose it. The shameful comments we have on the record so far this evening just indicate how low they will go in their efforts to prevent that equitable outcome.

We say in this piece of legislation that it is essential for Australian schooling to be of high quality and to be highly equitable in order to create a highly skilled and successful workforce, strengthen the economy, increase productivity and lead to greater prosperity for all, because you cannot tell which of those children in each of those classes who needs those extra resources could be the greatest leaders of our country in the fields of business, science, the arts, or political and civic engagement. Every kid needs a chance to have access to high-quality education, and where they are disadvantaged we understand that teachers need to be given more money, more resources and more capacity to pick up those kids where they are and lift that standard.

It is often said that really bright kids will do well wherever they are. However, Australia's statistics are showing that apart from that very top echelon of kids who are indeed doing very well, hugely by their own effort, the system is failing to respond to the students who are lower down. Sadly, I have to say that is particularly the case in the secondary setting. There are many challenges for us to face but we will not be able to fix them by continuing to blame teachers. We need to put money in and make the changes that have to be made.

This bill says that Australia is a prosperous nation with a high standard of living and that if we want to continue to have that we have to continuously improve school performance. This bill is directed to that end. We need students who have the capacity to engage with Australia's region. We do have a focus on Asia in this 21st century. This bill will enable that engagement. Future arrangements will be based on the needs of Australian schools and school students and on evidence of how to provide an excellent education for school students, building on the reforms that we have undertaken so that we can get a picture of where Australian students are. That picture needs to be fleshed out to become much, much richer; a dataset collected about really outstanding success for students in schools. But there is no point in attempting to fatten the pig by weighing it more often. We have to make sure we put in the money to allow the teaching professionals to get on and do the job, and enable our students to become more and more successful so that they can compete with the very best to be in the top five countries by 2025. That is our goal.

Schools are formed when we have partnerships between teachers, students and the community. These schools will change our nation. They will improve our nation, they will improve our productivity and they will improve our civic life if they get the chance to do the right thing. The reality is we are facing a great challenge with incredible cuts in education funding at state level and this is not going to be an easy bill to negotiate through with the states. Since September last year, significant progress has been made and, in the lead-up to COAG in April, I am confident that even the Liberal governments of Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria, who have cut so harshly into the education budgets at the state level, will see the vision that is offered by this piece of legislation, will buy into that vision and actually believe that there is a better future for Australian kids, and get on board and enable us to do that job for the future of our nation.

Mr Shorten interjecting—

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the minister for his 'hear, hear' comments before I began to speak. Deputy Speaker, I rise to speak on the Australian Education Bill—

Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, the member was getting ahead of himself. I was complimenting the comments of the member for Robertson.

Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will resume his seat. We understand. The member for Hasluck has the call.

Ken Wyatt (Hasluck, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thank you for that, Minister. I rise to speak to the Australian Education Bill 2012, a bill that raises an issue of critical importance to our society—that is, the education of our young people. I am passionate about education and lifelong learning because it has made a difference to me and the options that I have had in my life. I want to see the same for all students. Sometimes we need to step down from the high moral ground of finger-pointing and look at what it is that we need to put into place that will make a difference to the educational options for all children regardless of the choices that their parents make.

When you educate a person, you liberate them from being a victim in life because you create the capacity for them to acquire knowledge to make informed consent decisions within the context of their life. Education develops within a person the wisdom to control their life but equally the capacity to question the way in which a government leads a nation. This is evident in nations where totalitarianism prevails, because they do not have that option; they are led to live a life that does not allow those freedoms.

I want to quote from a great man and an inspirational leader who has touched the lives of so many in different ways. I refer of course to Nelson Mandela, former President of South Africa, whose quote is pertinent to the core business of providing educational and training pathways for Australia's children and youth. He said:

Education is the great engine of personal development. It is through education that the daughter of a peasant can become a doctor, that a son of a mineworker can become the head of a mine, that a child of farm worker can become the president of a great nation.

Schools alone are not the only source of accessing an education within the framework of lifelong learning because learning begins at birth and an individual's family is a partner in the process.

What I did note when I read through Gonski is that recommendation 1 gives strong credence to the fact that we need to consult. It says:

The Australian government and the states and territories in consultation with the non-government sector should develop and implement a schooling resource standard as the basis for general recurrent funding of government and non-government schools.

It goes on to expand on those standards. What is disappointing is that that consultation process is not at a stage where I thought it could have allowed for the evolution of an agreed position with states and territories and the Commonwealth government, and then defined legislation as to how that would operate. It would be common sense that those who provide education at state and territory level are those who have a significant say in the modelling and the shape of it with respect to funding.

I have seen the doors that good education open and I have seen the doors that a lack of education close. As a nation, in the interests of our future prosperity, education is of critical importance. I cite the United Nations Education Scientific and Cultural Organization. In the 1980s, at the international consultative forum on 'Education for All' 155 nations participated. As an outcome of their collective deliberations, a joint statement 'Education for all: a goal within reach' was released. Within the context of this joint statement, the principles of education for all is based on an individual:

Further, and this is what we all should strive for: 'An educated individual must be prepared to play many roles in the course of their life within their community.'

These include: an efficient producer; a public-spirited citizen; a responsible parent/individual; a reliable and convivial friend; a teacher; and a life-long learner.

In the document entitled 'A National Health Policy for Children and Young People' the Australian health ministers made the following statement:

Children and young people represent a country's future. They are also important, now, as valued members of society, each with unique characteristics and potential to contribute to family and community.

Within the context of education for all there is a need to invest in the education and training of all Australians and it is crucial to the attainment and maintenance of high-quality educational and training outcomes for all, both now and in the future.

This bill attempts to re-ignite a dialogue about the education of our young people and how this will impact on the future direction of our country. Unfortunately, this bill is all talk and no action.

The Prime Minister in her own speech has suggested three overarching goals for this bill: firstly, for Australian schooling to provide an excellent education for all students—none of us disagree with that; secondly, for Australian schooling to be highly equitable; and, thirdly, for Australia to be placed in the top-five countries in reading, science and mathematics, and for quality and equity recognised in international testing by 2025.

These are fine objectives but, unfortunately, this bill will only set the stage for further updates after the Council of Australian Governments meeting later this year. At this point, there is little substance to what we see. The real concern about this bill is how it will seek to achieve these broad aspirational goals of our schools. I have a genuine concern about what this is going to mean for our schools, particularly schools in my community.

I have great empathy for the schools which are closely monitoring the activities of this parliament in the hope of finding out what this bill will mean for them, their students and their communities.

This bill has no details at all as to how the new funding model will operate, how much funding individual schools will receive, how this funding will be calculated and what other obligations will be placed upon the sector.

This bill is basically a great big blank cheque for the government. It is difficult on this side of the chamber to have a thorough discussion about the merits of this bill because, at this stage, there is no detail about what the outcomes will be for schools.

However, the coalition is proposing an amendment to this bill. We believe and have moved in our amendment that the definitions in this bill should be supplemented to define both a 'systemic school' and a 'non-systemic school'.

The non-government school sector is very diverse and this diversity should be reflected in the funding arrangements for schools. There should be flexibility in how this funding is provided.

I continually meet and talk with principals and P&Cs within my electorate and one question they ask is about the operational budget that provides the scope and breadth of programs that allow for individualised learning for students who struggle. Most of them perform a shifting exercise in order to provide a diverse educational program. That should not need to happen in this country. We should not have the disparity in education that I often see across this nation. The challenge is how we recognise and define systemic and non-systemic schools, to allow the funding to be allocated to meet those needs—or, if they are not systemic then direct to the school, because there are Independent schools that are not part of a system; they are stand-alone within various jurisdictions. There has to be debate and consideration around the scope of the types of schools, and systemic schools and non-systemic schools that we have in this nation. The Gonski report recognised this need and I quote from the report, which says:

Public funding for school systems would be provided to system authorities for distribution to their schools. There would be an expectation that systems would be publicly accountable for their decisions on the redistribution of that funding. Non-systemic schools would receive funding directly from governments.

The last part of our amendment calls on the government to extend the current funding arrangements for a further two years, should this be required.

Parents and schools need funding certainty so that they can adequately plan for the next year and guarantee teaching positions. There is no detail about what this will mean for young students in schools across the country.

The bill outlines five directions for reform including: quality teaching; quality learning; empowered school leadership; transparency and accountability; and meeting student need.

This is the extent of the government's information. As a former educator, I am concerned that the government has made the assumption that schools and teachers are not already striving toward these goals. That is certainly underpinned by the number of national partnership agreements which exist within education and which came about as part of the COAG reform, led by the previous Prime Minister.

We would like to make it clear that the changes to this sector require close scrutiny but, until the government is willing to be transparent and accountable on exactly what changes it intends to make, we are unable to do so.

As soon as the government is willing to provide detail on the changes, we are willing to examine them and determine whether they will be beneficial to Australian schools and Australian students.

I doubt there would be any Australian who would philosophically disagree with the notion that we want Australian schools to be the best in the world. But it is the way in which this government intends to achieve this lofty goal that I have concerns about.

The final Gonski report leaves some serious questions to be answered and raises some deep concerns. Before this government can contemplate moving forward we need to know how this bill will be funded. The bill contains no details on how much money will be available or which level of government will be required to stump up the additional funding.

As we know, the Gonski report recommends an additional $6.5 billion per year be injected into schools. On that basis alone the current commitment is absolutely critical because, unless we provide the framework within which negotiations and discussions can occur between the Commonwealth, states and territories, systemic and non-systemic schools, then the uncertainty will prevail.

At this point in our history as a country we should, based on First World conditions, have an incredible education system that meets the needs of the disparities, the geographically dispersed and those who have need of intervention.

The assumptions we make about schools are sometimes not correct. When you stand in a school, when you sit with teachers and parents and students, you will see that some incredible work is being done. But the Gonski report provides an opportunity not for the imposition of a model but to develop a model that is inclusive of every facet of school and educational and training delivery.

It is probably a turning point that we need to seriously think about, because we lead into a world that is changing technologically. We live in a time when the information available and accessible is far beyond our comprehension. We also live in a time where there are families who are resource poor, and what we do not want to do is take away choices for parents. I know there are kids who come from outside of my electorate to attend schools in my electorate because these schools provide an opportunity; both government and non-government schools. Catholic schools are providing for Aboriginal kids in the Kimberley, but their funding has been affected. However, they are still continuing to provide a solid pathway.

Education is too important to play games with. It is important that we define what is required within the bill. Because if we do not, then the debates that we have here do not create the certainty. It is interesting that, in some areas, we sit on joint committees, and we work through commonality. We work through opportunities to create better pathways in whatever the factor is that we are looking at. Certainly, in the education bill, I would prefer, personally, and as an ex-professional who has worked in schools at both a teaching and curriculum level, and then as an administrator, to see much more detail so that you were able to foreshadow in your thinking some of the changes that will be required, where you need to modify. And let me say, the schools have overloaded curriculum that require teachers to take on much more than they did in the last decade. So there are a number of factors that we should negotiate with every state and territory. We should work cooperatively to put the detail into the bill that will achieve the outcomes that we seek. Thank you, Deputy Speaker.

Gai Brodtmann (Canberra, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

When I was elected, I used my first speech in this House to talk about the transformative powers of education and how Labor has helped tens of thousands of people like me break free from a cycle of disadvantage through education. I was the first member of my family to finish high school and the first member of my family to attend a university. My mother worked extremely hard so that her girls could have the opportunity of an education. It was an opportunity that was not available to her, to my grandmother, or to my great-grandmother. The achievements of my sisters and myself are testament to my mother's belief that a quality education is one the most important gifts that you can give to a child. It was through her sacrifices and commitment that I am here today, and my story is by no means unique.

There are countless other men and women who have finished school and gained a higher education because of the hard work and sacrifices of their parents or their family. Like me, they were supported by Labor, by a party that understands that a quality and properly funded education system is the vital link to opportunity and is the core responsibility of government. In fact, when I think about it education is one of the main reasons why I am Labor.

When I visit schools in my electorate—which is one of the most rewarding aspects of my life as a local member—I make time to talk with students about my experiences in a world-class public school system, and what it meant to me to have the chance to attend university. I remind students that my own journey shows how the transformative quality of education can really impact on your life. I talked with them about how education can empower, how it opens doors, how it gives options, choices and opportunities—opportunities often unimagined. Young students talk with me about their great teachers—how they are inspired by them, how their lives are changed by them, and how education can lead to totally unexpected careers, travel and life experiences.

Last year while I was visiting a high school not far from us here at Parliament House, students were sharing their stories about volunteering overseas and furthering their education and knowledge through programs that give them incredible opportunities. Of course, these students were also sharing their educational experiences in a school that had recently been the beneficiary of a massive funding investment as a result of the Building the Education Revolution. It is important to remind the conservatives who opposed this investment that great transformations in education have been fostered by Labor, such as the BER, and now this bill. The education revolution that Labor has championed underscores our belief in building Australia's education sector and providing greater choice and greater opportunities. Every time I visit a school in my electorate, I see how beneficial it is and how transformative it is. The investment that Labor has made in ACT schools over the past few years is truly incredible, and these enhancements are in government schools, independent schools and in Catholic schools.

Those opposite are strangely silent on this, because their local members know that every time they visit a school in their electorate, they see modernisation and investment and improvements in IT, thanks to Labor. They see a national curriculum, and teacher standards being improved and enhanced to the benefit of students, teachers and families. They see better teacher training initiatives, and greater decision-making authority for school principals, and they see a doubling of funding to Australian schools thanks to Labor.

Following the Prime Minister's announcement of the National Plan for School Improvement in September last year, Labor has made a great deal of progress on the pathway to implementation. State and territory education ministers have already agreed to work collaboratively on the main points of Labor's plan, such as higher teaching standards, better learning opportunities, individual school improvement plans and a new, needs-based school funding system. It is equally significant that state and territory education ministers, along with just about everyone interested in education, has welcomed and endorsed the Prime Minister's objective of placing Australia in the top 5 countries in the world in reading, maths and science by 2025. Since that announcement, we have also seen agreement by the states and territories to collaborate on greater transparency and accountability measures, to ensure that funding goes where it is intended and produces better results for our students.

An education is one of the strongest threads that runs through the Australia in the Asian century white paper.

The paper says that by 2025 every Australian school student will have access to learning an Asian language from their first year of school. That is already happening in Canberra schools. Many students in my electorate are already undertaking broad-ranging programs in Indonesian, Japanese and Mandarin. A number of schools in my electorate have little Japanese rooms where they not only learn the language but dress up in little Japanese outfits and do drawings. Their Japanese teacher comes in every day. These rooms are quite extraordinary. They are all decked out in Japanese themes. We have also got one school that has an Indonesian themed room where the children learn Indonesian. They have puppets and dress-ups and all sorts of things. It is a complete experience for these kids. It is not just a case of language; it also involves culture, art, drawing and a great deal of fun.

These are all significant and landmark policies that will have a lasting legacy on Australian education. I want to talk now on this bill. It is the first comprehensive review of school funding in 40 years, a significant length of time. This bill creates the foundation for a legislative framework to ensure that Australia's schooling system is both high quality and highly equitable, while recognising inherent disadvantage. It is a key element of Labor's response to the findings of the review of funding for schooling and it is the first stage of a legislative response to ensure that all our schools are great schools. When we examined our education system a few years ago very critical facts emerged. Although the Australian economy is the envy of the world our school education system was slipping. Over the past decade Australian students have fallen from second to seventh in reading and from fifth to 13th in maths in the international exams. Australia's year 4 students were significantly outperformed in reading and literacy by 21 countries out of a total of 45.

This is not good enough. We can and must do a lot better than this. When we look around the world we see high levels of investment in other countries and we see that this delivers better outcomes. Labor wants to ensure that we have a school system that provides for all Australian children and gives them a real chance to reach their full potential—a world-class potential. And it is not just about disadvantaged kids and gifted kids; it is about all students. To this end, Labor's National Plan for School Improvement will see more money and more resources delivered to every school in the country. Our goal is to see a new school funding system based on the recommendations of the Gonski review. This will include a benchmark amount per student plus extra money for the schools and students who need it most.

I want to take this opportunity to thank St Edmund's College and St Clare's College in my electorate. In the development of the Gonski review and the response to that I went out and did a number of consultative briefing sessions with them. I had one session for staff and one session for parents. They were really worthwhile sessions—getting feedback from staff on the direction in which they thought it should be going and also getting from the parents a very strong sense of what they want out of an education system and their expectations of government and also the schools. In addition to those forums that I held I also spent a lot of time, because of my love of education, out with the school principals and teachers. I go to assemblies probably once or twice a week when we are not sitting. I meet with the union, the Independent schools association and the Catholic schools association to get a sense of the issues that concern them and also their response to Gonski and other education issues.

I want to name a few of the schools whose principals I meet with: St Mary MacKillop College, Saint Edmund's College, St Clare's College, Saint Francis of Assisi college, Canberra Grammar, Richardson Primary School, Bonython Primary School, Conder Primary School, Gordon Primary School, Lanyon High School, Alfred Deakin High School and the colleges. The principals have been extraordinarily excited about this first review of school funding in 40 years and they want to be actively engaged in it. In the conversations I have with them they have been incredibly well-informed and incredibly interested in ensuring that they deliver the best outcomes not just for ACT schools or their particular school but for education across Australia today and into the future.

The Gonski review is not just a question of increased funding, however; it is also about binding extra money to changes that deliver better results. Let me outline what we want to deliver. We want to deliver an innovative funding model for every school that guarantees all Australian schools the money they need to do their job. We want to deliver higher standards for our teachers, with at least a term's classroom experience before graduation and an annual performance review for every teacher. We want to give teachers extra training in managing disruptive behaviour and dealing with bullying so that every school student can learn in a safe environment. We want to increase authority for school principals in hiring staff and controlling the budget—and I know that some of the schools principals I have spoken to about this issue in my electorate have really embraced this concept. We want to improve the My School information to make sure no school falls behind, with more information for parents so they can see how their children are managing. We want every school to have its own school improvement plan that will outline the steps that schools will need to take to improve student results. We want to know which schools need extra help to improve their results, and we will provide the support to ensure that that happens. We want to ensure that school improvement plans are part of a national drive to ensure we meet our goals as set out in the Asian century white paper. And, as I mentioned before, we want every student to have access to learning an Asian language from their first day of school.

The Gillard government is prepared to invest substantially more money to help deliver this plan for better schools and we expect other governments to contribute their fair share too. We know that a quality education is an opportunity that must be available to all Australian students no matter their circumstances or background. This bill lays the foundations for a framework to ensure Australia's schooling system is high quality, highly equitable—that is particularly important bearing in mind my background and that of many here and that of many tens of thousands of Australians—and recognises disadvantage.

This bill is an essential element of our response to the findings of the review of funding for schooling.

What we have before us is legislation that outlines the National Plan for School Improvement and the base for a new national push to improve both school and student results. The bill details the five core reform directions of the plan, which are: quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, transparency and accountability, and meeting student need. As I noted earlier, these reform directions are based on the collaborative work undertaken by all states and territories, the non-government sector and the Commonwealth to ensure that future funding is directed to what makes a difference in schools.

There has also been extensive consultation with parents groups, education unions and representatives of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and disability education sectors, amongst others. It is the first stage of our legislative response to ensure that all our schools can be great, world-class schools. Most importantly, this bill outlines a plan for further reforms to address educational disadvantage and to ensure that by 2025 Australia is ranked as a top five country in the world for education performance.

I hope every member of this parliament agrees with the Gillard government that all students, regardless of their circumstance, geography or socioeconomic situation, are entitled to an excellent, world-class education, so that every Australian girl and every Australian boy can reach their potential and have the chance to experience the world of opportunity that education has provided for me.

Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to address the Australian Education Bill, a framework outlining this government's intention to introduce a new funding model for schools as recommended by its review of funding for schooling panel. The panel's work, chaired by leading corporate identity David Gonski, has become known simply as the Gonski review. But this is one equation—adequately funding Australian schooling so that all students have an equitable shot at success—that is far from simple. If the right answer is not reached, this and future generations will be justified in pointing the finger at this place and asking: 'Why did you let us down? Why did you deny us our opportunity to reach our potential? Why did you stand in the way of our being the best Australians that we can be?'

Our current educational standards are notably below par. Just before Christmas, our worst fears were sheeted home with the release of two landmark global studies. The findings of the 2011 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study and the 2011 Trends in International Mathematics and Science Study cast serious questions over one of the Prime Minister's key goals for this bill—that Australia be placed in the top five countries in reading, science and mathematics by 2025. In the tests, Australian students came 27th out of 45 countries in year 4 reading benchmarks—significantly behind the US, England, Canada, the Czech Republic, the Russian Federation and Hungary, and on equal footing with Lithuania, Slovenia and Bulgaria. Twenty-five per cent of our year 4 pupils failed to meet the minimum reading standard for their age. In maths and science, we ranked 18th and 25th respectively for year 4 students out of 52 countries tested. High school students did better, ranking in the top 10 for year 8 maths and science out of 45 countries. But a high proportion of young Australians failed to meet the minimum standard for their grade in maths and science—again, more than a quarter of year 4 and year 8 students.

Minister for School Education and Minister for Early Childhood and Youth, Minister Garrett, described the results as a 'wake-up call', and, admittedly, they were further evidence that national changes to the school system were needed urgently. In an ironic twist, Australian Council for Educational Research CEO Professor Geoff Masters was almost, shall we say, lost for words. He 'could barely believe it' when he first saw the reading results.

Let us be in no doubt. Labor cuts to programs and the hindrance and meddling of the education unions should take a deal of the blame for this damning lag in performance. The previous coalition government pulled out all stops to insure against any slide, including introducing $700 vouchers to cover the cost of extra tuition for struggling students. Such children could have private after-hours tuition as part of a drive to raise standards, but the unions detested this constructive help because it involved the private sector, and this Labor government dismantled the program. It was the carping unions, too, which undermined the Howard government's considerable efforts to raise teaching standards in schools. They saw every move to incentivise good teaching as an attack on their general membership.

Today, the imperative to improve all levels of teacher training is clearly more resonant than ever. The next coalition government will take action, not as a backhander to teachers or teaching—one of the noblest professions—but as a measure of support, through proper resourcing, goal setting and rewards that will return the joy to their vital vocation. Australian teachers deserve this, and their students deserve the benefits that will flow.

On the other hand, Labor's so-called education revolution has lurched from one failure to the next. This Labor government pledged to lavish every Australian secondary student with a computer. But the realities included a cost-of-delivery blow-out of $1.4 billion. Then there is the Prime Minister's supposed schools stimulus program, the so-called Building the Education Revolution or BER, that has resulted in the most extraordinary waste of taxpayers' money. In the program's rushed and reckless roll-out, the government opened itself to price gouging for the building of school halls and other structures. The original budget of $14.7 billion jumped to $16.2 billion. According to some estimates, the amount of wasted BER money is in the vicinity of $5 billion to $8 billion of Australian taxpayers' money. One such tragic illustration from my electorate involved the building of a besser block and tin-roofed shed for the school to assemble in. Only once it was up was it discovered to be inadequate. The entire student body could not fit into the space. A wall was designated to be knocked down to allow the necessary expansion. But, by then, the budget was exhausted.

This craziness had cost $1.8 million. Much of it was wasted on bureaucracy and consultancy fees. It is something that could not, and will not, occur under a coalition government.

The coalition has a plan to hand principals and boards or community councils the real autonomy and the authority in the running of their schools. For the aforementioned school, this would have resulted in a proper hall being built, and for a far more competitive price, with surplus funds going to other improvements and upgrades to the buildings and the grounds. It would be the principal and the local school determining where the funding went, ensuring it was utilised in the best possible way. I cannot be more emphatic. Authority must be returned to local school communities so that they can be in control of not just building plans but the array of long-term decisions on the education needs of students.

Nobody would disagree with the aim of turning Australia's schools into the world's best-practice. But the brutal truth is that under this Labor government we are light years away from that ever happening. The coalition is moving an amendment to the bill, and from the government we do await further details. So much uncertainty clearly prevails. What we do know is that the main recommendation of the Gonski review was to implement a new funding model, seeking greater equanimity across schools at an extra cost to all governments of $6.5 billion a year. The panel's original proposal was that the Commonwealth and the states split the cost of introducing the model on a 30 to 70 basis. This would see each government lifting their existing school education expenditure by approximately 15 per cent.

The coalition has consistently maintained that any new funding model should, of course, see no school left worse off in real terms. But leaked government modelling last year suggested otherwise, revealing that approximately one-third of all schools—both government and non-government—would actually lose funding. The government has done nothing to alleviate the concerns, with a reluctance, to this point, to detail the proposed breakdown of funding and the role of indexation. As it stands, the bill currently before the House sets a largely aspirational goal and is due to be updated following discussions at the forthcoming Council of Australian Governments. In the meantime, it contains no detail of how much money will be available, how much individual schools will receive and how this will be calculated. Nor does the bill flag the sorts of new obligations that will be placed upon the education sector.

Since the Gonski report was handed in December 2011 to the government, Labor has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to redesign various elements of the panel's original funding proposal. Yet not only has none of the modelling ever been released by the Gillard government, but this same government has never supplied a formal response to each of the panel's 41 recommendations.

Last month Queensland's education minister John-Paul Langbroek publically expressed his dissatisfaction. He said:

We've had absolutely no detail about numbers. … We don't have a model from which we can work and we also don't have any idea about what state contributions are supposed to be let alone whether we can afford them.

Just last week, Victorian Premier Ted Baillieu put his discontent on the record. He stated that he looked forward:

… to the details of the Gonski proposals because nobody knows what they are. All we know is it's going to cost a lot of money …

And away from what some might consider the vested interest of politics these same sentiments reoccur. Last November Bill Daniels, the Independent Schools Council of Australia chief executive, urged the government to produce for stakeholders the information that will determine their future. He said:

While ISCA appreciates the complexity of the task, many of the 1,100 independent school communities have genuine concerns about the continuing uncertainty of future funding arrangements. Considerable time has passed since the release of the Gonski Review of Funding for Schooling and current Australian Government funding arrangements for independent schools expire at the end of 2013.

Mr Daniels went on:

ISCA encourages the Government to quickly finalise the details of the funding arrangements with state and territory governments and with the independent and Catholic sectors, and to incorporate them into the Australian Education Bill as soon as possible. This is the only way to provide school communities with an assurance that there will be stable, fair, robust and transparent public funding of independent schools from the commencement of 2014.

This Labor government's parlous performance on education is reflected in the test results of students who deserve better, and in the hand-wringing of parents and educators. It is not only arrogant but the height of ignorance for this government to maintain its predilection for an information vacuum on matters pertaining to this bill. We on this side of the House wait with interest for the i's to be dotted, for the t's to be crossed and for the numbers to add up.

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

I rise proudly to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012. The Gillard Labor government is committed to giving every Australian child the right to a world-class education irrespective of where they live, the school they attend or their family background. Sadly, I have been listening to some of the speeches from those opposite. They seem to occasionally touch on this as a topic, as a theory, but not in practice. It would seem to be that they believe in the status quo. I guess that is the brief of conservatives everywhere but it is particularly that of those opposite, the conservatives opposite. They insist on conserving, whereas obviously in the Australian Labor Party, as the progressive party, we are a party of ideas, a party of making sure that there is opportunity for all.

The Gillard Labor government strongly believes in the power of education, and the Prime Minister has made this a central part of her prime ministership. She, as a migrant from Wales, like many of the people in the Labor Party who have been given opportunities through education, knows that the right education can transform lives. We are committed as a party to making sure every school is a great school.

It is in Labor DNA. We have a strong track record that we can be very proud of when it comes to investing in our children's future. As I have said previously, I will stack our 3,000 libraries up against those opposite's 3,000 flagpoles when they were in office for 12 years, any day. I am particularly proud of the Building the Education Revolution that was rolled out across my electorate.

And now today, we have a very resilient economy with low unemployment, contained inflation, solid growth, record levels of investment and low debt. In fact, the level of investment is a bit of a problem in some areas. I know up in the Roma area, in some bits of the Darling Downs, there are some labour shortages—but that is a great problem to have. It would be nice to have a lever that would enable some of the people who need employment, where there are job shortages, to be able to move to other areas—not that we want to go the way of those opposite with their 'troppo' plan.

The reality is that the Gillard Labor government has put in place measures to help Australians with cost-of-living pressures at the same as taking a longer-term view—not just a short-term populist view, but a longer-term view—that improves productivity, which can then flow to all and make sure that the high-wages economy of the future can be a reality for my grandchildren.

We have invested in revolutionary initiatives such as the National Broadband Network, an initiative that will be destroyed by those opposite despite the fact that when they go to their electorate they are happy to say to people, 'I am lobbying for the NBN to be rolled out faster in my electorate'. Yet, they come in here and are prepared to commit to ripping up some of this NBN.

The Labor Party also introduced the first paid parental leave scheme. We have lifted the childcare rebate, not to mention those great environmental initiatives. Some I am particularly proud of include the Coral Sea Marine Park and, although it is a bit outside my electorate, the initiatives in the Murray-Darling Basin Plan.

However, the most significant investment that this Labor government has made toward the future, and the one I am most proud of, is obviously moving toward improving education for all Australian children in all Australian schools. Not just a case of empty platitudes: instead we have doubled the education budget—or basically doubled it—since Labor came to government in 2007. It is five years tomorrow since my first day in parliament, so to be able to tick the box and say in that time we have doubled the education budget is something I am particularly proud of.

The Gillard Labor government is also delivering on helping families make ends meet with things like the schoolkids bonus—something particularly appreciated in my electorate. I know that because parents have been telling me; as my son has gone back to school, parents have said, 'Thank you very much'. Particularly post Christmas, it is appreciated by parents with kids. Sadly, we hear again and again from those opposite that they will cut that scheme, an amazing initiative.

The Gillard Labor government is preparing Australia for the future and delivering on Labor values by investing in school improvements, in aged care, in a national disability insurance scheme—which I am proud to say is being introduced to parliament in this parliamentary fortnight—in dental care, in skills training and in significant investments in infrastructure. I have been waiting a long time for the Leader of the House, in his portfolio, to actually be asked some infrastructure questions, but that is yet to happen. But when he is asked a question, my goodness you cannot stop him on all the changes that we have brought in; changes that I know in my electorate we have been waiting for since Federation in 1901, in terms of some of the rail infrastructure—the archaic rules and guidelines that we had that have been cleaned up by Labor.

The National Plan for School Improvement aims to provide first-rate education for all school students, and to ensure that Australia becomes one of the top five countries in the world in reading, writing and maths by 2025. Isn't that a noble goal that we all support?

As a former teacher with 11 years' experience—I should stress I taught English, not mathematics—in state and Catholic schools, and then a further five years down the track as a union organiser with the Independent Education Union of Australia, I do have a fair knowledge of the education sector. I am proud to stand here today to speak on the progress the Gillard Labor government has made since the announcement of the National Plan for School Improvement in September last year.

Since the announcement of this plan and the release of the Gonski review findings, I have had many discussions with principals, P&Cs, P&Fs, parents and community members at forums, at P&C meetings and at P&F meetings, and they are all concerned about Australian education standards. I have had some great one-on-one meetings with some principals and then some lively debates with other education stakeholders. I do that both as an MP and also as a parent of a student in year 3.

These discussions have always come to the same conclusion, that our federal, state and territory governments need to work together to invest in an improved education system so we are not falling further behind compared to the rest of the world. This is not a blame game exercise; I am proud here in 2013 that I can say that the Labor Party does not judge schools by the name above the gate. However, I think we should judge political parties by the money that they devote to education rather than just the empty platitudes.

In my electorate of Moreton there are around 20,000 students attending 45 schools. I have state schools, private schools, big schools and small schools; some schools with over 1,600 students and one with only 40. I have religious schools and secular schools, single-sex schools and co-education schools: Catholic, Christian, Muslim, Anglican, wealthy, battlers, NAPLAN champions—those I will not single out but there are some of the top 10 schools in Queensland—and some schools that, according to NAPLAN, have some challenges and opportunities. Moreton is home to this large range of fantastic schools and I certainly want to see their students given the best opportunities in life through education.

As I said, both sides agree on this theory, but there is a giant chasm between us on the how and the when. There is my small primary school—Rocklea State School—through to the big primary schools, which are some of the biggest primary schools in Australia—Warrigal Road State School, Sunnybank Hill State School and MacGregor State School, three of the biggest; Graceville State School is also significant and also Corinda State High School. These are some of the biggest schools in Australia.

We also have some great private schools. I could mention St Elizabeth's Catholic Primary School in Tarragindi, St Brendan's Catholic Primary School in Moorooka, St Aidan's Anglican Girls School in Corinda and Southside Christian College. These are wonderful schools, but to complement that education story I need to mention some of the special schools in my electorate. Just before Christmas I visited the Sunnybank Special School to watch their Christmas concert, where I met their wonderful new principal, Nicole Finch. Watching the school pageant, where these people with varying degrees of disability did the The Twelve Days of Christmas in costume, I knew that for some it was like climbing Everest just to do their part of the song. It was very heart warming, and certainly confirmed why we need to have the NDIS and why we need to have individual schemes catering for individual disabilities and the opportunities and challenges that come with disabilities.

I have also been to Tennyson Special School, Kuraby Special School and Runcorn Secondary Special Education Unit—and Calamvale Special School, which is just over the border in the electorate of Oxley. They all do great work. I greatly commend all the education workers, the teachers, health workers and volunteers, that contribute to these schools, and obviously the parents. It is undoubtable that the community benefits from all their hard work. We need them to make sure that we have a bright future.

Moreton is quite a multicultural electorate. Consequently, the schools have a variety of cultural backgrounds. If you go to Yeronga State High School, particularly to their multicultural day, you can see all the countries of the world represented. At Milpera State High School students from all over Brisbane come to learn English in all of their subjects. Nyanda State High School is another very strong multicultural school.

Then I can go to the Murri School in Acacia Ridge. It is a private school set up by the Indigenous community. Southside Education is a school that I have a particular soft spot for. I think it might have been set up by the Baptists but it caters particularly for young women who have children. The school has its own creche to give the young women an opportunity in life. I was amazed, talking to some of the teachers there about some of the problems that are associated with homework, to learn that some of the students may not know where they are sleeping that night and they have a kid to look after. It puts some of the concerns I had, in some of the schools where I taught, in a completely different perspective.

All the schools I have mentioned and the many others in my electorate will benefit from the National Plan for School Improvement. How? They will benefit through the five key areas. First, the plan will endorse quality teaching to make sure we have the best and brightest teachers in our classrooms. I know that as a former teacher I am biased but I think the quality of teachers is the No. 1 factor in improving education. Second, the plan will ensure quality learning through a world-class curriculum while providing individual support for students. Third, the plan will empower school leaders by giving principals more say over how their school is run, within a consultative process to make sure that the parents as well as the broader school community is involved. Fourth, the plan will provide better information to the community regarding their school's performance. That is why My School is a favourite on so many home computers around Australia; it is about giving information to parents. Lastly, and most importantly, the plan will meet the needs of disadvantaged students and schools.

Under the Labor government the schools of Moreton have seen a number of significant improvements. When I attended BER openings in my electorate, in the middle of the GFC and soon after, it made me proud to be a member of the Australian Labor government. I saw the fantastic renovations and infrastructure developments that are promoting better learning environments, curriculum innovation and access to facilities for local students—and also access by the local community.

The federal Labor government is further building its vision for school reforms by continuing to drive change and deliver results across a range of school initiatives. The Building the Education Revolution invested $92 million in Moreton for 151 BER projects, including the building or upgrading of 21 classrooms, 26 libraries, 21 multipurpose halls and three science and language centres. We will continue to see the benefits of this program for many years to come.

There have been 4,384 computers installed under the Digital Education Revolution, National Secondary Schools Computer Fund. There was $1.6 million approved for the Acacia Ridge Trade Training Centre project benefiting local schools in the Moreton electorate. We invest in trades and TAFEs; sadly, we have a Premier at the moment who wants to close down TAFE sites.

My electorate has 15 schools participating in the Smarter Schools National Partnerships. I should declare that St Brendan's Catholic Primary School, where my son goes, is one of these schools. The Smarter Schools National Partnerships program is an agreement between the Australian government and state and territory governments addressing disadvantaged students, supporting teachers and school leaders and improving literacy and numeracy.

There are 26 schools eligible to receive funding for chaplaincy and student welfare services in the electorate of Moreton and I particularly commend the chappies and the great work that they do with students. I know that they save lives sometimes.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support the Australian Education Bill—along with the coalition, of course. But as with most things that Labor puts into this House it could have been much better. We only have a fraction of the information we need to be satisfied that we are going to have a more successful education system in the future—one that is competitive and will give us a set of educational outcomes that put us in the top five countries in the world.

Of course in Australia we want to provide excellent education for all students, and that is one of the aspirations of this bill. We also believe Australian schooling should be equitable and, as I said, one of the three goals of this bill is for Australia to be placed in the top five countries in reading, science and maths; for quality and equity to be recognised in international testing; and for this to be achieved by 2025.

We do not have a detailed understanding of just what the new funding model will be. There are no details of how much money will be available. And we certainly do not know how, and according to what sorts of principles, the new funding model will operate, or how much individual schools will receive.

Education is not just about cash or about injections of additional grants and funding but they certainly go a very long way to improve the quality of teaching and learning outcomes. You can empower school leadership through properly placed resources. For me, as the member for Murray, all of these matters are of critical concern given the current declining state of educational opportunity in my electorate. There are reasons why those educational opportunities and outcomes are declining. It is very much, sadly, a consequence of this government's neglect of the agricultural sector, and the agricultural sector underpins the economy in northern Victoria.

I need to tell you about the Goulburn-Murray school attainment statistics because they emphasise why it is so important that we drive for equitable outcomes in Australian schooling and for excellent education for all students. These statistics have been put together by the Goulburn Murray Local Learning and Employment Network or GMLLEN as it is locally called. My electorate, particularly the City of Greater Shepparton, is over-represented in the number of refugee students who have very recently arrived both from the Middle East and from Africa. We also have a big proportion of Indigenous students in our schools and we now have a growing proportion of students whose parents' enterprises, particularly farm enterprises and small businesses, are in great financial distress. Given those factors, the statistics I am about to relate to you are not surprising. It is the sort of experience of a rural regional community like ours which must drive a government, like the Labor government that we now have, to try harder. The Labor government has failed regions like mine comprehensively and I am afraid it will probably not be until we have a change of government that the students in my electorate will have some sense of equitable treatment and achieve excellence in education.

The school retention and university enrolment rates in the broader Hume region, including Shepparton, are the lowest of all Victorian regions. Education levels are lower on average in Shepparton among Australian-born students than among overseas-born students. Some of my schools have more than 70 per cent overseas born students in them, but that is also reflecting my Indigenous population. A third, or 33 per cent, of all students who completed year 12 in government schools in Shepparton in 2010 continued on to further or higher education. But that compares with 50 per cent of all Victorian students continuing on to further or higher education, a difference of nearly 20 per cent. In 2011, the total number of students continuing with a bachelor degree or certificate IV in my region was 39.9 per cent, compared to Victoria as a whole, which had 63.4 per cent.

University deferral rates in Shepparton are nearly twice as high as the state average. In 2011 in Victoria the overall deferral rate was 10 per cent. In the Goulburn-Murray area it was 19.8 per cent. There is limited access to TAFE and ACE in the shires surrounding the City of Greater Shepparton. Twenty four per cent of the working-age population in Shepparton is on Centrelink benefits, compared to 17 per cent of that population in Victoria and in Australia. We have many younger people with low aspirations and high welfare dependency because of their family circumstances. They need special support in our schools. They need enthused and talented teachers. Unfortunately, as we know, teaching in Australia is a low-status, low-paid job with very little support for those who excel. And there is certainly not much support for those who enter the profession with bright ideals but are then confronted with poor infrastructure, red tape and bureaucracy that does not support them to grow their professional skills.

Let me go on to tell you more about the younger people in my area and why they need a better outcome than the Labor government is delivering. Unemployment rates among my early school leavers are higher than the state average. In 2010 the teenage unemployment rate in the City of Greater Shepparton was five times higher than that of the overall working age population, and much higher than that of Victoria. The teenage birth rate for 15- to 19-year-olds in Greater Shepparton was 20.9 per 1,000 girls. That compares with the state average of 10.6 teenage births per 1,000, so we have almost double the number of teenage births. Greater Shepparton is ranked 14th out of 67 local government areas for teenage birth rates. Teenage birth rates particularly reflect young girls' lack of alternatives, lack of good information and counselling and lack of choices in their lives. As we know, where you have got 15- and 16-year-olds giving birth it often leads to interrupted education, failure to complete schooling and a lifetime of poverty. That poverty becomes intergenerational too, as we know.

Adolescent and adult offender rates for crimes both against persons and against property are also significantly higher in Shepparton than they are in Victoria as a whole, and they have increased in the past five years—from 77.8 per 1,000 adolescents in 2005-06 to 90.6 per 1,000 adolescents in 2009-10. That compares with 65.3 per 1,000 in Victoria on average in 2009-10. Again, with our young people leaving school early and not being able to go on to higher education, they very often find themselves amongst those accused of crimes and find themselves contributing to the offender statistics.

The increased percentage of early school leavers in my area who are unemployed after six months is also very disappointing, but it is not surprising given the increased pressures on our rural communities. Let me explain why those very sad and damning statistics represent the people in my electorate. Let me also hasten to add, though, that I spend a lot of time in secondary and primary schools in my electorate and I am forever in awe of the quality of the individuals that I meet in those schools, both the teaching profession and the young people who are sometimes struggling against the most difficult family circumstances—where their single parent has limited resources, where there is very little public transport or where there are very few options for them to go to different schools that might better meet their needs. Where English is a second language, the number of hours available to schools to help with their newly arrived, non-English-speaking background, refugee students is not sufficient.

We face an enormous battle because we have been neglected by the Labor government. Even now, when I look at the objectives of this bill, there are so many motherhood statements. There is no detail that will give anyone in my area comfort to think that Labor are serious about addressing the inequalities and the disadvantage.

Why is there such educational disadvantage in my area? The region's labour force is concentrated in the Labor-squeezed and neglected sectors of manufacturing and agriculture. In this area of Victoria, 35 per cent of employment is concentrated in agriculture and manufacturing, compared with just 13 per cent in the rest of Australia. It is extremely difficult when you have a government like this, which pays no attention to the needs of food exporters—and 60 per cent of our food production is exported—and when you have the carbon tax making the costs of production so high that your sector cannot any longer compete with places like New Zealand, the US or the European community, where their competitors are. You have labour penalty rates and laws which discriminate against seasonal labour workforces. You have the carbon tax driving up electricity prices. You have power-intensive industry. All of that makes it very difficult.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy Speaker, I rise on a point of order, on the question of relevance. We are straying beyond that which even a liberal ruling would say was relevant to the bill before the House.

Dick Adams (Lyons, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The honourable member's point of order is reasonably valid. I ask the honourable member for Murray to come back to the bill.

Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will, Mr Deputy Speaker, but that is an example of why Labor are failing students in my area. They just fail to understand the drivers for early school leaving, failure to be employed, teenage pregnancies and incarceration rates of adolescents, all of which are part of an extraordinary environment of disadvantage. This bill, I am sad to say, does not home in on the very serious issues of structural disadvantage that are now affecting much of regional Australia. That is why I stress those statistics.

For example, since 2006 more than 50 per cent of the dairy farmers have exited the industry in the Goulburn-Murray region. They all had children. They had small schools that the local dairy community supported. There were 50 children in those schools; now there are 10 or the school has closed. A school with three teachers can offer better educational alternatives and options than a school with one teacher, but this is what is happening in the declining populations in rural and regional Australia, particularly in northern Victoria. At the Heinz factory, 146 jobs were lost and went to New Zealand. At SPC Ardmona in Mooroopna, part of Coca-Cola Amatil, another 150 jobs were lost. Rochester Murray-Goulburn has lost all of those jobs.

The problem is that our school students once aspired to work in local manufacturing and local agribusiness. They now, quite reasonably, feel they will have to look for alternative occupations and have to train elsewhere. But I am saying that we should have those training options right there in those rural and regional communities.

This bill does not give me much hope that we are going to see funds directed to better regional funding models. It does not give me any hope that our rural and regional teachers will receive better career counselling support so they can direct our students to alternative occupations in agriculture and food manufacturing. When I look at this bill, I think to myself: it is purely a feel-good set of motherhood statements. It should have really driven into the growing distance between the life experiences of metropolitan Australians and rural Australians. It should have looked at the disadvantage that we know exists with Indigenous students. It should have looked at the life experience now of so many refugees, who settle in a place like northern Victoria only to find that the schools do not offer support in English as a second language and the towns do not offer parents the sort of work they would have had even five years ago.

So I am not saying this bill is fantastic. I am saying that the goals expressed in the bill are fine, but the detail is missing. In fact, I wonder if the heart is missing from Labor when it comes to looking beyond the tram tracks and beyond its own electorates. When will you look at rural and regional Australia and understand that the people living there are Australian citizens too? Without decent education they cannot realise their genuine life prospects or opportunities, and that is just not fair.

Stephen Jones (Throsby, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The 43rd Parliament has been fractious but busy, noisy but productive. There is no more important a matter that we could grapple with in the remaining months of this parliament than improving our school education system. The Prime Minister has, rightly, made it her highest priority. Education is what raises us up. It ensures that we have the opportunity to be the best people that we possibly can be and to make the best contribution to our country. That is why it is core business for Labor governments to ensure we do our bit to reform and improve our education system.

This is an important piece of legislation, but it is not our first attempt to improve the lot of our schools, our school staff and our students.

Since 2007 we have doubled the amount of money we are spending on the school education system. We have made significant advances. We are working on and introducing a National Curriculum in English, science, maths and history into classrooms right across the country. We have provided record support of over $200 million for students with disabilities. We have put more power into the hands of over 900 school principals through our $64 million Empowering Local Schools scheme. We have delivered an extra $243 million in this year's budget alone for the Literacy and Numeracy National Partnerships in Schools program to enable that important program to continue its work. We have invested an additional $30 million into Indigenous students under the Focus Schools programs. Also, importantly, we have announced another $1 billion for early-childhood education, giving every four-year-old in Australia access to 15 hours a week of kindergarten or preschool. These are the sorts of reforms you would expect from a government that truly prioritises education and reforming our education system.

The bill before the House today has a long history. It started with the commissioning of a review of our school education funding system by Mr David Gonski. He engaged in a national debate, consulting far and wide, not only with educators, with parents and with experts within the field but with business. He looked in Australia and abroad. He found that we have a good education system here in Australia, but when we compare ourselves to other countries in the world, indeed even other countries in the region, we are falling behind, particularly in the areas of maths and science, the keys to our national productivity and to the ability of students from our schools to engage not only in the national economy but the international economy.

He also found that the gap between the highest-performing and lowest-performing schools was growing. Whilst the answer to this problem did not lie solely within the funding of our school system, it was a significant part of the problem, and additional funding was a significant part in reforming and improving our education outcomes.

This bill is not the first part of our reform process, but it is about making sure that every single student can succeed to his or her best ability; it is about creating the conditions for our high achievers to excel; it is about ensuring that we have more high achievers; and it is about ensuring greater success for those who are failing. The bill is about improving education outcomes for all, making all of our schools great, where every school has the capacity to lift each and every student to achieve to the best of their ability. To this end the Australian Education Bill outlines a plan for further reforms to address educational disadvantage and to ensure that by 2025 Australia is ranked as a top-five country in the world for education performance.

The National Plan for School Improvement contains a number of elements that will ensure that every school will have great teachers; the performance of every school is improved; parents and the community have more information about school performance; and more help for students who need it. The bill commits the government to provide funding on a needs basis to support schools in the future. Funding will be tied to parties agreeing on implementing reforms to ensure that funding is directed in an accountable and transparent way to where it needs to go, and in the ways we know make a difference. Funding will be based on a benchmark amount for each student in each school. In addition to the benchmark, loadings will be added to address educational disadvantage, which will ensure extra funding for students who need extra support.

This is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve our schools and ensure every student gets the opportunity to reach their full potential. When negotiations are completed with the states and territories, the government will update through further legislation to improve the operation of the agreed new schools funding model.

I have had the opportunity to have a discussion with schools, parents and educators within my electorate. I have asked them what implementing the recommendations of the Gonski review to school funding would mean for their schools, for their students and for their kids. I had some impressive responses. Dapto High estimated that they could receive up to $1.4 million in additional funding for their school. What would they do with that money? They would provide a special needs teacher in every faculty to support students who needed it. They would improve faculties and resources for their autism classes. They would improve online resources for students and teachers. It means having a textbook for every student in the school for every faculty. It means having an interactive white board in every classroom. It means more staff training, a specialist literacy teacher, an additional teacher librarian to teach literacy and promote reading, and renewing the library, because it has not been upgraded or had any modifications on it since it was built in 1975. It would provide resources to assist students to move into the workforce. It would provide funding for a specialist AIM teacher to assist Aboriginal students. It would fund a homework centre, provide a breakfast club every morning of the week instead of the one morning of the week that they currently operate. The list goes on and on. These are not exorbitant or immodest requests. Indeed, if you were to ask many people in this place they might be shocked to know that a school in an electorate such as mine did not have access to these sorts of facilities.

I asked teachers at Albion Park High School to share their hopes with me about what the Australian Education Bill might mean if it was passed by this parliament. Suzi Roth, a teacher at the school, told me it would make a dramatic difference having a teacher's aide. In her experience, having a teacher's aide caters to the diverse needs of all the students in her class. I happen to know many of the students in that school and I know that there are diverse needs, with many coming from disadvantaged or challenged backgrounds. A teacher's aide would make a real difference.

Edward Kent, a language teacher, said the principle of funding schools on the basis of need would enable his school to provide individualised support and learning opportunities to their students.

Stephen Taylor, a science teacher whom we spoke to, put in a plug for a new science lab at his school. Phil Seymour, the principal at Hayes Park Public School, thinks that the Gonski funding will mean his students will have the best opportunity to reach their full potential, with more resources and the flexibility he needs to drive improvements in student outcomes. Dorothy Cass, the principal of Primbee Public School, speaks of the great work her teaching and support staff put in in improving the outcomes at her school—another disadvantaged area. Dorothy believes that significant additional funding allocated on the basis of student need will help her school continue to make the great improvements they have been making with the national school partnerships funding. Cheryl Trusket, another local teacher, looks forward to accessing effective resources and programs with a shift to needs based funding. I have had feedback from Elizabeth Negro of Dapto, who talked and wrote about the importance of the funding benchmark and the school resource standard, which will ensure all students, including our brightest, will receive an equitable amount of funding. Local parent Bronwyn O'Keefe hopes that all students will have access to the same support that her daughter had when she was at school. Ron Watt, another local parent, believes that needs based funding will mean improved outcomes for non-English-speaking students in his area and an improved curriculum for all students. I thank everyone who has contributed to the debate within my electorate: teachers, parents and students—all of them, because they have played a part in ensuring that this bill came before the House today.

There is a great appreciation for the work that the Gillard Labor government has done in improving the education system in the 63 schools in my electorate. They know that they have already received over $96 million through 136 BER programs in the electorate, including the upgrading of 27 classrooms, 14 libraries, 20 multipurpose halls and two science and language learning centres. We have 19 schools participating in the Smarter Schools National Partnerships, and we have had over $7 million approved for four trades training centres in my electorate—all great commitments to improving education outcomes for students in Throsby.

I would like to make a few observations about some points that have been made within this debate here in the parliament and elsewhere. Some have said that the most important thing that we can do in the education system federally is to ensure that parents have a choice in what school they send their kids to. Well, I believe in choice. I am the product of both state and Catholic education systems. But we have to be frank: a parent does not have real choice in the education of their kids if the only reason they are sending their kids to a private school is because the local public school does not have sufficient resources to provide a decent standard of education for their kids—that is not a real choice. Parents should have the choice of sending their kids to a private school or a selective school on the basis that the curriculum meets their needs, or it aligns with their faith or religious belief, or they have an expertise in sports or engineering or the arts—that is a choice. But you do not have a choice when you have to divert your child from the state system to a private system because the state system does not have the resources.

We have had a discussion about the importance of teacher quality, and I concur with those who say that teacher quality is key to improving education outcomes for our students. But if you are serious about this you need a plan to improve teacher quality, and all I have heard from the other side so far in this debate—their only plan for improving teacher quality—is to make it easier to sack teachers. Well, that is not a plan for improving teacher quality. You can get a lot of improvement in teacher quality if you have additional funding in a school which will enable the school to employ relief teachers so that existing teachers can go off and engage in a course of further learning or professional development in a specialised area needed in that school. You can get teacher quality by better funding and assisting that school to improve the quality of their teaching.

You can get improvements in education through a better curriculum, and we are doing that, but funding is critical. I will tell you one way that you will not improve education outcomes, and that is by slashing $1.7 billion from the school education system as the New South Wales Liberal government has done. They have slashed over 2,400 jobs from public schools and TAFE. They have cut funding from 272 special needs schools and axed a program to replace over 5,000 demountable classrooms. They promised 200 new literacy and numeracy teachers in schools by the end of this year, but that will not occur; they will only deliver 50. So funding is not everything, but it is important.

What will not work is if we, in embracing the Gonski recommendations to improve funding of and quality in our school education system, seek to put more money into the top of the bucket while, at the same time, the state premiers, like Premier Newman in Queensland and Premier O'Farrell in New South Wales and Premier Baillieu in Victoria, are getting a big tool and sticking a big hole in the bottom of the bucket and draining money out of the bottom of it. That will not improve teacher quality. That will not improve education outcomes for our kids. We need to enlarge the size of the funding pool—not by putting more money into the top of the bucket and having it drained out of the bottom, but by ensuring that the federal government and state governments work hand-in-hand to ensure that we take this once-in-a-generation opportunity in the interests of our kids.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Let me start by saying that I do not see that we should be debating the Australian Education Bill today. The Manager of Opposition Business, the member for Sturt, moved to have the debate adjourned and he moved that adjournment for some very good reasons. On 29 November 2012, the selection committee asked the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment to inquire into and report on the Education Bill 2012. There have been two submissions to that inquiry, both of which are available on the APH website. The first day of hearings for the inquiry is Friday of this week. We are here today debating a bill that has been referred to a House standing committee for inquiry and we are debating it before those hearings have even begun. This debate should be adjourned until the inquiry has been completed; it should not be rushed through.

Having said that, there are a number of issues that I would like to place on the record with regard to education. I have spoken many times on education at the primary, secondary and tertiary level. Education is an important part of any child's life. At primary school, they learn essential skills in literacy and in numeracy. As they continue through to secondary school, they expand their interests and begin to make pathways into careers that they wish to pursue into the future. It is the right of every Australian child to receive a world-class education. This parliament bears the responsibility to ensure that we deliver that to every student regardless of geography or demographic.

To ensure that each and every child is receiving the opportunity to pursue their ambition, we need to have a resilient yet diverse education system. The only way that we can do this is to provide the education sector, schools, teachers and parents with certainty in the way that the government will fund schools and provide resources.

The bill before the House attempts to set out aspirational goals for Australian education through the implementation of a national plan for school improvement, which the states, and territories, and non-government school sector authorities are expected to agree to in exchange for future funding. However, there are no details as to how the government will implement the plan or even those key elements by which the plan will be monitored. Astoundingly, or perhaps not given its rushed nature, this bill still contains no detail on a funding model for schools. It contains no information on the amount of funds that will be made available or which level of government will have to provide any additional funding.

I understand and my coalition colleagues understand that schools need to have funding certainty so that they can plan for the years ahead. They need to know what funds they will have before they order resources, hire teachers and staff, and investigate future works. Without funding certainty, none of these things can go ahead. It is peculiar to say the least that a bill of such significance to this government is only nine pages and 1,400 words long, with no funding certainty contained in it. Perhaps that is why there have only been two written submissions to the inquiry—there is actually not a lot to comment on.

As many in the House would recall, this bill is supposed to encapsulate the government's response to the Gonski review handed down in December 2011 which recommended a new funding model for schools. However, this new funding had a $6.5 billion price tag attached to it. The review panel's original proposal was that the cost of introducing the funding model would be split between the Commonwealth and the states on a 30-70 basis. Many technical issues arose with the theoretical model and leaked modelling in August 2012 showed that approximately a third of all schools would lose funding. Any new funding model that is introduced must not see any school left worse in real terms.

I understand that the modelling has been substantially revised but this has not been made public. Again, we have a lack of detail and what that lack of detail means is that there is virtually no opportunity at this time for property scrutiny and open debate about a funding model that will potentially run to billions of dollars. The lack of detail fuels the concerns of schools as they look for funding certainty. As I have said before, they need that certainty to plan, for example, for their class sizes, teaching and support staff requirements, and fee structures. For schools to have that certainty, the funding model must be known and this bill does not contain sufficient detail for that to take place.

Providing funding certainty will benefit not only the schools but also parents. I am sure we would all agree that school is a large part of any child's life and parents understandably want to be in a position to consider all the information available before deciding what they believe is best for their child. They want to know that when they send their child to school, the school is going to be able to keep its doors open or be able to afford the resources they need to teach their students.

Parents who do choose to send their child to a non-government school and wish to make private contributions towards their child's education should not be penalised for making that choice. In my electorate of McPherson on the Gold Coast there are 12 non-government schools and 19 government schools. If parents choose to send their children to one of those 12 non-government schools, they should not be penalised for doing that. We also need to ensure that students at government or non-government schools are not being deprived of a quality education just because of the school that they attend. We need to ensure that we provide families with the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs, as well as providing students with similar needs with comparable treatment throughout the course of their schooling. The right of choice is fundamental to schooling and parents should be entitled to choose a school that they believe will provide the best opportunity for their child. I believe it is our responsibility to defend this right and to make the ability to choose easier wherever it is possible.

The coalition have been consistent with its approach to education as we want to ensure that every student gets the quality education that they deserve. We recognise the importance of both government and non-government schools in delivering this fundamental service to all Australian children. To ensure that no school is disadvantaged by any new funding model, the current quantum of funds for every school and indexation should be maintained as the basic starting point going forward. Any funding must be on the basis of fairness, objectivity and transparent criteria, and distributed on the basis of socioeconomic need.

Funding arrangements for schools need to done in a way that will allow schools to direct funding towards education outcomes and increasing productivity and quality, rather than increasing paperwork and administration costs. Increasing the red tape associated with providing funding to schools would make any funding increases to schools redundant, as schools will allocate more of their new resources to ensuring they are complaint with regulations rather than expanding on the services they already provide.

That is the last thing that we should be doing. Funding should be directed towards directly delivering quality educational outcomes.

Schools are local organisations and we can make them stronger by placing the power to run schools back in the hands of their local communities. Local teachers, principals and communities know what is happening on the ground and what the needs of their schools and students are. Empowering schools, their principals, teachers, staff and parents to make as many decisions as reasonably possible at the local level will give schools an appropriate amount of flexibility to address any issues that they face.

Last week I spoke in this place about one of the schools in my electorate, the Currumbin Valley State School, which has 127 students and prides itself on working closely with students, parents, carers and the school community. I think it is a very successful school and I believe that its success is due to three factors in particular: firstly, a 'students come first' culture where the needs of the students are paramount in the school decision-making process; secondly, the involvement of parents, carers and the school community in the running of the school—the school carnival last year was attended by about 5,000 or 6,000 people from the local community and it raised a significant amount of money for the school; and, thirdly, the leadership of principal Heidi Mackenzie and her staff.

Providing local communities with input into and responsibility for their own schools is a good thing and this has been ably demonstrated by the Currumbin Valley State School. It is in the southern part of my electorate, but in the northern part of the electorate we have a much larger, non-government school, All Saints Anglican School, with about 1,800 students, from pre-prep to year 12. All Saints has an excellent academic record and, last year, 20 of its year 12 students achieved an OP1. It too encourages the involvement of parents, carers and the community, and it empowers its staff.

All Saints participates in international student and teacher exchanges with schools in many countries around the world and I encourage and congratulate the school on the work it has done in this area. I believe that an international exchange program should be available to all students, as these experiences will benefit them not only in their academic pursuits but also in their personal development. A number of schools in my electorate have established exchanges with schools in other countries and I am working to establish further programs with schools overseas, in particular in Taiwan.

Student exchanges should not just be limited to school students, though. They should also be actively encouraged in tertiary institutions. The two universities in my electorate, Bond University and Southern Cross University, currently have student exchange programs with universities across the globe. That provides their students with the opportunity to not only study at an overseas institution but engage with another culture and to often learn another language. This gives them an opportunity to give themselves an edge in a highly competitive modern marketplace.

Student exchanges are just one way that our next generation of professionals will set themselves apart from the rest of the world. I want to see Australia's best and brightest travel the world to learn more about the countries in our region. I also want the best and the brightest in our region to learn in Australia and to share their experiences with students here. I am already encouraged by what opportunities are currently available to our students. I am excited and I look forward to seeing what further progress can be made in this area.

Education is vitally important to the future of our nation and perhaps our world. Funding reform for our schools should be done with care and attention, and the right for all students to have a quality education should be the paramount consideration at the front of our minds. It will be my primary consideration when I participate in the committee inquiry into the Australian Education Bill 2012 and I personally look forward to ensuring that Australian students are given the best opportunities possible throughout their education.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I speak in support of the Australian Education Bill 2012. There are 69 schools in the electorate of Blair in South-East Queensland, 13 of which are non-government schools—Lutheran schools, independent schools, grammar schools, Catholic schools and also Indigenous schools. These schools do a great job in educating the children in my electorate of Blair, based in Ipswich in the Somerset region, ensuring the children fulfil their potential. There are many dedicated teachers and I strongly believe that every parent has a right to choose the school they want for his or her children. But I also believe that every child has a right to go to a great public school. In Queensland we call them state schools.

The legislation here creates the legislative framework for the government's response to the Gonski review, setting out the five core reform directions of our National Plan for School Improvement—quality teaching; quality learning; empowering school leadership—that is, school principals and teachers—transparency and accountability; and meeting the students' needs, goals and aspirations. Why are we doing this? We are doing this because Australia has not had a comprehensive review of its school system for 40 years. Those opposite would say: do nothing.

Forty years is a biblical generation. We need to know what is going wrong, and we have looked at that at under the Gonski review. The statistics show that while our economy may be going strongly, our school education system has fallen behind. Over the past decade, the PISA exams—the international criteria which set out how students are going—show clearly that Australian students have fallen from second to seventh in reading, and from fifth to thirteenth in maths. It cannot go on. If we want a high-wage, high-skill economy, and if we want to get the jobs of the future, maintain our standard of living, have economic growth and economic development in this country, we need to educate the children we have in the next generation and those after that to the best of their respective abilities. If we do this, it is possible for us to lift, according to Gonski, our annual income by about $11 billion a year over the next few decades. That is what we could do: empower our economy. The Gonski reforms can be a catalyst, not just for educational opportunity and socioeconomic justice for our young people, particularly those from low socioeconomic areas, they can be a means to drive our economy forward.

This legislation sets out the framework for what we need to do. It is important to look at where we have come from using the Gonski review. In April 2010, the Australian government—this federal Labor government—commissioned a review of funding for schooling. We had eminent business people like David Gonski AC on it. We even had people from the other side of politics, like Kathryn Greiner AO. We had Carmen Lawrence and other persons of eminence in Australian community life. They had a look at it, and they found that our system is not working. We are falling behind, and the gap between our students is widening. The kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds had more disadvantage; many kids cannot do as well as they would like to do and as their parents would like them to do.

We need to take action, and it is no good sitting around on our laurels, sitting around and saying that we should do nothing. That seems to be a standard Liberal response—whether it is education, superannuation, industrial relations and the like. Doing nothing is not an option. Our living standards will go backwards. This is why, when I listen to those opposite making their speeches during this debate, I have been puzzled; I have been bewildered by those over there. They say great words, platitudes, words of eminence and words of comfort to the mums and dads in their communities, but the reality is that the experience of people in the mainland states—in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria—has been that Liberal governments cut funding for education. They leave young people behind; they leave those from low socioeconomic backgrounds behind. They do not consider loadings with respect to Indigenous heritage or disability or remoteness or kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds or kids with poor proficiencies. That is what Gonski recommends. It recommends a schooling resource standard and loadings, and that is what this legislation is about today.

I have heard Queensland MPs from the Liberal and National parties talk with words of consolation and with words that show that they have concern for their schools. But what they do not say is what the LNP state government in Queensland has done to education. Not a whisper, not a word from any of them about that. It is the context of this bill that they should be talking about it. They should be talking about education generally. They should be talking about what is happening in their electorates—whether it is in TAFE, whether it is in universities, or whether it is in schools. We have seen, in my home state, a terrible wrecking-ball budget from the Campbell Newman government in September this year. We have seen proposals to cut TAFE, cut funding, cut jobs and cut funding in all aspects of school and community life. We have seen it carried out in part, and it is still continuing. Just this week, we have seen, in my electorate, the Queensland Times report yet again on more cuts to education funding in Ipswich. Bremer TAFE is set to lose 24 jobs after state cuts, not included in the 14,000 people who lost their jobs after previous cuts by Campbell Newman.

Those opposite have said that we should have more time: more time to do things, more time to respond to Gonski, more time to respond in a more considered way about education reform. I would have more respect for that if the shadow education spokesperson had taken a little bit more time himself to respond to the Gonski review. He went on camera to condemn the Gonski report within half an hour of its release, notwithstanding the fact that it is 300 pages in length, with 26 findings and 41 recommendations. He might be an intelligent and articulate fellow, the Manager of Opposition Business, he might be able to spin a good speech, but I do not think that even he could have read 300 pages within half an hour! So do not come into this place and say that we should delay this because you have not had enough time to consider all of these reforms. When he was asked questions in relation to this issue by interviewers, the opposition spokesman also thought that one of the determinants of the outcome of school education was not socioeconomic background.

That is exactly the opposite of what the Gonski review found in relation to the challenges, particularly in low-fee-paying Catholic schools, independent schools and state schools. They come in here and tell us that we should be looking at leaving the SES model in place, and they criticise us for our education investments. I have heard many speeches tonight criticising us about funding that we have put into schools and what we have done. The reality is that in this financial year we are investing $13.6 billion in our schools, compared to $8.5 billion invested by the Howard government in its last budget. This comes on top of our record funding in our first four years of $65 billion in school funding, and around $17 billion for early childhood education. That is far more than the coalition ever did.

Unless those opposite say that we are wasting money—and they do say that—they really have hidden in their speeches tonight what they really believe they should do about education. They went to the last election with a pledge to cut $2.8 billion in funding from our education system. That is what they did. Their comrades and colleagues in Queensland did similar things. They got get rid of more than 1,100 full-time equivalent workers in the Department of Employment, Training and Education. They slashed about $9.9 million from that department. They slashed so many programs in that department—it was a disgrace.

The coalition say nothing about those funding cuts. I have not heard any of the LNP members from Queensland talk about this when they are talking about education, but $160,000 was cut from the Association of Special Education Administrators in Queensland; the Pyjama Foundation lost $100,000; the Keep Australia Beautiful Council lost $20,000; the Education Minister's Arts Awards lost $30,500; the Science Education Strategy lost $150,000; the Positive Parenting Program lost $291,000—and the list goes on and on and on. That is what they did. All of those worthy programs in Queensland they got rid of. There was not a word from any of the LNP members about that. That is what they did in Queensland. Unless we should think Queensland was an aberration, let us look at their colleagues below the Tweed River and the Murray River. You will see that they repeated that.

And the LNP have backed that up; in this place and elsewhere they have announced further cuts since the last election. They announced on 8 February 2011—and they have not said any of this tonight—they would get rid of the Reward for School Improvement Program, at $160 million; the online diagnostic tool for parents and teachers, at $150 million; Helping our Kids Understand Finances, at $8 million; and the rest of the Building the Education Revolution program. Those opposite were very, very happy to stand in front of those libraries and school halls because their school communities loved them. In my electorate we got $107 million across 64 local schools, and we have had about five schools added since then. These were projects which not just the school communities but the whole communities in country towns liked. Often that new hall or new library was important. In fact, in the floods we have had in Queensland those school halls were the evacuation centres in many country towns. Not content with voting against the funding for the flood reconstruction in Queensland, they then of course opposed the BER program and those school halls, some of which were used as evacuation centres.

They opposed also the Digital Education Revolution. We have seen 950,000 computers put into high schools across Australia at a cost of $2.4 billion. Those opposite opposed every one of those computers going into the schools. They must think that it is all paper, that you never use computers in high school. They have opposed and criticised the national partnerships for literacy and numeracy and boosting teacher quality. Go to Silkstone State School, Leichhardt State School and Riverview State School in my electorate and talk to the principals. They will talk about how important that program was—but the opposition opposed it.

Those opposite also opposed the trade training centres. They called them 'glorified sheds with lathes'; that is what they say about the trade training centres. But go to the trade training centre in Ipswich, a partnership between St Edmund's Boys College, Ipswich Girls Grammar School and Ipswich Grammar School and have a look at that great program. Have a look at those wonderful facilities established in Ipswich. Those opposite are very happy to own them on the ground, but they disown them in Canberra. That is what they are like. When it comes to education, look at what their comrades and colleagues have done in the states, look at how they vote in the House of Representatives and look at their inconsistency back in their electorates.

If we do Gonski, as I anticipate we will, we will see big improvements in school funding in my electorate. We will see an extra $1,500 per student based on enrolments on the 2011 My School website. Toogoolawah State School can expect about $269,000 extra; Rosewood State High School will get $829,500 extra; Ipswich State High School will get $1.6 million extra; my old high school, Bundamba State Secondary College, will get about $1.27 million extra—and it goes on and on and on. All the schools in my electorate—state, Catholic, Lutheran, and grammar schools—will benefit from the Gonski review.

Those opposite, with the terrible record of their colleagues and comrades in the states and their platitudes and prophetic claims here in this place, should have a good look at themselves when it comes to education and get on board with the Gonski review. We should do Gonski and so should they. Commit to it. Do it.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I welcome the opportunity to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012. A quality education for young minds is of the utmost importance. The young people in the education system today are the doctors, lawyers and community leaders of tomorrow. Australia must provide the best quality education to give the next generations the very best chance to make use of the opportunities that will present in the time to come. Adequate funding for schools is required for providing this quality education. Australia is fortunate to have a diverse range of schools, which gives parents the opportunity to enrol their children in the school that best suits their needs.

But unfortunately we are currently burdened with the worst government in our nation's history. When we look at education and this government, all we see is more broken promises and more policy failure. Despite all the rhetoric from the government about their commitment to education, the reality is that we have had five years of policy failings from federal Labor. To say Labor is the champion of education is like saying Labor is the champion of economic management—and, after more than $260 billion in government borrowing and the trashing of consumer confidence and business confidence, we all know this government's record on managing the economy is abysmal. Indeed, instead of delivering a better education for the next generation all this government has succeeded in doing is to saddle teenagers, undergraduates and all Australians in their 20s and 30s with a mountain of debt. It is these Australians who are going to have to pay for the reckless spending of the Rudd-Gillard era and the waste and mismanagement which have been its hallmark.

This bill confirms to all members that this government is all talk and no action; it is long on rhetoric and short on policy detail; it is great at creating expectations but rarely delivers. We have seen this with their commitments to a surplus, we have seen this with their border protection policies and we have seen this with their broken promises on private health insurance.

This government believes that delivering on policy commitments can be done through the distribution of a press release. The Labor way is to forget all the crucial detail, not worry about the real cost and make sure the delivery date is after the next election. That is the Labor way of implementing policy and it is the reason they have failed Australians in so many policy areas. It is no wonder that the government is now in a shambles and that it is scrambling together an uncosted dream in relation to Mr Gonski's recommendations and the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

Before going to the specifics of this bill, it is worth reminding members of the government's poor track record on education. In the past year, the government cut $600 million from the computers in schools program. This was the program that the former Labor Prime Minister promised would give every student in years 9 to 12 'a toolbox for the 21st century', but it now sees funding cuts that will put pressure on the families that it was established to assist.

Then in MYEFO, the Treasurer announced, in his words, 'responsible cuts to education'—some $3.9 billion. That was $3.9 billion not going to schools for the sole reason that those opposite wanted to claim that they had returned the budget to surplus, not that this claim lasted long. In fact, within two months it was abandoned and the surplus claim was laid bare. Then, to end the year, the government introduced this bill into the House with a section that clearly states that the bill does not create legally enforceable obligations, nor will the failure to comply with the act affect the validity of any decision. If no part of the bill is legally enforceable, the question must be asked: why has this bill been introduced at all?

This government likes to talk about education, but, when you look at the results from just the last 12 months, you can see that the delivery does not match the promises. Since this bill has been introduced, there have been reports that state governments are still waiting on payments from August last year for rolling out the computers in schools program. While a number of computers in schools will become obsolete this year—

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Health Services and Indigenous Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Landfill.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Landfill, indeed. There is no certainty that this program will continue.

To illustrate my point about the failure of this government to deliver meaningful policy for all Australians, I would like to note some of the details in this bill. Most of this bill focuses on aspirations rather than the implementation of good public policy. For example, the Australian Education Bill sets three goals: firstly, for Australian schooling to provide an excellent education for all schools. Well, that is pretty exciting! We all think it is a good idea but I do not think we needed this bill to tell us that. The second goal is for Australian schooling to be highly equitable. I do not think anyone would disagree with that. The third goal is for Australia to be ranked as one of the top five highest performing countries based on the performance of Australian school students in reading, mathematics and science, and based on the quality and equity of Australian schooling, by 2025.

The bill outlines five directions for reform under the National Plan for School Improvement, which states, territories and non-government school sector authorities will be expected to agree to. The directions are: quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, transparency and accountability, and meeting student need. But that is about the extent of the bill. There is no meat on the bone. The bill represents little more than a regurgitated thought bubble which the minister somehow convinced himself would be a good idea. There are no further details on how the plan is to be implemented or how the elements of the plan are to be monitored. As the member for Sturt pointed out, the government could try and show they are serious about education by answering some key questions on how they are going to implement the Gonski recommendations.

I share the concerns of other members of the coalition who are genuinely seeking answers in relation to education, Gonski and this government. I would like to place on record some of the questions which the government must answer in relation to education and the Gonski review. Where will the $6.5 billion per year that is needed come from? How much will the Commonwealth contribute and how much are the states expected to fund? What programs will be cut and what taxes will the government increase to pay for it? With Gonski modelling showing 3,254 schools will be worse off, how much extra will it cost for every school to receive more funding, as the Prime Minister has promised? Where is the modelling showing the impact of this funding for each school? Will the Prime Minister guarantee no school will have to increase school fees as a result of her changes? Where is the detailed response to the 41 recommendations in the Gonski review? How much indexation will each school and school sector receive? What will be the benchmark funding per primary and secondary school student? How much funding per student will be allocated for students with a disability? That is a very important issue. Will this funding be portable between the government and non-government sectors? What, if any, future capital funding arrangements will be provided for schools? What new reporting requirements and other conditions will schools have to meet in order to qualify for government funding? All these are legitimate questions which the government must answer if they are to be taken seriously.

The review of funding for schooling, chaired by Mr Gonski, made a number of recommendations in relation to funding for schools. Also recommended was a new funding framework, although technical issues arose once the panel's model was tested by the government. Both the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Council of Australia reported serious anomalies, and leaked modelling revealed that approximately a third of all schools would lose funding. Since the report was given to the government, there have been hundreds of thousands of dollars spent on consultants to redesign the Gonski panel's original proposal for a funding model. With the funding agreement to commence next year, none of this modelling has ever been made public and no formal response has ever been provided by the government to each of the panel's recommendations. This bill adds no further detail. In fact, since this bill was introduced into parliament, representatives from key stakeholders, including state governments and the non-government education sector, have raised concern about a lack of certainty and detail as to the government's plans.

It is clear that this bill was introduced last year so that the government could issue a press release. The explanatory memorandum indicates that the bill will be updated once agreement is met with the states on the parameters of a new model. And, while the amendments are to be introduced, schools are becoming increasing anxious about the future funding arrangements and cannot plan beyond the end of this year. From the minister that presided over pink batts, we now have no certainty about funding for school education.

It is also worth noting that we are debating this bill before the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment commences public hearings into this bill.

The coalition believes that the current arrangements for funding and indexation must be the basic starting point for any new funding model. No school should be worse off as a result of a new funding model. Nobody would disagree with the notion that we would like Australia's schools to be the best in the world. However, this government has seen a decline in Australia's standings in the international school rankings. Nobody should disagree that the Australian schooling system should provide an excellent education for school students. However, this bill does not have any details of what an excellent education is, just that school students should have one.

The coalition do not oppose the directions in this bill but are concerned about the lack of details provided to date. The coalition have our own values for schooling, as set out in our amendment. These values guide our approach to school funding and are as follows: first, that families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs; second, that all children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education; third, that student funding needs must be based on fair, objective, and transparent criteria distributed according to socioeconomic needs; fourth, that students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling; fifth, that as many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems; sixth, that schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students; seventh, that every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government; eighth, schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future; ninth, that parents who wish to make a private contribution towards the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment; and, tenth, that funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding towards education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.

In conclusion, while the coalition do not oppose this bill in its current form, we fear that it is like so many other issues: this government just will not be able to deliver on its commitment. The budget is in crisis. Government borrowings are at historic highs. And the reality is that this government is in a desperate state. As a result, we can expect this government to come up with more hollow rhetoric, and no doubt they will try and blame state governments across the nation for the Gillard government's failure to deliver. But the truth is that when it comes to national reform it is the federal government that is responsible for delivering. And when one looks at this government's record of delivery we can see a litany of waste, mismanagement and failure that is without peer in our nation's history.

Andrew Leigh (Fraser, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Each of us comes to this place with the perspective of the work we did before we got here. So it is not surprising when we hear former businesspeople calling for less regulation, former union organisers calling for better protection for workers, farmers calling for more assistance to agriculture or, as in my case, former professors arguing for more investment in education. But I think there is some fairly strong evidence to back up the notion that great investment in education not only pays off in a more affluent society but also in a more equitable society. In my first speech here I described education as being the best antipoverty vaccine we have yet developed, because a great education gives you opportunities in life which are greater than you can achieve without that opportunity.

Education allows people to make more choices. We know that raising education levels boosts health and boosts happiness. We also know some other things about our education system over recent decades. Work that I did with Chris Ryan found that Australian numeracy scores had flatlined since the 1960s, and our literacy and our numeracy scores had flatlined since the 1970s. Chris and I also showed that the academic aptitude of new teachers fell from the early 1980s to the early 2000s, with students in the top tier of their own class less and less likely to choose teaching. I have also done work looking at the relationship between pay and the academic aptitude of teachers, showing that when states raised the pay of new teachers the TERs of those in teaching went up, and that it is indeed possible to attract more academically gifted students into teaching by raising the pay of the teaching profession. So it is very pleasing to me as a Labor MP to recognise the importance that teacher quality has in the government's reform agenda. As John F. Kennedy once said:

Let us think of education as the means to developing our greatest abilities, because in each of us there is a private hope and dream which, fulfilled, can be translated into benefit for everyone and greater strength for our Nation.

And the way we fulfil that ambition is through having great teachers.

I recently carried out a survey on education in the Fraser electorate. We got responses from around a thousand electors and a good distribution from across school sectors, with 67 per cent saying that their children were in government schools, 25 per cent saying that their children were in non-government schools and eight per cent saying that their children were in both systems. We asked respondents what they thought was the most important issue in education. The issue that topped the list was attracting and retaining great teachers—43 per cent of respondents. That was followed by boosting literacy and numeracy, 18 per cent; maintaining a well-rounded curriculum, 15 per cent; reducing bullying and cyberbullying, eight per cent; smaller class sizes, seven per cent; helping students with disabilities, five per cent; and assisting students from disadvantaged backgrounds, four per cent. We asked respondents whether they felt that the school that their child attended was well resourced. Of those whose children attended both government and non-government schools, 19 per cent said the school was not well resourced. Of those whose children attended non-government schools, 20 per cent said the school was not well resourced. And of those whose children attended government schools only, 29 per cent said the school was not well resourced.

A majority of respondents had used the MySchool website and a majority of respondents had seen a BER project, indicating that in my electorate many people are taking advantage of important reforms that have occurred under this government. This history of education reform goes back to the Hawke and Keating era, where funding for schools was considerably increased and a greater emphasis was placed on school completion. It often worried me in the Howard era when you would hear then Prime Minister Howard, and sometimes his ministers, suggest that education was not for everyone, that finishing school might be the right approach in some cases but not in others.

It particularly worries me when I hear politicians give different advice to kids from low-income backgrounds to what they give to their own children. Once was the day when you could leave school in year 9 and get a well-paying job in a factory or as a mechanic. There was a range of good jobs available to, say, a young man who was good with his hands but who had not completed year 12. But these days if you want to be a mechanic, you had better be able to reboot the on-board computer systems and probably download some upgrades. That requires good literacy and numeracy skills, and it requires good people skills because working on cars is a different job from what it once was.

We need an Australia in which everyone finishes school, not just as the Leader of the Opposition said last year, 'the right kids'. This government believes that we need a system which addresses equity and which invests in all schools. We have repeatedly said that the debate over government and non-government schools is a debate of the past. Our passion is in investing in all schools. You saw that when the global financial crisis hit. It was an opportunity then to carry out major infrastructure spending, knowing that the impact on the economy of infrastructure spending is greater than the impact of cash handouts. We used that as an opportunity not just to support jobs, local architecture, construction and tradespeople around Australia but also to provide schools with facilities that would improve the learning experience.

In my electorate, Florey Primary School encourages students to follow in the footsteps of the great Howard Florey, the inventor of penicillin. They used their BER money to invest in better science classrooms. At Amaroo school, they used their BER money to invest in new classrooms with removable partitions to encourage team teaching and allow teachers to learn from one another. That infrastructure investment was right for the times for Australia, and from so many schools the message that came back to me was that this was a once-in-a-generation investment.

But as I said before, we recognise that teacher quality is the No. 1 issue in education. It is the issue that came out as No. 1 from my Fraser education survey. Certainly, if you speak to education researchers it is very likely they will place teacher quality at the top of their list.

This government has agreed the first ever teacher performance and development framework, including annual teacher appraisal processes, starting this year. We have introduced new pathways into the teaching profession through Teach for Australia and Teach Next. I am looking forward to speaking at greater length on Teach for Australia in the Tax Laws Amendment (2012 Measures No. 6) Bill 2012, which is giving Teach for Australia deductable gift-recipient status.

Our plan is to ensure that by 2025 Australia is ranked as a top five country in the world for education performance. As I said at the outset, our test scores have flatlined—in some cases, even gone down. So this is a big ask. Looking back over past generations, the challenge of raising school performance to amongst the best in the Asian region is a major one. But there is strong support for it in the local community, and there is strong support for making sure that we raise the performance of all children.

One constituent of mine in response to the education survey wrote, 'We have one son who attends kindy. He has delayed speech and because of his disability he has fallen behind in literacy and numeracy. More funding for disabled students at both government and non-government schools is highly required as schools don't have resources to deal with children with disability'.

Many respondents spoke about the passion of their staff. One person wrote, 'The staff at our school are extremely hard working and dedicated to providing the best educational experience for our children. This would be enhanced by better resourcing and additional funding to enable them to focus on what they do best, and that is teaching'. Another constituent noted, 'We have been informed that the ACT has only one school with dedicated music teachers for students, with teachers who are actually trained in this subject'. We have listened to experts and to many, many people who have spoken out around Australia about the importance of placing quality teaching at the core of the government's reform agenda.

The bill will commit the government to providing needs-based funding to support schools in the future. It will be tied to parties' agreement on implementing reforms, and that will ensure transparency and accountability. There will be benchmark amounts for each student and, on top of that, loadings for educational disadvantage will make sure that those who need extra support get it.

In closing I would like to acknowledge the many Canberrans and those around Australia who have worked to make the Gonski reform a reality. There is a spectrum of views in the education policy debate, but I pay great tribute to those who have passionately backed the Gonski reforms. In the ACT I would acknowledge AEU Secretary Glenn Fowler and officers Peter Malone, Cathy Smith, Bill Book, Sue Amundsen, Sascha Colley, Mike Fitzgerald and Penny Gilmour.

I acknowledge the executive: Phillip Rasmus, Roger Amey, Piers Douglas, Stuart Gilmore, Ingrid Bean, Jo Larkin, Roseanne Byrne, Murray Chisholm, Peter Curtis, Nina Leuning, David Stone, Shane Gorman, Janet Harris and Lana Read. There are many other active AEU members who have written, emailed, telephoned, visited, letterboxed and 'given a Gonski'. I am sure David Gonski's mother never imagined that his name would go from being a proper noun to being used in that way.

I acknowledge former president of the AEU Phillip Rasmus, current president Lana Read, vice-presidents Roger Amey and Ingrid Bean, and the active parent community under the leadership of the P&C's Vivienne Pearce and, before her, Jane Tullis. The hard work of other organisations in the community has also been vital to bringing this bill before parliament.

This is a mass movement from the Australian community recognising that Australia is at our best when it has an education system that supports all students. The promise of Australia is not fulfilled if a child who grows up in poverty is destined to stay in poverty for the rest of her life because the schools that she attends are not able to bring her out of poverty. The great promise of Australia—the Australian dream—relies on ensuring that we have great teachers in every school, that we address educational disadvantage through targeted investment and, in particular, that we make sure that we get great teachers in every school.

Teaching disadvantaged students is, I think, among the most important jobs in Australia. It is, at times, an extraordinarily difficult and challenging job, but it is a job which can change lives. If you read autobiographies of Australians who have grown up in poverty you will often see that there is a single teacher in the author's life who, at a certain moment, encouraged that child to change their life course and to see the opportunities that lay ahead of them. That is why, in so many first speeches—particularly by Labor members—you will hear stories of education. I know that my colleague the member for Canberra will often tell of the important role education played in her life. It is a powerful story indeed.

We need education to change more lives. We need an education system that reaches out to the most disadvantaged and encourages the top. Our education system can reduce poverty and produce more Nobel laureates. I hope this bill will do just that. (Time expired)

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012. I was expecting a significant bill, given the title, and I ask: what does the government intend with this bill? I use that term loosely. What does this bill tell schools? What does it tell parents and their communities? What does it tell people in my community in the south-west of WA, who might be watching this tonight? The answer is: not much. It does not tell you much at all. It tells you that the government has a plan to have a plan to have a plan. That is why there is great concern and uncertainty in my electorate.

When I read through the bill—the nine pages and about 1,400 words—I thought, 'This should really be a very important piece of legislation.' I looked for the financial impact statement and I printed it off. Under the heading 'Financial impact statement' it says: 'There is no financial impact associated with this bill.' The rest is a blank page. There is no detail. There is no certainty for the schools, the parents or the teachers in my electorate. There is nothing legally enforceable. The bill actually states that it is not legally enforceable. There are no funding arrangements—a blank page—and no plan. The bill does, however, have a lot of uncertainty, as I said, for schools, parents, students and communities—particularly for schools in regional and rural areas, where often the school is the centre of the community, so issues that affect the school affect the whole community.

We would all like our education system to be the very best possible, and I see this in schools in my electorate. However, this bill before the House does not tell us how this is going to be achieved. Even the explanatory memorandum cannot bring itself to claim that the bill provides the answers, because it does not—it is a plan to have a plan. Instead the explanatory memorandum says:

The Bill provides the foundation for a legislative framework that puts an excellent education for every child at the heart of how Australia delivers and funds schooling.

The bill itself is not the answer but may perhaps provide that foundation for a legislative framework that might one day provide an answer—thank you, Sir Humphrey! The answer will be provided in the fullness of time at the appropriate juncture!

The bill apparently sets out a vision for the development of a national plan for school improvement. I thought this was the Australian Education Bill 2012, but let us be really clear: this bill does not deliver a national plan for school improvement; it delivers a plan to develop and then ultimately deliver a plan. It does not, itself, deliver at all.

The bill outlines five directions for reform: quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, transparency and accountability, and meeting school needs. Those are fine words of aspiration, but beyond listing the five reform directions in the bill there is no detail. What is there for us to discuss from the nine pages of this bill? How does the government mean the plan to be implemented or delivered on the ground? It is the lack of detail that is of great concern, and it is creating significant uncertainty for schools, parents and students. They do not know, any more than we do, what is intended.

It should be noted that the coalition is not opposed to the bill. However, I certainly support the amendments proposed by the shadow minister, the member for Sturt. One of the issues that will be of concern right across Australia—not just in my electorate—will be the definitions of 'systemic school' and 'non-systemic school'. That is a critical issue.

We, the coalition, have set out principles to outline our values for schooling that will guide our coalition government in delivering a real education policy. At any time that we get into government, the principles will include the fact that families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, that meets their values and that meets their beliefs. All children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education. Student funding needs to be based on fair, objective and transparent criteria distributed according to socioeconomic needs. Students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling. As many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems. Schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students.

Every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government. Schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can effectively plan for the future—that should be a basic right. Parents who wish to make a private contribution towards the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools be penalised in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment. Funding arrangements must be simple so schools are able to direct funding towards education outcomes, minimise administration costs, and increase productivity and quality.

These principles define the education agenda of the coalition. Even in this form they provide more detail than we see in the government's bill before the House. Until such time as these details are made available, key questions remain to be answered following the handing down of the Gonski report.

There are a few questions that need answering. Where will the at least $6.5 billion per year the government floated come from? How much will the Commonwealth contribute and how much are the states expected to find? What programs will be cut and what taxes will the government increase? If the Gonski modelling shows 3,254 schools worse off, how much extra will it cost for every school to receive more funding, as the Prime Minister has promised? Where is the modelling showing the impact of this funding for each school? These are the sorts of questions every school in my electorate wants to know the answers to. Will the Prime Minister guarantee no school will have to increase school fees as a result of the changes?

Where is the government's detailed response to the 41 recommendations in the Gonski review? How much indexation will each school and each school sector receive? What will be the benchmark funding per primary and secondary school student? These are the sorts of things we should be seeing in any bill entitled an education bill. How much funding per student will be allocated for students with a disability? Will this funding be portable between the government and non-government sectors? What, if any, future capital funding arrangements will be provided for schools? What new reporting requirements and other conditions will schools have to meet in order to qualify for government funding? They are pretty simple questions. You would have thought that, in a bill that is entitled 'Australian Education Bill 2012', exactly these types of questions would be answered and very clearly laid out. These questions do need to be addressed before the government can make any real progress in education reform.

But the key question remains: where is the money? The explanatory memoranda tells us that this bill, the Australian Education Bill 2012, has no financial impact; there is no money in this apparent deal. The Labor government has a well earned reputation, as we all know in this place, for making unfunded announcements. It also has a similar reputation for cost shifting to the states. The current actions of this bill will only enhance that reputation.

The review panel chaired by David Gonski handed down the final report into schooling to the government in December 2011. The main recommendation was to implement a new funding model, at an additional cost to all governments of $6.5 billion per year. The panel's original proposal was that the Commonwealth and states split the cost of introducing the proposed model on a 30 to 70 basis. That would require each government to lift their existing expenditure in school education by approximately 15 per cent.

Dozens of technical issues arose once the panel's theoretical model was tested by the government. Both the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Council of Australia reported serious anomalies. Leaked modelling in August 2012 revealed that approximately a third of all governments, both government and non-government, would lose funding. The explanatory memoranda tells us that the Commonwealth commits itself to work collaboratively with the states. That is something that we certainly need to see, and we will believe it when we see it.

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Nola Marino (Forrest, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As the member says, it is easy for me to say—so I challenge him to do the same.

When we talk about the education of the next generation of Australians, I really want to point out the desperate need for education on cybersafety. When we talk about education needs of Australian students, cybersafety education must be part of the conversation. Our young people are at risk. With the advances in the science of communication and of the internet, this risk continues to grow. We can no longer afford to sit on our hands while our young people remain at risk. I believe the major way to effectively protect people from such a risk is education. This is a national problem that needs a national coordinated solution. Everything that I have seen and done on this issue tells me that education of our great young people is the real key. I saw a recent report from Europe that revealed that, of the 30 countries and regions that participated in a study, online safety education is included on the school curricula of 24. The UK has cybersafety in its national curriculum and starts the program at five years of age. The threat is real and looms large, and our response needs to be rapid and effective.

Debate interrupted.