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

I was speaking, in the previous part of this debate on the Australian Education Bill 2012, about the need to include cybersafety in the national curriculum. With social media—like Facebook and others that we see out there—the user has to assume that anything they post online cannot be deleted and is, in fact, on the internet forever. Speaking on such social media, a quarter of teens surveyed said that they had been the victims of cyberbullying.

Advanced features of social media—we see them all the time—include Bluetooth and geotagging. Geotagging can often be a default setting which poses a significant risk, particularly to young people, who do not understand the implications of taking a photo with the geotagging embedded in there and then uploading it to Facebook. So the reason for cybersafety to be included in the national curriculum is very real. Our children face these issues on a daily basis. It is part of the challenges they face.

I deliver these courses into schools constantly, encouraging young people to be safe and aware online. Certainly it is something that needs to be included in the national curriculum. We need to teach our young people how to be safe and, equally importantly, we need to teach parents how to teach their children to be safe. This should be an Australia-wide activity. The only way to deliver that, in my view, to the next generation and the current one, is to include that type of education in the national curriculum.

As I said in relation to the nine-page, very short bill before the House—the plan to have a plan to have a plan—what we need is legislation that delivers certainty and choice. We need to deliver. Where is the definition of what is a systemic school and a non-systemic school? The government needs to deliver details in this piece of legislation, but no details are in this nine-page bill.

The government needs to deliver the funding well before the next election. Just where is the funding going to come from? We have heard nothing about that. There is no reference to that in this bill, in any way, shape or form—nothing in this legislation. Probably the way to describe this bill—as I did previously—is that it is, at best, an aspirational mission statement. The bill is supposed to be about education but is, in fact, nine pages long and approximately 1,400 words. Here is the financial impact statement; there is nothing on it. This is not legislation; this completely ignores the issues.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Higher Education and Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to stand to support the Australian Education Bill 2012, which is before the House today. Having spent a lifetime working in the education sector—as, indeed, you have, Acting Speaker Grierson, coming from a similar background to mine—I see this as a once in a lifetime opportunity to address the issue of ongoing school funding in this nation. So I particularly endorse the bill before the House.

A core Labor value is giving every Australian student the chance for a world-class education. Like many in this place, I was the first in my family to go to university. We well understand the importance of making sure that each child has the capacity to reach their full potential and to achieve their goals in life. Every child should have this chance, no matter where they live, what their family background is or where they come from.

For a student, a great education should not depend on the income of their family, what school they attend or the personal circumstances of the young person. Every Australian student should have the chance to secure a great job when they leave school and be able to contribute to their community in the immediate and long-term future. This will help our economy stay strong. The Australian government, as shown in this education bill, believes in the power of education—and high-quality education at that. A highly skilled and highly educated community strengthens our workforce, strengthens our economy, increases productivity and leads to a greater prosperity for all. Who would not want that?

Australia is a prosperous nation, and countries in our position need to lead the way in education. Our schools must continually improve and offer equity in schooling so that our nation will continue to prosper. We need our students to engage with the region and we need to provide social, economic and cultural opportunities for this engagement to happen, particularly with our Asian neighbours.

New evidence based methods of teaching and learning—using the opportunities that the digital age, in particular, offers—will help successful reforms in education that will take us into the 21st century. Indeed, prior to my current position, when I chaired the Standing Committee on Infrastructure and Communications—one of my wonderful colleagues who was on that committee is with us today—one of the interesting things that we found, when we were looking at utilising fast, ubiquitous broadband as it becomes available in the nation, was the capacity for it to transform education. A particular example we saw was with young people who wanted to study Asian languages but who came from a small school or a school without a critical mass that would support the employment of a teacher. Through online, video based classes with a high-quality teacher they were able to continue to engage in learning an Asian language, which may have been denied to them previously.

We saw examples of students in classrooms in Australia linked to partner schools in Asia. Indeed, two schools with enormous distances between them were doing joint science experiments. The young people in those classrooms had a common enthusiasm for exploring science and experimenting. So, there are real opportunities in the new century to drive that sort of reform in our schools.

We need to develop strong communities in which partnerships are formed across that broader community that engage parents and teachers, families and employers. Our National Plan for School Improvement is the next step in the education reform agenda and provides a once-in-a-generation opportunity to improve the way our schools are funded and to provide our children with a fair and high-quality education system.

The Australian Education Bill 2012 states that the objects of this act are, firstly, to acknowledge the matters I have just referred to and, secondly, to set out the following goals for Australian schooling to address those matters: firstly, for Australian schooling to provide an excellent education for school students; secondly, for Australian schooling to be highly equitable; and, thirdly, for Australia to be ranked by 2025 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.

The government wants to ensure we fund reforms we know will work to lift the standards and the results of all students. Under the national plan, we have set an aspirational goal to be in the top five countries in the world in maths, reading and science by 2025. This plan will introduce a new way of funding schools based on the needs of the students. The government has put in place the My School website—and I acknowledge the Prime Minister and the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, Mr Garrett, are at this very moment talking about the most recent update to that website—which provides greater transparency and accountability of school performance. NAPLAN data allows us to focus on student achievements in literacy and numeracy and provides both contextual and financial information about each school. Our government aims to drive continuous improvement and improve school performance and educational outcomes. We will provide significant additional funding to do so. Quality education will be at the forefront of our educational plan.

Our government also wants to reward great teachers. We all have had great teachers in our lives. I think everybody has a story of a particular teacher who left an ongoing impression on their life. Teachers need to have the skills and the support that they require to both improve continuously their own performance and deliver teaching of a high quality to their students. The Australian Teacher Performance and Development Framework will be introduced across New South Wales from 2013. Teachers who, after participating in annual appraisal processes, are seen to be doing well will be encouraged to apply for certification at the 'highly accomplished' or 'lead' teacher levels. Teachers will be rewarded, and rightly so.

There will be more support included in our program for students with disabilities, Indigenous students, students from lower income families and students with limited English skills. The extra funding will be provided to assist teachers in schools to improve the education of students, helping them to move towards a job or further education. Support will be offered in the form of health specialists such as occupational therapists in schools, curriculum tailored to students' needs and assistive technologies in the classroom. There will be extra funding for every student in the poorest half of the community, for Indigenous students and for students who need help with their English skills. Programs will be introduced—and there are some wonderful examples of these around already, but they will be further supported by the reforms—in the form of breakfast clubs, homework centres and personalised learning plans for students. We will put more power into the hands of school principals and provide more information about school performance for parents and the community. We will invest nationally to empower schools to make decisions at the local level, and additional funding will be provided for additional support for teachers in the form of training and professional development.

The Australian Education Bill 2012 has had great support in the Illawarra region. My office has received a lot of support for the bill and encouragement to continue with courage and tenacity to reform the funding model across Australia. On 24 April last year, the minister for school education, Peter Garrett, joined parents, principals and members of the community at Wollongong's Smith's Hill Selective High School to discuss school funding and the future of Australian schooling. The event was one of many to be hosted in the Illawarra for us to speak with school communities about the recommendations of the report. My colleague the member for Throsby and I met with P&Cs and school groups, as have many of my colleagues in this place. It was a great opportunity for us to share ideas about the issues and challenges facing Australian schools and to provide information about the government's school improvement reforms.

The Illawarra has already benefited from the record investment in school education. We have seen some 7,835 computers delivered to senior high-school students at 17 schools, and seven schools are receiving funding for a school chaplain or welfare worker to look after the social, emotional and spiritual wellbeing of students. In every school I visit, I hear from principals, teachers, students and parents about the terrific new facilities they now have, thanks to the Building the Education Revolution program. There have been 143 projects at 66 schools in my electorate. It would have meant an awful lot of lamington drives if those schools had been individually trying to raise funds for those particular projects. The government has invested more than $114 million in school infrastructure in Cunningham. We have great schools in the Illawarra, but this government wants to make them even better, to ensure that every local student will have access to a world-class education.

We have also had investment in innovative science outreach programs, with the launch of a mobile planetarium. This was created by the Science Centre at the University of Wollongong. The mobile planetarium will capture students' imagination and enable them to expand their knowledge of the sciences. It is vital that young Australians develop an understanding of science, and the mobile planetarium will expose students to new ideas in science and technology, potentially leading to an interest in a career in the field. The study of science is integral to the long-term prosperity of the nation, and being exposed to world-class curriculum in the sciences will be an investment in and asset to our society.

I want to very briefly mention a number of other important investments that have happened in schools in my region under the Labor government. Just to give the context: there are 66 schools in my electorate and around 24,000 students. There have been 143 BER projects, costing just over $115 million in total, and they have included building or upgrading 27 classrooms, 16 libraries and 27 multipurpose halls. Numerous times I have sat at schools where they have persevered with their annual presentation day, with their band playing and the kids coming up to get their awards, in less than ideal weather conditions. I can say that, at the end of last year as I went around and did all those awards, they were particularly pleased to have the wonderful new halls and facilities in the schools. As I indicated, over 7,800 computers have been installed under the Digital Education Revolution and almost $5 million was approved for two trades-training-centre projects, which benefited four schools across my electorate and that of Throsby. There are four schools participating in the Smarter Schools National Partnerships and there are nine schools eligible to receive funding for chaplaincy and student welfare services in my electorate.

Our National Plan for School Improvement has already delivered in the Illawarra, but importantly it needs to continue to improve and deliver quality teaching in every classroom as supported by the bill before the House. This Australian government is prepared to discuss significant investment in our schools and we will provide more support for schools and students who need it most. We will provide more power to local school principals, more information about school performance for parents and the community and, finally and most importantly, a fair school funding system based on the needs of every student in every classroom to lift the wellbeing of all students across the nation. I commend the bill to the House.

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

I thank the member for her contribution. I know that she has a longstanding commitment to education.

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012. This bill is intended to outline the government's determination to introduce a new funding model for schools, as part of its response to the Review of Funding for Schooling panel, the Gonski review. However, this bill contains only nine pages and 1,400 words, which set out 'aspirational goals' rather than specific details about how the Gillard government plans to fund the state and non-state school system in the future. There are no details at all as to how the new funding model will operate; how much individual schools will receive; how this funding will be calculated; and what other obligations will be placed upon the sector. This is extremely important information that all state and non-government schools need to know so that they can plan for the future education of their students.

While this bill is very light on detail, the coalition will not oppose the bill in its current form. Before we finalise our position, we will of course wait for further details from the government following the COAG discussions this year, and wait for the further details from the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment's inquiry into the bill, referred to the committee on 29 November 2012. We previously heard the member for Grey, the deputy chair of the committee, advise the House that the committee has not even had a chance to begin the inquiry into this bill. It is therefore simply unacceptable that the government has continued the second reading today.

As the member for Sturt highlighted on 12 February, the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, the member for Kingsford Smith, attended a protest in New South Wales to demand that the New South Wales Premier, Barry O'Farrell, release how he is going to implement the Gonski recommendations and how he will cost that implementation. This demonstrates the sheer hypocrisy of the minister and this government: the coalition has been demanding answers from the federal Labor government about how they will implement the Gonski recommendations, given that to date the government has not responded formally to the 41 Gonski recommendations. This bill does, however, expect that states, territories and the non-government school sector will agree to a national plan for school improvement in return for future federal funding. This national plan indicates five general directions for reform, including quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, transparency and accountability, and meeting student need. These are laudable aims, but there is no further information about what these directions mean for the sector or exactly how the government intends on implementing them and improving education.

I read with interest an article by Scott Prasser, Professor of Public Policy and Executive Director of the Public Policy Institute at the Australia Catholic University here in Canberra. Professor Prasser calls the bill 'a vacuous document long on rhetoric and aspiration, short on substance and detail'. He highlights the concerns of many in public policy of the huge concerns that have resulted from the fact that it is, as he explains, 'heretical to question the value of the Gonski proposals'. When a government proposes to spends billions and billions of dollars of taxpayers' money to fund its announcements—on education, disability, broadband—it is absolutely crucial to scrutinise every single dollar. As Professor Prasser wrote:

A government that makes large-scale public investment in new policies and programs which have little prospect of success is failing the first principles of good government.

I absolutely agree with these sentiments. It is our responsibility as members of parliament to ensure the hard-earned money that we take from taxpayers is spent wisely and efficiently and that, further, we actually measure the outcomes and success or failure of programs. It is especially crucial given the nature of special interest and lobby groups and how they position the problems of their particular industry or sector. Often, the purported answer is money—that if you throw more money at a problem, magically, the problem will be solved.

What we do know is that research across the world confirms that more spending does not necessarily correlate with educational quality. The question is: what do you do with the money you spend and how cost-effective is it? We must therefore take stock of the entire school education system in Australia for both government and non-government schools. The Gonski review attempted to do this but left many stones unturned. As I said, the government has not formally or adequately responded to the Gonski review, so the only real recommendation that the government will entertain is spending more money. Everything from the Gonski review has been simplified into one figure—$6.5 billion. Now is the time for the government to explain what they intend to do in education reform. We must know further details about how the governments across Australia plan to spend the additional $6.5 billion.

There are many questions which still abound. How much money will be spent on employing teachers? How many teachers will we need? What Higher School Certificate score will students need to study education at university? Is the current score required for studying education at university set at a high enough standard to ensure that we attract the best quality people to become teachers? What are the advantages of implementing a voucher system in Australia? How do you harness a voucher system to truly provide parental choice while at the same time ensuring that funding is directed from the bottom-up, as opposed to being directed by some bureaucrat thousands of kilometres away? Will the government be focusing on technology or giving laptops to every student as per the now-defunct government program which wasted hundreds of millions of dollars?

Does the government have an ideal class size in mind? Will there be capital funding arrangements for the future establishment of new schools or classrooms? Will the Prime Minister guarantee that no school will have to increase school fees as a result of the changes? What will be the benchmark funding per primary and secondary school student?

Furthermore, there is still no clear answer as to how students with a disability will be supported by the federal government. I spoke, in my private member's motion last session, of the annual struggle of parents and staff at the Glenleighden School in my electorate to receive adequate support from the federal government for their children. The school is concerned that the Gonski review does not adequately address the problem that operational policies relating to disability are inconsistent across states. While the Queensland state government does recognise children with primary language disorder as having a speech-language impairment, making those children eligible for funding, some states in Australia do not recognise PLD. The school is extremely concerned that the Gonski review made no recommendations in relation to loading for a disability because of 'significant obstacles'—as described on page 167 of the review. The Glenleighden School is the only one of its type, so parents travel from all over Australia to enrol their child. That means it is of paramount importance to the school that this issue is dealt with. At this point, I do not know how to answer the school's inquiries—because there is no answer from this government. This is not an exhaustive list of the many key questions about the implementation of the Gonski review.

Over the last five years, since the Labor Party took office, there has been much consternation within the state and non-government school sectors about what the government will change in school funding. During the 2007 election, the member for Griffith promised a review of funding but the government has since largely retained the former Howard government's funding model. David Gonski was selected to chair the review panel, which handed its final report into schooling to the government in December 2011. The main recommendation was to implement a new funding model at an additional cost of $6.5 billion a year. The panel proposed originally that the federal government and states would split the cost of introducing the recommended funding model on a 30 to 70 basis, which would require each government in Australia to lift existing expenditure in school education by approximately 15 per cent.

Since then, the panel's proposed theoretical model has been tested by the government and dozens of technical issues and anomalies have arisen. Both the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Council of Australia reported serious anomalies and became very concerned about what the model meant for their schools. In August last year, leaked modelling revealed that approximately one-third of all schools, including both government and non-government schools, would lose funding. In particular, the Independent Schools Council of Australia reported that 16 per cent of its members would lose money—180 of the 1,100 independent schools losing out. This would mean parents having to fork out thousands and thousands of dollars extra each year just to cover the cuts in funding.

As I said, the coalition has consistently maintained that any new funding model must not reduce funding for any school in real terms. That makes the original Gonski proposal simply unacceptable for Australian parents and the coalition. I understand that the government has at least attempted to substantially redesign the original proposal, including spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants. The devil, however, will be in the detail, about which we currently know very little. It is the coalition's position, as the member for Sturt has indicated, that the current quantum of funds for every school—and the indexation of those funds—is the basic starting point when considering any new funding model. In particular, no school should lose funding.

In addition, the coalition has set out 10 principles which outline our values for schooling. These include, among others, respecting the right of parents to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs; ensuring opportunity for all Australian children to secure a quality education; student funding being based on fair, objective and transparent criteria and distributed according to socioeconomic need; and decisions being made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems.

The coalition has introduced amendments to this bill to provide certainty to schools and parents that their funding is protected during implementation of any reform of school funding. Firstly, we will introduce an amendment to ensure funding certainty for schools by extending the current model for another two years in the event that a new model has not been agreed with the states this year. Secondly, we will introduce an amendment to include the coalition's 10 funding principles.

The coalition's amendment calls for the addition to the bill of a definition of both 'systemic school' and 'non-systemic school'. The essential difference is that systemic schools receive funding through system authorities. The 1,704 Catholic schools, for example, receive funding through their state or territory Catholic Education Commission. The non-systemic schools are funded directly by the federal government—some independent Jesuit schools and many schools of other faiths are funded this way. The government must, at the very least, explicitly recognise and define the difference between systemic and non-systemic schools. That would then allow funding to flow from the Commonwealth to non-government system authorities—or direct to a school, if it is a non-systemic one. During the Senate process, members of the coalition will continue to ensure that any measure which will have the effect of micromanaging schools or increasing red tape will be opposed, but we will definitely support those parts of the plan to increase school and principal autonomy.

Lastly, the coalition believes that parents and schools need funding certainty so that they can adequately plan for next year and guarantee teaching positions. Last year, I held an education forum in conjunction with the member for Brisbane. The shadow education minister, the member for Sturt, kindly attended and responded to the many questions from principals and parents about the uncertainty they face about what is going to happen—for example, whether the 'funding maintained' principle would continue or whether schools would continue to be funded on the basis of socioeconomic status. At that forum, the shadow minister was able to outline the broad philosophical approach of the coalition to quality and choice in education and to recommit to making sure that no school loses real funding if the funding model changes. Unfortunately, all government and non-government schools in Australia still have no clue as to the funding model to be in effect from 1 January 2014.

By introducing a bill that is only nine pages long, by introducing a bill with no detail, by introducing a bill prior to full consultation with the states and by progressing their bill prior to the committee process, this government is demonstrating that it is not serious about providing certainty to the Australian education system. While I do not oppose this bill in its current form, the government must announce the detail of its proposals. We owe it to the schooling system in Australia, we owe it to Australian parents and, most of all, we owe it our children. The coalition's plan is for real solutions for all Australians.

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

The Australian Education Bill is the Commonwealth government's response to the Gonski review. The Gonski review identified principally the shortcomings of the existing funding model for our schools. Our response, when fully implemented by 2020, will see an additional $6.5 billion spent on our schools by state and territory governments and of course the Commonwealth. This amount is in line with the recommendations of the final report of David Gonski. From talking to families and teachers across my electorate of Corangamite it is clear that schools face a number of challenges, and it is clear that a large number of those challenges come from the existing funding model. When I am engaging with state schools I find that those schools are inadequately funded, particularly when you consider that by and large it is the state school system that teaches students from low socioeconomic backgrounds, students from non-English-speaking backgrounds and of course students with a disability.

The Gonski model funds each student on their needs. A base amount is applied for each student and then it is topped up with additional funds to provide additional resources to help those students succeed. Extra money will be available to schools to help support students, including those from low SES backgrounds and students with a disability, or students with limited English proficiency. Small schools and rural and remote schools will also receive additional loadings to cover the additional operating costs that they have because of the size of their enrolment.

The Australian Education Bill is implementing Labor's plan to deliver for our schools. The plan, in a nutshell, includes quality teaching, making sure that we have the best and the brightest teachers available for our schools, and quality learning, with a world-class national curriculum and individual support for students. Our plan also empowers school leaders, giving principals more say about how they run their school. Further, it provides better information, giving the community detailed information on local schools through the My School website. Further, it provides funding to help meet the challenges of students from disadvantaged backgrounds and schools located in disadvantaged communities.

Five specific new legislative measures form the centre of the Australian Education Bill. First, a quality education for every Australian child will be an entitlement arising from their common citizenship of our Commonwealth. Second, there will be new goals for Australian education. The aim is for Australia to be ranked in the top five countries in reading, science and mathematics by 2025 and, by the same year, for us to be ranked in the top five countries for providing a high-quality and high-equality education system. Third, there will be a new national plan for school improvement.

The bill provides the directions for our plan: quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, transparency and accountability, and meeting our students' needs. The bill further sets out the basis in law for agreement between the Commonwealth, the states and territories, and Catholic and independent education authorities to implement the plan in full. It also provides for new principles for school funding.

The bill provides for a new funding standard, based on what it costs to educate students at schools we know already get strong results. Quality education requires strong funding so that schools can engage quality teachers and provide the support they need. The bill will provide a benchmark amount per student with extra needs to be met through a system of loadings—additional funding to help children who the evidence shows need help. The fourth part of the plan is that there will also be a new link between school funding and school improvement. The bill provides that the Australian government will deliver future funding on the principles legislated in this bill to those states, territories and non-government authorities which agree to implement the national plan.

The bill fulfils the government's commitment, given in its response to the final report of the Gonski review that we commissioned. This legislation needs to be implemented as soon as possible so that we can enshrine these principles and the new funding approach for the commencement of the next school year. The bill also picks up the commitments made in the government's white paper, Australia in the Asian century. Asian studies will be embedded across the Australian curriculum, and students will have access to at least one priority language. This is an exciting and challenging time for education.

Since 2007, Labor have invested heavily in our local schools—new buildings, new classrooms, a new national curriculum, computers in schools and additional funding assistance. All the evidence tells us that the single greatest factor in school improvement is lifting teacher quality. Labor's plan for school funding will have a particular focus on teachers. New teachers will be readier for the classroom, with more practical experience during training and two years of support in school once they become a teacher. Teachers will meet rigorous professional standards and be recognised for improving their skills and performance in the classroom. All teachers will be reviewed annually in their school. Teachers and principals will have access to more data on the school's performance. This also ensures that students who are falling behind, especially disadvantaged students, can be identified and provided with the extra support they need to meet the standards. This information about performance will hold teachers, principals and school communities to a greater level of accountability. Every school will have a school improvement plan and will be accountable for delivering it.

The bill requires the meeting of student needs—identifying the needs of every child and delivering what he or she needs. We will now have clear evidence about how disadvantage holds back many students and what is required to provide them with a quality education. We know that, if we get the resources right and ensure that no child misses out, every child can succeed in the classroom. Our national plan will see resources allocated to reflect the need of the student. We have made good progress on our national plan. Federal and state and territory education ministers have already commenced work, and that work will continue over the next few months. I look forward to outcomes being delivered and identified.

Labor is the party that is principally concerned with education. We have provided additional funding since we came to office in 2007, and it is one of the principles of the Labor Party—to deliver funding to students on a needs basis. There is a lot of work to be undertaken between now and 1 January 2014, when the new funding arrangements will be implemented. From getting around and talking to students, schoolteachers and parents right throughout the Greater Geelong area, across my seat of Corangamite, I know that we need to put more money in to assist in the delivery of quality education that enables Australia to achieve the goals of this bill—to provide opportunity to all students, to ensure that we have individual learning plans for students, to make sure that students are adequately resourced and to deliver on that learning plan. That is the way we need to move forward.

I look forward to further negotiations between us, the Commonwealth, and the state and territory governments, and the Catholic education system and independent schools. I commend the bill to the House.

Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012, which—in a fashion we have come to expect from this government—sets out a list of noble and lofty aspirations with no plan as to how to actually achieve them. I want to make three points in the time available to me today. The first is that, despite all the noble and lofty aspirations which are articulated in this bill and elsewhere, the Labor Party is unable to guarantee that no school will be worse off when it comes to its proposed funding arrangements. The second point I want to make is that the measures which are contemplated in this bill will add substantial regulatory and red tape burdens, but the case has not been made out that they will deliver compensating and justifying benefits. My third point to the House today is that, on analysis, this bill is an entirely meaningless piece of legislation: it is explicitly stated, on the face of it, that it creates no legal obligations. To introduce a bill which does this is to demean the parliament and the legislative process.

I turn to the proposition that the Labor Party and the Rudd-Gillard government are unable to guarantee that no school would be worse off when it comes to funding arrangements. Clause 9 of the bill purports to deal with the issue of school funding. It states:

For any Government of a State or Territory, or non-government education authority, that reaches agreement with the Commonwealth on its implementation of the national plan referred to in section 6, the Commonwealth will provide funding for schools or school systems, through grants of financial assistance to States and Territories, based upon the following principles …

It then articulates a list of very noble and worthwhile principles. In other words, the bill sets out a very high level outline of the funding model that was described in the Gonski review of school funding. The Gonski report recommends new funding for education of some $6.5 billion per annum, which raises a fairly obvious and essential question: where is the $6.5 billion going to come from?

The original proposal in the Gonski review was that the incremental cost of introducing the model be split between the Commonwealth and the states on a 30-70 basis. The implication is that each government would be required to increase its existing expenditure on school education by around 15 per cent. It might have been thought that, when a bill dealing with the implementation of the broad model set out in the Gonski review was introduced, that bill would give detail, that bill would set out the precise implementation mechanics. But anybody who approaches this bill with that expectation would be gravely disappointed, because this bill gives no detail about the funding split at all and nor does this bill grapple with any of the technical issues which have been raised by the many stakeholders in this sector about the implications of the funding model proposed by the Gonski review.

Both the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Council of Australia have highlighted what they see as significant anomalies which would lead to around a third of all schools having reduced funding compared to the current model, and I hasten to add this would include both government and non-government schools. It is no surprise, therefore, that we have seen a steady series of concerns expressed by state premiers and by state education ministers about the glaring lack of detail provided to date by the Rudd-Gillard government on how the new school funding arrangements will operate in practice. For example, Queensland's minister for education had this to say on 20 January this year:

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.

The Western Australian minister for education had this to say on 1 February:

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.

Last year, the Chief Executive of the Independent Schools Council of Australia, Bill Daniels, had this to say:

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.

The Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth was supposed to release data on student characteristics and school finances. There are reports around that data has been provided to stakeholders, but we simply do not know with any certainty whether that is correct and, indeed, what that data consists of.

It is only after the data has been provided that the proposed model is supposed to be finalised. Until all of that is done and until all of that information is in the public domain, there are key questions which remain unanswered, including: where will the at least $6.5 billion per year which is required to fund the Gonski arrangements come from? If it is the case that the Gonski modelling shows that over 3,200 schools will be worse off, how much extra will it cost for every school to receive more funding, as the Prime Minister has promised? And will the Prime Minister promise that no school will have to increase school fees as a result of her changes? This really comes to the core of the issue: are any schools to be made worse off as a result of the new funding model?

It has been the consistent view of the coalition that any new funding model should leave no school worse off in real terms—and I do emphasise the words 'in real terms', because one of the glaring areas where we have seen a lack of commitment from the government is the indexation of funding. As we all know, due to the effects of inflation, a funding commitment in any particular year can be eroded quite materially as several years go by when you get the cumulative effect of inflation year after year. Therefore, indexation is absolutely critical to address that concern.

In addition, as was mentioned in the remarks by Bill Daniels which I quoted earlier, there is a glaring lack of certainty about what is to happen when the existing funding arrangements cease at the end of 2013. There is no answer on this question in the bill before the House today, yet this is a matter which is causing very considerable anxiety in independent schools around Australia. In the electorate of Bradfield, there are a significant number of outstanding independent schools. I know that the school councils, principals and others charged with the management of those schools are becoming increasingly anxious about what is to happen when the existing funding model comes to an end. It is extremely difficult to plan for the future when you have no idea of what the funding arrangements are going to be at the end of the current year. Yet these schools need to make plans for years ahead, and seeking to do so without having certainty as to what degree of funding support will be available from the Commonwealth makes their challenge extremely difficult.

It is really hard to see how any competent government could get into the position where a very significant existing program of funding is to come to an end and yet no clarity on how the new arrangements are going to apply has been given to the many, many schools in the sector which depend upon this funding. You can go to considerable levels of detail as to where that uncertainty extends. For example, we do not know about the future arrangements for capital works funding. We do not know about the funding arrangements to support students with disabilities and other disadvantaged students. The lack of this government's capacity to give a commitment on the future funding arrangements, and particularly a commitment that no school will be worse off should the arrangements contemplated in this bill pass into law, is of substantial concern to those of us on the coalition side of the House.

The second point I want to make is that this bill, as one would expect from any bill introduced by the Rudd-Gillard government, proposes to add substantial additional regulatory burdens. We are told that there will be a national plan which will improve school performance and drive continuous school improvement. It will provide opportunities for school students to develop capabilities to engage with Asia and do a wide range of other very worthwhile and desirable things. There are significant concerns in the sector, based on experience, that the establishment of additional plans, indicators and requirements will add materially to the regulatory burden on schools.

The question therefore becomes: what benefit is to be obtained in exchange for this extra burden which is to be imposed? As many in the sector point out, key aspects which are highlighted in the plan are already addressed under current arrangements. For example, schools already undertake annual performance assessments of teachers. So therefore there is a real question as to whether the plan envisaged in this bill is going to do anything more than simply increase the red tape burden on schools and be yet another opportunity for attempts by the federal government to engage in ever-increasing micromanagement of aspects of activity in various sectors—in this case, education.

I would note, however, that one aspect of what is envisaged is something that the coalition is very much attracted to, and that is the notion of increasing school and principal autonomy. If the present government actually delivers on its ideas in this area, that would certainly be something we would be pleased to support. But naturally enough, based on experience, we are somewhat sceptical that they will in fact deliver.

Let me turn to the final point I want to make in the brief period available to me. The bill before the House today is, in substance, a completely empty and meaningless exercise. Clause 10 of the bill states that, when it passes into law, the act which is so created will not create any legally enforceable obligations. In other words, to take up the parliament's time with considering and debating this empty and meaningless sham is a scandalous misuse of the parliament. It is a sham and an empty piece of trickery, designed to do nothing other than to give the appearance of progress and action. Everything which is in this bill could have been dealt with equally well through issuing a brief government policy statement. But of course that has already been done several times and so, therefore, this government is desperate to give the appearance that they are doing more. And what could achieve that objective better than to introduce a bill? Of course, it is a bill with lots of lofty goals and laudable aims and it repeats the phrase 'excellent education' several times, as if the more often you repeat it the more likely you are to achieve the outcome. I am sorry to say that excellence, while a laudable goal, is unlikely to be achieved just by using the word repeatedly.

The bill before the House today is one that wholly fails to address a concern which is causing great anxiety within the school sector in that it fails to guarantee that no school will be worse off when the new funding model is implemented. This bill before the House today greatly adds to the regulatory burden that will apply to schools. And, thirdly, it is a bill which in fact has no legal effect whatsoever and is therefore a scandalous misuse of the parliament's time.

Yvette D'Ath (Petrie, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change and Energy Efficiency) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to voice my strong support for the Australian Education Bill 2012, a bill for education reform that will significantly benefit schools across the country. I would just like to acknowledge and say how great it is to see the school students in the gallery today while we are having this extremely important debate, one that I believe is important for the future of our children and this country.

As my community and members of this House know, I have been a very vocal advocate for these reforms—reforms that will benefit our principals, teachers, parents, staff and, most importantly, our students, the leaders of the future and our country. We know the current school funding model is flawed. While our school communities moved into the 21st century, the funding model was rooted in the past. So we commissioned a national review, the Gonski review, to consult far and wide, including with the relevant experts, about how to make our school system better. Locally, I have had many discussions and held roundtables with local school principals, parents and teachers about the recommendations of the review, and I have passed on their feedback here in this House. My local schools know that I 'give a Gonski'.

The Australian Education Bill provides a framework for a better, fairer funding model and delivery of our national plan for school improvement, focusing on five core areas, including 'meeting student need', where we will provide targeted help for disadvantaged students and schools, and 'quality learning', where students will be taught using a world-class curriculum that supports all students to reach their potential.

As to the area of quality teaching, we will make sure we have the best and brightest teachers in our classrooms. The government will introduce new, more rigorous standards for teacher training courses to improve the quality of teachers graduating from universities and being employed in Australian schools. Under the new proposals, teaching degrees will have to introduce improved admission processes and aspiring teachers will have to pass a national literacy and numeracy test. All teachers will get additional training in managing disruptive behaviour. Student teachers will have more practicum experience before they graduate, and beginning teachers will have more time to plan their lessons, with 80 per cent of the workload of more experienced teachers. These measures will build on the $550 million teacher quality NP to attract the best graduates into teaching and provide ongoing professional development.

We will empower school leadership. In return for more federal funding to the states and territories, we will stipulate that principals will implement local strategies and have more say over how they run their schools, who they hire and how they manage their budget to secure the best education outcomes for their students and that schools will be more transparent and accountable, providing better information about school performance using the My School website to make available even more detailed information about our schools, including information about school finances, teacher accreditation, student attendance rates, student behaviour and wellbeing, and year 12 attainment rates. As recommended by the Review of Funding for Schooling, Commonwealth funding will be provided on the basis of a schooling resource standard which will provide a base amount for all students, according to a formula that accounts for the costs associated with providing a high-quality education, and additional loadings that address educational disadvantage associated with any of the following circumstances: students from low-income families, Indigenous students, students with disabilities, children with limited English skills, the size of the student's school or the location of the student's school. This extra money, or loadings, will be 100 per cent publicly funded, so every student who needs more support will get it, no matter what type of school they attend. The loadings will help schools implement programs that can help their students, such as breakfast and homework clubs and personalised learning plans. The extra funding for students with disability will ensure that every child is able to fully participate in classroom activities and that teachers can be trained to understand and help every child reach their potential.

We all know and recognise the benefits of education. Access to a good, quality education means students can learn the skills they need to get a good job. We know that when we have a job, particularly a good, secure job, it contributes positively to their mental health and wellbeing. It also means we can spend money, which in turn helps keep our economy strong. According to independent analysis by PwC, improving the performance of Australia's schools will deliver benefits worth more than twice the current annual economic output of Australia. The analysis calculates the potential value to Australia of reforming its education system would be $3.6 trillion over the lifetime of the generation born in 2012.

Many schools around Australia are delivering a quality education and great outcomes for their students right now. But too many students are not achieving what they are capable of and, because of this, Australia is slipping behind our international competitors. And, worryingly, we are seeing significant differences between the education outcomes of students in the same year levels attending different schools. For example, by year 9 the gap in reading, maths and science results between advantaged and disadvantaged students is equivalent to about two years of schooling. This is not good enough. It should not matter what school a child attends, how much money their parents earn or where they live—every Australian child should be entitled to a quality education. That is what Labor stands for and that is what we will deliver.

We also recognise that schools need certainty so they can plan and budget. To this end, I echo the Prime Minister's guarantee that every school will see its funding increase every year. This means that under the federal Labor government no school will receive less funding next year—or the year after, or the year after that—than they receive right now. The schooling resource standard will be a permanent feature, so schools will no longer be dependent on short-term grants to improve their communities. This assurance will take the pressure off P&Cs, principals and school staff to find more money, allowing them to better get on with the day-to-day running of schools.

The delivery of education in our schools has long been a partnership; the federal government works in partnership with states and territories and with the government, Catholic and independent school sectors, who are on the front line of education delivery. In return for our higher investment from next year, we seek continued collaboration with all sectors, and we expect the states and territories to also up the ante when it comes to their education funding. I know that discussions are ongoing at the highest levels and I look forward to positive outcomes being reached in the near future, particularly in my home state of Queensland. I strongly encourage the Premier of Queensland, Campbell Newman, to put his politics aside when it comes to providing educational opportunity for our students, now and for future generations. Queensland is an expansive state with significant decentralisation, which means we have schools in many rural and regional communities. In addition, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics 2011 Census, around 3.6% of the Queensland population identified as being of Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander descent and around one in every five Queenslanders has a disability.

Opposition education spokesman Christopher Pyne has confirmed that the coalition would keep in place the broken school funding model introduced in the Howard era that could see up to $5.4 billion cut from Australian schools—that is why we want to replace the current, broken system with a new and stable way of funding education. These facts and figures add up to one very clear message: Queensland—and every other jurisdiction in Australia—stands to benefit significantly from the federal Labor education reforms.

As we debate this bill, it is timely to reflect on what federal Labor has already achieved in our schools and in education policy over the past five years. We have built and improved facilities through almost 24,000 projects in 9,500 schools around the country, including $86 million in improvements in 36 schools across the electorate of Petrie. We have empowered parents and communities with information about schools through the My School website. We have delivered more than 950,000 computers to schools, an investment of $2.4 billion, including a computer for every student in years 9 to 12 across Australia, with 6,491 of those computers now benefiting students in my electorate alone. We have committed $2.5 billion to build trade training centres to help address Australia's skills shortage and to ensure every high school student can have access to trade training. The value of our investment in this program was reinforced for me when I officially opened the new Arethusa College Trade Training Centre in Deception Bay on 18 February this year. I know this facility will make a world of difference to teachers and students at Arethusa. I was particularly pleased on the day to hear the Queensland Minister for Education, Training and Employment acknowledge the great work of this college and voice his support for the federal government's investment in this trade training centre.

I am a huge supporter of chaplains and student welfare workers in schools and am thrilled that 28 schools in my electorate now have chaplains or student welfare workers in place. The feedback I receive about this program is fantastic. Students, staff and parents love it and it is great for school communities. As we observe the National Day of Action against Bullying this Friday it is important to note that our national plan for school improvement requires participating schools to have safe-school plans and anti-bullying strategies in place and make that information available to families.

Our government has developed the first national professional standards for principals and teachers. This initiative, together with $2.5 billion that we have made available in national partnership funding, is helping to improve literacy and numeracy, boost teacher quality and provide extra support to low-socioeconomic-status schools, including a number of local schools in my electorate. They tell me about the significant benefits that have come out of that national partnership funding.

We are rolling out the National Broadband Network across the country, which will significantly benefit our schools. I know schools are crying out to be switched on to the NBN as soon as possible, because they recognise it will revolutionise the way they do business, in and out of the classroom. To capitalise on the NBN capabilities, we are also delivering a $27.2 million NBN-enabled Education and Skills Services Program to develop online and interactive education and training projects, including virtual classrooms.

I could talk about Labor's commitment to education all day. I could talk about how we are investing $54 million to attract maths and science professionals to teaching, our $200 million record investment in students who have a disability, our $64 million scheme for empowering local schools, another $1 billion for early childhood education to give every four-year-old in Australia access to 15 hours a week of kindergarten and preschool, and the Asian century white paper which, in coming years, will see opportunities for all students to learn an Asian language, from their very first day at school.

It is important that I also make mention of exactly what would be at stake if we were to have a coalition government, led by the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, and the shadow education minister, Christopher Pyne. Most of the programs I mentioned would never have come into existence—the new school halls, libraries and science centres, the NBN, 950,000 computers for students in years 9 to 12 and a national Australian curriculum. We would see around one in seven teachers gone, teacher-training programs cut, small class sizes gone, national partnership funding scrapped and no NAPLAN information for parents.

Opposition members have been on the record, since 2010, confirming they would cut all of these initiatives. That is on top of their promise to stick to a broken funding system that could see our schools lose over $2 billion in coming years. The contrast is clear. The Gillard government is reforming our education system for the better. We have listened to school communities about what they want and what they need. We have consulted with principals, teachers, parents, staff and students—and I am proud to say we are delivering.

My local schools are great, already. But with more funding, more professional development for teachers and principals and more autonomy they can be even better. On behalf of my school communities—especially all of the teachers, parents and students who wrote letters to tell me they give a Gonski and asked me to do the same—I commend the Australian Education Bill to the House.

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

It is a privilege to rise and speak on the Australian Education Bill and outline my concerns with the bill as presented by the government. I listened carefully to the member for Petrie and essentially she said, 'We believe that children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.' That is a lovely aspiration I support and which all members of this parliament support. But the purpose of a parliament and the purpose of legislation in the parliament is to outline, in law, the things that we intend to do and deliver, in a funding way and in a legislative way.

The problem with the Australian Education Bill, as it is drafted before this parliament, is that it is nine pages—1,400 words—long, with no detail on how anything will be achieved. So when you think you have reached a new low point, legislatively, from this government and you think, 'Wow, that is the worst-drafted piece of legislation I've seen in 17 years of watching these things,' and 'That is a poor way to word a phrase or a clause,' and 'That is a particularly bad name for a bill', here we have a nine-page bill about nothing, being put into the House of Representatives, with no detail attached, and we are asked to pass it with no detail attached. We do not know how anything will be delivered, we do not know how the future of education will be improved, we do not know if any funding will be attached and we do not know the government's intentions. It will not work.

I have had the privilege, thanks to the House, of being added to the inquiry into this Australian Education Bill. Again, I would point to an additional abuse of process, although my points today will not be just about process. They will also be about content and substance. The process is that we are having the inquiry into this bill. We are inquiring into a nine-page bill that says education is our future. Yes! Education is our future. We all agree. This inquiry process into a bill that is nine pages long with 1,400 words has been a complete farce, if I can put it that way. All of the witnesses and people who have made submissions have said, 'We'd really love to say something about what the government is intending in this bill but, essentially, we don't know the detail.' Some of them have said, 'We're in these bogus secrecy agreements with the government. We can't reveal any detail about what we're discussing, so we can't give you any evidence about it.' So when we have had serious questions like 'What funding models would benefit your system and what benefits would get to your school?', most of the time the answer is: 'We'd really like to say something about it, but we don't know.' That is exactly the problem that we have with this government and this piece of legislation before us. There is no detail. There is simply an aspirational attempt to say that education is wonderful and we need to do something about it.

Of course we do. We do hear that the funding model is one that needs improving. But it is not a good or worthwhile process to ask the parliament to pass this piece of legislation when it says nothing about how we are going to improve things. Why not get a piece of legislation that says something, that has some clause that can improve the quality of education for us?

My points are not purely procedural. I do have serious concerns about some of the content we have been presented with. In the course of our inquiry and hearing from many of the different sectors in education, nationally, we have heard very concerning things about some of the funding models that are being considered.

I, coming from Sydney, have a great concern that there will be winners and losers. Certainly it was the view of ISCA, the Independent Schools Council of Australia, that this bill would produce winners and losers in schooling. That is contrary to the Prime Minister's view that no school would lose a dollar. It is easy to say no school will lose a dollar, and we have heard members opposite in the course of this debate say that, but it is not about the current amount of funding that they receive. Schools are serious enterprises that require increases in funding every single year. The indexation, of course, has not been guaranteed by the government, and the question of indexation is fundamental to the operation of schools. They cannot budget or continue their operations without guarantees, not just of their funding in real terms now, but of their funding in real terms with the guarantee of their indexation next year, the year after and the year after that.

We are now 10 months from all of these funding arrangements expiring, and the best that the Minister for Tertiary Education, Skills, Science and Research can tell us—because there is no detail in this bill about the funding arrangements—is that COAG will work it out. I do not want to give advice to the government—it is not my job to give advice to the government and they certainly would not listen to me—but I have been around long enough to know that relying on COAG to resolve these kinds of critical questions, when your agreements are expiring in 10 months, is not a recipe for certainty for the education sector. It is not necessarily the smartest approach to take. If states and the Commonwealth do not come to an agreement—knock me down with a feather; it would not be the first time that that has happened, as we know from the history of Commonwealth-state relations—what is going to happen to the funding arrangements in these schools?

Schools need more than 10 months; they need certainty now to plan for their future years. That is why we have moved an amendment to this bill—this bill that contains nothing about nothing—to continue the current arrangements for two years, to give certainty to schools and the school sector so they can at least make plans for the years ahead. Sure, we may need to improve the funding model. Everybody in this place has a concern about that. But, if we have no detail, if we are relying on COAG to sort it out—perhaps—in a few months, we must have a message for those schools out there, who need to plan ahead for next year and the year after. This is not something we can leave to the last minute. I am very concerned about that.

I am also concerned about what we heard directly from ISCA in their presentation to our inquiry—that there would be winners and losers under the funding scenarios that are currently being considered, particularly in Sydney and Western Sydney. I want to refer to a couple of sections of their submission to make my point. In particular, we heard that about a school in Western Sydney as an example. There are 440 independent schools in New South Wales and about 40 per cent of those, according to ISCA, would be worse off under the funding model that is being contemplated. Some of those are large schools and some are not necessarily high-SES schools. In particular, Dr Newcombe gave evidence of one school:

… with an SES of 91—

which is of course a high score—

so it is a very low socioeconomic area. It only charges fees of between $1,000 and $2,000 per student—so parents struggle there, but the school has well over 1,000 children.

So we are talking about a school community in a low-socioeconomic area with a reasonable level of school fees that the parents are making sacrifices to pay so they can send their children to the school of their choice. Dr Newcombe's contention was:

It would lose almost $1,000 per student under this model.

That is $1,000 a student, for a school in a low-socioeconomic area in south-west Sydney. That is just one example that he provided to the inquiry into this bill.

I read that out in the House today because I think it is extraordinarily important that members in Western Sydney in this place understand this. One in four students in Western Sydney attend a Catholic school, and the Catholic system are saying to the government—and said to us in the House inquiry—that they have concerns about the funding models that are being contemplated. In the course of the inquiry we heard that there were several models being considered. Then we heard there were up to 16 models being considered. This is the kind of detail that this House needs to know and understand before we make a decision on a piece of legislation of this nature. It is contemptuous of this parliament, it is contemptuous of the process of government, not to put the details of the funding before this chamber and put the arrangements in place before you ask us to debate and consider this legislation, because we do not know what the impacts on the sectors will be. The independent sector are telling us they are worried. The Catholic sector are telling us they are worried. They school a lot of students in our country. We ought to be very concerned about those things, and it is not right for the government to force this agenda on us without any reference to the detail or the quality of what they are doing.

You can go further into the detail of what they have provided—the 1,400 words—and see that a lot of those words are just a simple covering to ensure that the Commonwealth is not damaged by the passing of this nine-page bill. In the bill, if members want to have a look, they will find a particular clause in part 3 of section 10 saying that the act does not create legally enforceable obligations. Of course, that reads that the act does not create rights or duties that are legally enforceable in judicial or other proceedings. This is a very odd clause and you do not see it very often in legislation. Essentially, the government is saying to us that there is no legally enforceable part of this nine-page bill. Well, I would hope not, because there is nothing it. Why, then, do we have a clause in the nine pages and 1,400 words saying that it is not legally enforceable?

It also says that we believe the children are our future. I asked Mr Kritz from the Attorney-General's Department about that, and I will quote direct from his testimony to the inquiry. He said:

As to the reason for it, I can merely reiterate the fact—

By 'for it' he means that legally enforceable clause—

that without some substantive provisions being put in there, this bill, if it is passed as it is, would be legally problematical in terms of protecting the Commonwealth.

I attempted to ask Mr Kritz another question about that because that was pretty interesting, and it should be interesting to all members in this House, but I was shut down by the chair. I was not allowed to ask Mr Kritz another question on that day in the inquiry. So, I do not know what this provision means. I certainly would like to ask him what he meant by the statement that the bill would be legally problematical for the Commonwealth if it was passed in its current form. That was my next question, but I was not allowed to ask that question. What does it mean? There are only nine pages and there are only 1,400 words. Some of the words say, 'This bill is not legally enforceable.' There is no detail attached to this legislation. It is another low point that we have reached in the genesis of this parliament that is, I think, a bad example of a legal process.

I also want to turn to some of the comments that have been made about funding and the outcomes of the Gonski review which have led to the wording of much of this bill. Members opposite, in their rush to flesh out their speeches with statements about education, have talked about the BER and about money that has been spent in many other programs. To reiterate, there is no money attached to this bill. They have talked about $40 million here and $80 million there. The actual amount that was spent on the BER is $16 billion. What we know from all of the inquiries and investigations into the BER is that about $2 billion to $3 billion could have been saved.

In my electorate I had public schools where the money was wastefully administered by the department, and I have spoken about that in this chamber before. To give a quick example, I had a small school of 100 students who already had a library. They were told that they had to have a second library for those 100 students. A second library was built for those 100 students for $1 million. They had two libraries in Annangrove for 100 students at a cost of $1 million. The original library was air conditioned and fully functioning, but the new library for $1 million had no air conditioning, no shelving and was completely useless. There was great waste in the BER program.

That $2 billion to $3 billion that was wasted nationally is about half of the amount that Gonski has called for—the $6.5 billion. You would already be halfway there if you did not waste or throw away $3 billion. This government has a hide to talk about the amount of money that it has spent on education. You could get halfway to Gonski on the money that has been wasted on the BER. Certainly, if you gave that $1 million to my Annangrove Public School in my electorate, they could have used that $1 million to set up that school for 20 years. They should not have been told to build a second library for $1 million.

That underscores my point about this bill. We certainly do not want to do anything that damages the independent or Catholic sectors in terms of funding or education outcomes. Funding is not the only component of successful education systems. In Australia we spend more per student than systems overseas that get better results than us. Funding is not the only consideration, even though I have spent a lot of time talking about it today. There are other very important things. I want to make sure that we keep the efficiencies that come out of the Catholic system. I see that the Catholic system spent the BER money about three times better than the public system did in New South Wales. That was a shambles. It is not a good outcome for public schools, but it is a fact and it happened that way. So we have to make sure that we—in this rush from the government, with all of these vague and sceptical terms—do not damage the inherent qualities of the different systems that produce good educational outcomes.

If we are serious about funding, let's get serious about a bill, let's put some meat on the bones and let's see something that is actually going to do something rather than being some sort of aspiration that has no place in a bill without any detail to back it up. This is a parliament and this parliament has to pass laws. Until you come forward with your detail and some practical proposals, please do not lecture us on the quality of education.

Adam Bandt (Melbourne, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Every child has the right to a good quality public education. To make that happen, public schools need money now—not in 2019 or at some unspecified date in the future but now. To even match the OECD average, Australia would need to put an additional $7 billion into education right now. Australia's public investment in all education is 3.7 per cent compared to the OECD average of five per cent. In relation to public expenditure on schools, we rank 24 out of 30, with Australia's public investment of 3.0 per cent comparing to an OECD average of 3.5 per cent. By OECD standards, only Belgium and Chile spend a smaller proportion of money on public schools than Australia, and only Belgium, Chile and Israel spend a higher proportion on private schools.

We know that this current inequity in funding hits disadvantaged public schools the hardest. As was reported in the Australian, over the last seven years public funding of independent schools has increased by 82 per cent and for Catholic schools it has increased by 64 per cent, but for public schools it has increased by only 48 per cent. Why are we in this position? We are in this position because the previous government, the Howard government, put in place a very unfair funding model. It is a model that does not take into account the streams of private recurrent income from sources other than fees, such as endowments, donations and capital works loan schemes. It is a model that gives an advantage to schools in regional areas and those with a high proportion of country students, leading to some wealthy city boarding schools receiving lower SES rankings, such as Geelong Grammar. The funding given to schools with high SES scores is disproportionately generous compared to schools at the lower end of the scale. That funding model has been in place for a number of years and has led to us having the distinction of being near the bottom of the heap in developed countries when it comes to spending on public schools.

For many years the Greens have said we need to fix this. The Greens know that public education is a cornerstone of democracy. The Greens firmly believe that every child has a right to a good quality public education. When the Gonski report came along, we said, 'It's well overdue. Let's get on with it.' We find ourselves in a situation where, five minutes to midnight, with only a few months to run on this parliament, we still have not fixed the unfair Howard funding model. Labor has had so many chances to fix this problem. At the early stage of its government, it had the advantage of having almost wall-to-wall state Labor premiers with whom it could have worked to fix the John Howard unfair funding model. Instead, Labor came to this parliament and said, 'No, we want to extend it, because we're not ready to fix it yet.' As a result, a child who was in grade 1 when Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister has just finished primary school, all under a Labor government and all under John Howard's unfair funding model.

So now we have the ludicrous situation where, at five minutes to midnight, there is a much more hostile environment for public education, with conservative state premiers around the country, and we have a bill that still does not contain a new funding model. If a public school or a parent were to ask, 'How much more will I get for my public school or for my student if this legislation passes?' no-one would know, because still there is no money on the table to redress that massive disadvantage that has us ranking amongst the bottom of developed countries in terms of how much money we give schools.

Even if this legislation were to pass, there is a clause in the legislation that says nothing in it is binding on the government. So still, even if we voted for this and it passed today, it would not result in our public schools, who desperately need the money, getting one more cent. What worries me is that, having passed up years of opportunities where there was a really good environment to fix this, we are now in the increasingly heated environment of an election campaign, where as the government looks around the states it does not find many political friends, and we still do not have a funding model.

This is not a good time to be debating such a significant reform, because history tells us that in the heat of a fight Labor gives in. We saw that with the mining tax. When one of the most significant reforms that could have set this country up for decades to come was recommended by Treasury, after a $26 million advertising campaign Labor caved in to the big miners, we got a change of Prime Minister and, as a result, the public purse is about $100 billion worse off over the next decade. That probably explains in part why we have not yet seen any money put on the table, despite five-odd years of government, and why when it does come, if the reports are to be believed, it will be put off into the never-never—because Labor has not had the courage to stand up to the big miners and raise the money we need to fund the services Australians expect, like decent public education for our kids.

So now we find ourselves speculating about when any money might arrive. According to one report, if it does arrive it will not be phased in until 2019. By 2019, if we get the full $6 billion that has been committed, we will still be behind the OECD average—because, of course, the rest of the OECD will have increased their spending. By 2019, that child who started primary school when Kevin Rudd became Prime Minister will have finished high school without seeing the full benefits of the Gonski reform package. This is what happens when you do not have the courage to stand up in the public interest and says to the big miners, 'You have got to pay your fair share.' It means that there is no money to pay for important reforms like this.

That is why I will be moving an amendment to this legislation to provide that, when the money does come in, given that it is probably going to come in dribs and drabs, the first lot should go to those disadvantaged public schools. We know from the Gonski report that public schools are where you find the highest concentration of disadvantage. As I go around and look at the schools in my electorate, that certainly rings true. But, because the money is going to come in dribs and drabs, if we do not give it to those public schools first, they are going to fall further behind. It will also mean that, of a limited quantum of money that is well below what is needed, money will be going to wealthy private schools that do not need it anywhere near as much, while the disadvantaged public schools continue to drag further and further behind.

This is a sensible amendment that says, if you are not going to pay for it all upfront, then give it to those who need it most first. If the government comes out and releases the funding formula to say that from tomorrow we are going to fund the Gonski recommendations fully then there would be no need to proceed with this amendment. But I reckon you can pretty safely bet that that is not to happen. We are going to see funding promises put off to the never-never, and we are going to see years and years before public schools get the funding they deserve. We are going to see, whatever happens at the election in September, the legacy of the unfair Howard model continuing because Labor was not willing to act when it could to raise the money that we need to fund services that Australians expect.

I am also worried that the delay after delay potentially means that the decline in funding for public education and its consequences become irreversible. I read an article recently that suggested that whilst in Victoria the majority of parents still send their children to public schools at the primary level, it has now changed so that the majority of children at high school level are going to non-government schools. What I find from talking to people in Melbourne is that parents would love to send the kids to a government school at the secondary level. But they look around their neighbourhoods at the government schools and worry that they are underfunded at the high school level.

In areas like Flemington and Richmond we have enormous disparities. As well as some very wealthy people we also have more public housing than any other electorate in the country. So you have schools that are trying to educate people from backgrounds of extreme disadvantage as well as people who come from backgrounds of wealth. Of course, they get slugged when the Victorian conservative government hacks away at public education, as it has done recently. They look at these schools and say, 'We want to be guaranteed that our child will get a good quality public education. We look and see that you are struggling for funds. Maybe we will look somewhere else.' There are some very good principals and school communities in Melbourne who are trying to reverse that trend and who are trying to make sure that government secondary schools again become the school of choice for people to send their kids to. I have done everything I can to support them with that.

One of the things schools need are resources, and they need them now. If we do not give resources to these schools now, these patterns of decisions that parents are making are just going to continue and government schools are going to fall further and further behind. We need to give them the resources to support what the parents and the school communities are doing to turn that around. As a matter of basic principle, people should be able to send their children to private school if they want to. It is not a matter for government to stand in the way of that. But it should never become a forced choice. It should never be a choice that a parent makes because they feel that the quality of education their child is going to receive at a public school is under a cloud. You can do it if you want to, but do not do it because you feel that government schools are falling behind.

Unfortunately what the Gonski report tells us is that we are at risk of that happening: we are below the international average and we need to act quickly. So, if the government were serious, we would be putting in place a proper mining tax now so that we could have the money from next year to get our public schools up to the average of international developed countries. I hope that in the lead up to the election the government has the guts to do that. It would be an extraordinarily popular move amongst the Australian people.

If you ask people, 'Would you rather that we increase the taxes on the most wealthy companies in this country that send 83 per cent of their profits overseas so that your children can have a good quality public education or would you rather that our public schools fall further and further behind and the government raises taxes that the rest of us have to pay?' I bet I know what the majority of Australians would answer. That takes a bit of guts. It takes guts to stand up to the mining companies. The Greens have the guts to stand up to the mining companies and raise the revenue we need to fund the services that Australians expect. It is time the government got on with it. If it is going to roll out funding in dribs and drabs, we will move an amendment to say, 'Give it not to those wealthy private schools that need it the least but give it first to those schools in the public system where the greatest areas of disadvantage are.'

Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012. In doing so I have the opportunity to speak on one of the most important areas that a government can influence: the education of our children. Quality education is the cornerstone of a democratic and progressive society. It is through education that each generation improves on the one that precedes it. That is why it is so critical that the government put in place an education system that realises the outcomes that we as a nation expect and demand. In order for this to occur the system must be robust, fair and flexible. It must provide choice for families. Every family is different and our education system should reflect that each family wants different things for its children. For some it is faith based schools, for some it is schools that excel in things such as sport, the arts, science, maths, biology or English, and for others it is schools that provide programs to extend students as part of their extracurricular activities—to name just a few.

As we look for the detail in this bill we find that there is no detail on how such things should be achieved. There is no detail around how our education system needs to be improved, how it will increase choice and how it will deliver quality outcomes. This bill exemplifies the government's approach to policy development and governing. It exemplifies its approach to overblown rhetoric, coupled with underdelivery or just plain botched delivery. It astounds me that the government continues to make the same mistake over and over again by espousing motherhood statements without providing the necessary detail which will result in quality outcomes. The government is taking the Australian people for fools.

This bill is only nine pages long, consists of around 1,400 words and—wait for it—is not even legally enforceable. There is no discussion in this bill about the fact that there is a funding formula. In fact, we need to state in this place that there has been no COAG discussion on funding. You might well ask: what is the point, then? All this bill does is outline a set of guidelines or objectives that, despite being noble in their intention, provide very little in the way of how to actually achieve the stated goals. It is easy enough to say that this bill and our education system should provide quality teaching, quality learning, empowered school leadership, and transparency and accountability, and should meet student need. Who would not want those attributes within the school system? But the integral question is: how? How does the government propose to provide quality teaching? How is the government going to provide quality learning? How does one improve transparency and accountability? These are the questions that need to be answered and are not being answered in this bill.

We know that the funding quadrennium will run out at the end of this year. We have known since the commencement of the last funding quadrennium that it would end in 2013, but the government chose to delay its decision regarding new funding, as it seems to do with all of its decisions. Instead, it established a review panel, chaired by businessman David Gonski, who handed his final report to the government in December 2011. Since then, we have heard precisely nothing from the government. There has been no formal response to the 41 recommendations made by Mr Gonski, nor has the government released any public modelling regarding the central recommendation in the Gonski report to do with an additional $6.5 billion of recurrent spending. The government has comprehensively failed to provide any detail whatsoever.

I know from visiting the schools in my electorate that what they want is certainty. They want certainty around how they will be funded and by how much. They want a guarantee that they will not go backwards and that they will not be part of a hit list, which we saw with certain schools when the Prime Minister proposed this under former leader Mark Latham. I know that from speaking with the parents of the 39 schools in my electorate that they want funding security for their students, their teachers and their schools so that they can concentrate on delivering the best educational opportunities for their students and for all young Australians.

As I mentioned, there is no detail as to how funding will be made up and where the funding will be coming from. This leads to more confusion and uncertainty in the schools and their administration. The government knows this but is happy to simply remain silent in the intervening period.

We just heard before from the member for Melbourne, who talked about wanting a fairer funding model. He does not yet propose how this will be achieved, but we certainly know from looking at the Greens' previous policy proposals that their idea of a fair funding model is to take away all government funding from independent schools. This would ultimately lead to many parents who would like to send their child to an independent school not having the choice and opportunity to do so. Despite the impression that the government and the Greens present, government schools receive the vast majority of government funding—as they should. There are 1.2 million children, or 34 per cent of all Australian students, attending independent schools. When funding from federal, state and territory governments is taken into account, current government funding favours government schools. In 2007-08—and little has changed since then—government schools received 79 per cent of total government funds for schools, of which the federal government provided only 8.6 per cent. Independent schools received 21 per cent of total government funding for schools, of which the federal government provided 72.1 per cent. Further, the Productivity Commission has determined that total government recurrent expenditure per government school student is $14,380, as compared to $7,427 for non-government school students.

The lack of information provided by the government so far has led to great confusion and great uncertainty. Schools cannot budget and, therefore, cannot determine their future plans. By contrast, the coalition has been very clear. We believe that the current quantum of funds for every school, and its indexation, must be the basic starting point for any new funding model. No school should lose funding as a result of the new funding model. We have moved amendments to this bill to this effect. In our amendments we also call on the government to extend the current funding arrangements for a further two years. We believe that parents and schools need funding certainty so that they can adequately plan for next year and they can guarantee teaching positions and programs.

State governments have also said on the record that they have been left in the dark and do not know what the government's funding proposal is going to be about. They therefore cannot respond to it and cannot respond more broadly to the aspirations outlined in the Gonski report.

We know that the government likes to talk big on education. I do believe their sincerity on this issue, as I wholeheartedly believe that every person in this House wishes for the best educational outcomes for the children of Australia. And I truly believe that the Prime Minister, when she says education is her ultimate passion, believes it. But what we have seen in this country since Labor took over government is a decline in Australia's educational outcomes.

Australia currently sits in ninth place in the OECD's Program for International Student Assessment rankings but is only one of five countries, and the only high-performing nation, to record a drop in student scores over the past decade. Under this government's watch we have slipped in performance. The Grattan Institute recently published a report entitled Catching up: learning from the best school systems in East Asia. It analysed the performance of the top four PISA ranked East Asian locations: Shanghai, Korea, Singapore and Hong Kong. In the report, Dr Ben Jensen identifies that success in high-performing systems is not always the result of spending money and that in recent years many OECD countries have substantially increased educational expenditure, often with disappointing results. Between 2000 and 2008, average expenditure per student rose by 34 per cent across the OECD. Large increases in expenditure have also occurred in Australia, yet student performance has fallen. Dr Jensen then went on to identify the particular focus of the countries he studied and found that each of the four countries has a particular focus on the things that are known to matter in the classroom, including the relentless practical focus on learning and the creation of a strong culture of teacher education, research, collaboration, mentoring feedback and sustained professional development.

We know when we look at the example of South Korea that they spend less, on average, than the rest of the OECD, yet their educational outcomes are so much more significant. This support for teacher training and development, which has been their focus, is indeed critical. But it is not a focus that the government has put at the forefront of this bill. Given the lack of detail, hopefully it is something that we will hear some more of. It is certainly something that is required. The coalition, on the other hand, has strong, very positive plans for education. We have been very clear in our guidelines for education reform, and we have clearly expressed our values for schooling.

First, families must have the right to choose a school that meets their needs, values and beliefs. Second, all children must have the opportunity to secure a quality education. Third, student funding needs to be based on fair, objective and transparent criteria distributed according to socioeconomic need. Fourth, students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling. Fifth, as many decisions as possible should be made locally by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems. Sixth, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their community, families and students. Seventh, 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 that they can effectively plan for the future. Ninth, parents who wish to make a private contribution towards the cost of their child's education should not be penalised and neither should schools, in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment. Tenth, funding arrangements must be simple so that schools are able to direct funding towards education outcomes, minimise administrative costs and increase productivity and quality.

In conclusion, it is clear that the coalition has a plan for education whilst the government has a nine-page bill that is not legally enforceable. The bill contains no detail of how much money will be available or which government will be required to stump up the additional funding. There are no details as to how the new funding model will operate, how much individual schools will receive, how this funding will be calculated or what other obligations will be placed upon the sector. The coalition does not oppose the bill in its current form. How could we? It comprises broad based, aspirational statements. We will wait for the detail before we finalise our position, once the government has actually spoken with their counterparts in the states following COAG discussion later this year. As further detail on the bill is made available we will consider the information. We stand united in rejecting the Greens' previous policy announcements to strip government funding for independent schools. We also stand united in supporting excellence in quality teaching, quality learning, empowerment, school leadership, transparency and accountability, and needs based funding. So, we will wait with interest for the detail of the national school improvement plan as to how the government intends to drive reform in these areas. But until the government backs its rhetoric with substance, we and all Australians will continue to wait—at our cost.

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

I am pleased to be talking on the Australian Education Bill 2012. Education is very important to me. For those who do not already know, I left school at a very early age to begin work, and when I left school I had not mastered my reading and writing skills. In fact, I did not learn to read or write properly until I was 20 years old. Since then I have made education a top priority in my life, and especially so in my electorate of Lyons in Tasmania.

Every Australian child has the right to a world-class education, no matter where they live, what school they attend or their family background. This is why I am pleased the government has the National Plan for School Improvement. It is the first of its kind in over 40 years—which is a bit too long, I believe, for our country. This new plan will help every student get a great education and hopefully secure a great job once they leave school, which will help to keep our economy going strong and our standard of living and quality of life at a level that Australians have come to expect.

The review of our school systems has told us that Australia is falling behind in school standards, and many speakers in this chamber have referred to that review. Over the past decade Australian students have fallen from second to seventh in reading, and from fifth to 13th in maths, in the international PISA exams. In December we had further proof of the urgent need to reform, with more international tests in maths, science and reading literacy revealing that Australia is lagging behind. For example, Australia's year 4 students were significantly outperformed in reading literacy by 21 other countries, out of a total of 45 countries taking part. Other countries around the world are already investing in education to improve their results, and it is working: four of the top five performing countries are now in our region. Better schools will give our children the best start so that they can get high-skilled, high-paid jobs in the future. Our goal is for Australian schools to be in the top five in the world in reading, maths and science by 2025. Labor wants to make sure we have a school system that ensures all Australian children have a real chance to reach their full potential. This is not just about disadvantaged children and not just about gifted children; it is about all students.

The National Plan for School Improvement will deliver more money and resources to every school in the country. We want to introduce a new school-funding system based on the recommendations of the Gonski review. This will introduce a benchmark amount per student, plus extra money for the schools and students who need it most. We want to deliver a new way of funding every school that will guarantee all our schools are getting the money they need to do their job. We want to deliver higher standards for teachers, where they are required to have at least a term's classroom experience before graduation and to undergo an annual performance review. Every report you see on education tells you that supporting teachers is one of the best things that you can do, and that the way to keep education standards high is to continue to support teachers and to give them professional training so they can keep up to date with new ways and stay fresh in the way they teach.

Teachers will get extra training in managing disruptive behaviour and dealing with bullying, so every child in the classroom gets a chance to learn in a safe environment. One has to feel for teachers who have to deal with disruptive behaviour, bullying on the bus, bullying in the classroom and bullying in school grounds. Dealing with that in schools is not an easy proposition. Every day right around Australia people are managing those behaviours. More training and more assistance in managing those behaviours will be of great assistance. There will be more power for principals, like hiring staff and controlling the budget, better My School information to make sure no school falls behind and more information for parents so they can see how their kids are doing.

Every school will have a school improvement plan which will outline the steps that school will take to improve student results.    Schools that need extra help to improve their results will get it, and successful schools will share their ideas and strategies with others. School improvement plans will be part of a national drive to ensure we win the education race in the Asian century. Every student will 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 a fair share too. We have said that we believe the extra money recommended by the Gonski review—around $6.5 billion a year in today's figures—is in the ballpark of where we want to get to over time. We are prepared to put in our fair share but states also need to contribute.

Already in my electorate of Lyons I have seen huge investments in education and in the future for kids. Lyons has around 11,000 full-time or equivalent students in 54 schools. Most of these schools are in rural and regional areas. The extra money in 'loadings', which will be available through Better Schools: National Plan for School Improvement, will help to support students in rural and regional schools, in small schools, students from lower income families, Indigenous students, students with disability and students with limited English skills.

A total of $82,688,710 in funding was approved for 134 BER projects. This included the building or upgrade of 26 classrooms, 10 libraries, 31 multipurpose halls and five science and/or language centres. I have had only positive feedback from schools, from parents and from parent groups about the new facilities they have been able to get through the BER. A number of students have also thanked me for helping to make their school more of a fun place to learn. I remember being at Bridgewater High School at the opening of a BER centre and dealing with the arts students, with so many of them wanting to participate.

Under the Digital Education Revolution's National Secondary Schools Computer Fund, 1,334 computers were installed in schools across Lyons. Funding of $12,094,500 was approved for six trade training centre projects. These centres are now benefiting 12 schools in Tasmania—and 10 of those are in Lyons. The trade training centres are helping to educate the next generation of chefs, carpenters, plumbers, mechanics and many other trades. Students are thankful for the opportunity to have a hands-on experience while learning.

I remember opening the trade training centre at St Helens, where a young boy, while putting on his overalls, was telling me how great a welder there was in that centre where he looked forward to participating and learning that skill. Across Lyons there are 29 schools participating in the Smarter Schools National Partnerships and 32 schools are eligible to receive funding for chaplaincy and student welfare services. Many principals tell me that chaplains have helped them to deal with issues throughout the school community which are more difficult for public servants to deal with.

Last September I had the pleasure of visiting my old school, Cressy District High School, with the Minister for School Education, Peter Garrett. On that visit the minister and I were impressed with how many Cressy students were excelling in their studies. We were even treated to a special music performance by a group of primary kids when they sang Blue suede shoes. On that visit the students thanked me and the minister for investing money in their school. They told us how their new multipurpose hall, funded by the BER, was making their schooling so much easier for performances and displays.

As you can see, my electorate is already reaping the rewards of positive investment in school education—and this is set to increase in the future. I believe every student in Australia has the right to a first-class education in Australia.

I want to take up the argument coming from the conservative side of this parliament about choice. It is very easy to argue that people can make choices about education. Right around our country some people can make choices much easier than others. If the choice is between a well-funded private school and a run-down state school, that is not a real choice. I believe the Howard government drove state schools that way during its era. I certainly would not like us to go back to that sort of system in the future. There are areas in my electorate which certainly need much more support than others—and some very much so. I am always moved by the standard of people in education in Tasmania. They are people who work to achieve and do achieve real outcomes for so many students.

I see that conservative parties that have gained power in some of the states are cutting into education. In the states of New South Wales and Queensland, both are cutting education funding. In Victoria, TAFE funding is being whacked in a very, very big way. That is a real shame when you think about it, when you see the figures and you see where we should be in this country and where we need to be when we are looking at the future. We really need to be funding education. We really need to be thinking about that, and not going back to old, conservative thinking or old conservative funding models.

I remember the flagpoles given to my schools in Tasmania under the Howard government. I have also seen, and am very proud of, the buildings that we have now built. I have talked to the parents and the school communities, and they know how those have improved education. Some of us voted for that money to go to education and, of course, some of us did not. Now, with this bill, we are starting new reforms that will add to improving education even more into the future. It is important that we get that right and we put an effort into that. I certainly hope that it is not frustrated by conservative thinking which takes us back into old thinking and old funding models. I strongly support the Australian Education Bill.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is a terrific opportunity to speak on this bill—the Australian Education Bill 2012. There is so much detail about Labor's plans for education for the future that the member for Lyons could not get through 15 minutes actually talking about the bill; he had to go back through alleged history. We might deal with some of that. He suggested that state Liberal governments are cutting education. Let's go through what the cuts in the federal education budget are in the next four years: in the MYEFO figures—Deputy Speaker, you will be well aware of these due to your role now as the opposition the costing spokesman—in 2012-13, $918 million was cut; 2013-14, $587 million was cut; 2014-15, $1.05 billion was cut; and 2015-2016, $1.3 billion was cut. So let's not have anything about funding cuts from this side of politics.

Mr Adams interjecting—

You can get as angry as you like, Member for Lyons. Those are the stats. That is your MYEFO document. I know it will change—Swanny will change it soon, I agree with you! It will be worse. Let's not have any hypocrisy from the Labor Party about state Liberal governments cutting funding. The other point the member for Lyons made was that the Howard government apparently attacked state schools. I have just a bit of constitutional advice for the member for Lyons: state schools are funded by state governments. Guess who was in power in states largely during the Howard years—Labor governments.

Let's actually get the facts on the table here about what this is all about. This bill has no detail and it has no substance; it is purely a bill to try and raise a political issue in the lead-up to 2013 election. We are seeing it on a daily basis. We are seeing it in the attempts to reduce the freedom of the speech in the Australian media by the minister at the table's friend and colleague Senator Conroy. We have seen it with the NDIS legislation which is before this place, which is without detail, and with the refusal of the offer of a bipartisan committee inquiry on what is such an important issue. We are seeing it with this bill here, which is all about political puffery, with no details attached and no costings attached. And something you are close to, Mr Deputy Speaker—

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

The member for Mayo is reminded that he can say whatever he wishes about the member for Fraser, but he should not reflect on the chair. It is a distinction he will well understand, being well acquainted with the standing orders.

Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do not think that I was reflecting on the chair, but if you took it in that sense I will withdraw, and I will reflect upon the member for Fraser at great length: the member for Fraser—who has been appointed the first spokesperson in government on coalition costings in the history of the Australian Commonwealth—would know very well that there is not a cent of costings attached to this document. Hearing on a daily basis these allegations about the opposition's costings makes this document a laughing-stock.

It is a sad indictment of a political party that is going through a death by 1,000 cuts that it is trying to make politics out of education for our children's future. I have three children: one in school, one about to start school in July and one who will start school in 2016. Many of us on this side are in the same position. We fundamentally believe in the education of our children. We fundamentally believe it is absolutely important to empower children for their future, to have an education system which meets their needs and to have quality teaching. Quality teaching is a point that gets raised in the bill, but there is no substantial detail addressing it. It is an issue the Labor Party does not like to talk about, because that would require the Labor Party to address the challenges within the state education systems. I think there an absolute, fundamental challenge in Australia education is the quality of teaching and the absolute control that the Australian Education Union has over addressing what are challenges in our education system.

I will reflect for a moment upon my home state of South Australia. The member for Lyons attacked the Howard government for attacking state schools—schools run by the state system, schools which state governments are responsible for. What has happened over many years is that, increasingly, the federal government has become too far involved in education policy. I think that is a mistake. It is a matter which should be largely left to the states. They are responsible for state schools. It is a constitutional requirement. At the federal level, we have, for some time—since the Menzies government—ensured that there is choice in education. That is a fundamental principle that we support. Those on the other side of the chamber do not.

Those on the other side are utterly beholden to the education union. In South Australia, principal after principal tell me privately that it is impossible for them to move underperforming teachers on. Or, worse still, they are given underperforming teachers from another school who have been moved on rather than been dealt with appropriately. So we cannot improve the quality where someone is not performing. What happens is that they are redirected to another school and the problem persists. Principals cannot directly address these issues with teachers; they have to do it through the bureaucracy in Flinders Street in the city. The bureaucracy deals—would you believe it?—with the union and the union basically asks the principals, 'Do you really want to bother going through this exercise?'

The teachers, at the first interview to review their performance, can refuse to attend and can, instead, have the union attend on their behalf. It is utterly absurd that parents have no control, at the state school, of the quality of their teaching. The principal of a state school has no control of the quality of the teaching or their workforce, at all. It is a fundamental problem that our education system has, and that is not being addressed—it is not even dealt with in part—by this bill: this piece of political fluffery which has no detail or substance attached to it.

Compare and contrast that with the experience in Western Australia—which, by the way, it seems the Western Australian voter does not think is too bad! The Western Australian voter re-elected the Liberal government on Saturday, if you had not noticed, Mr Deputy Speaker, in an absolute landslide. And one of the key policies of the Western Australian Liberal government has been to introduce independent state schools, where principals and the parents of the schools have some control over the school and are able to engage with the workforce, improve underperformance and encourage teacher quality. Compare that to the South Australian experience—my own home state—where we are still governed by an incompetent and out of touch Labor government. There you see the complete opposite. In Western Australia there has been a move, for the first time since 1977—a terrific year, that!—from parents choosing to send their children to private schools to parents choosing to have their children attend public schools. The opposite is happening in South Australia.

In Queensland Campbell Newman's government has taken the same approach in developing these independent public schools. I think it is a fundamental that needs to be pursued. State governments are responsible for state public schools. The federal government is not responsible for state government schools. The states have got to be empowered. They have got to take on, I think, a major problem in our education system, which is the absolute control that the education union has over state bureaucracies, and over state Labor governments in particular. Hopefully, Liberal governments across the country will pursue what the Western Australian experience has shown to be extremely effective. Stakeholders in the education sector have heavily criticised this bill because it is, as I said, a piece of political fluffery designed to try and create a debate on what the Prime Minister would prefer to debate prior to an election—that is, general concepts in education.

The member for Lyons was going on about his belief that every child has a right to high-quality education. As if anyone in this House would not believe that! As if anyone in this House would not believe that children have a right to quality education! We live it day in and day out. Many of us on this side of the chamber live it day in and day out—wanting our children to have access to the best possible education. The member for Lyons also reflected upon aspiration. He asked, 'Why should some have the ability to choose over others?' That, of course, is the Labor philosophy. They do not like people achieving better. Mark Latham put it so well in the Quarterly Essay. I urge you to read it. In a moment of clarity—I have been a Latham watcher for 10 years now—he put the problems of the Labor Party into stark and direct light, which is that they do not believe in aspiration. They do not believe in people wanting to do better, anymore. They do not believe in rewarding people with opportunity and understanding that desire that so many Australians have to want better, not just for them but for their children and for their future.

Choice in education is a fundamental of that aspiration, but the Labor Party does not accept that; they want a one-size-fits-all approach, where the teachers union is part of the discussion every step of the way, where they can nobble any reform and any change, to the point where they will stop people from our side of politics entering state schools, because they hate to have their power questioned or their authority challenged.

We have a set of aspirations and a set of principles that will guide our values and our policies when it comes to education. We believe in the power of education. We all do in this chamber—absolutely. Education is the way to a better future. It is the way for our country to perform better. It is absolutely fundamental for us to achieve our desire to be more prosperous and to have a stronger Australia in the future. Part of our 'real solutions' plan is education as a fundamental.

The first principle that we will pursue is that every family has a choice in education. Choice is absolutely important to us when it comes to education. We believe that people should have their needs, values and beliefs recognised when they choose the school they want to send their children to—whether that be a state-run public school, an independent private school, a school in the Catholic system, a school in the independent system or a school run by another denomination. We believe in that choice. Those on the opposite side do not believe in that choice. They do not believe in aspiration any longer.

Another fundamental principle of ours is that all children must have an opportunity to secure a quality education. Quality education means a well funded education, but that is not the only debate in town when it comes to education. The debate is about quality, values and opportunity; it is not all about funding.

Student funding needs to be based on fair, objective and transparent criteria and distributed according to socioeconomic need, a model developed by the Howard government that has worked successfully for some time. We have already, through the shadow education minister, committed to continuing that.

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, empowering local communities to look after their own schools and needs and to reward their desires for their own schools. All of us who are parents with children at school get out there and work on working bees and do what we have to do around school to ensure that our kids have got access to the best education they can possibly get. The empowering of communities—giving communities a chance to run schools, manage their workforce and get principals into the room to discuss the performance of teachers—is a vital and fundamental principle that we believe in.

Schools, school sectors and school systems must be accountable to their communities, 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 is why we have committed to the funding model that we have.

Parents who wish to make a private contribution to the cost of their child's education should not be penalised, nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment.

Finally, funding arrangements must be simple so that schools are able to direct funding towards education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.

We need to do better in education, undoubtedly, but this bill is not going to make a single bit of difference to the quality of education in this country, because it does not tell us what it is actually going to do. It is simply a bit of political posturing. It is nine pages and 1,400 words and it sets out aspirational goals. It sets out achievable outcomes, through lovely words, but it has no detail about how it seeks to get there. That says everything about this government, which is focused on the next 24 hours and not focused on the long-term future for Australia.

We have got the solutions to this issue. We have got real solutions, positive plans for the future, which we will continue to argue for between now and the election, because there is a better way to govern Australia—an adult way, where you think through policies before you announce them, where you actually make an impact for Australia's future.

Luke Simpkins (Cowan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is great to have this opportunity to speak on the Australian Education Bill 2012. Like so many of us here in this chamber and in the galleries, I have a personal interest in good education. I have two daughters, aged 14 and 10, and I want them to do better than I did in school. In some subjects, I am sure that will not be too much of a challenge! But it is important that we focus on what is real and outcomes that are going to be effective. As the member for Mayo just said, when we come to this place and debate something as grand-sounding as the Australian Education Bill, within the context of the Gonski report, it leads a lot of people in this country to believe that this is the outcome—the panacea—at the end of that report. The reality, again as the member for Mayo said, is that it is far from that. It is nine pages—or 11 if you throw in the table of contents—just a handful of pages really, which are full of motherhood statements that are not going to end up delivering anything for the children and the next generations of this country.

The reason why this is the case is that the government see a problem in the future. They see a day of reckoning when the Australian people will next have the opportunity to pass judgement upon those that sit in this chamber and upon the government. To try to counter a judgement that they think is going to be harsh and negative towards them, we are starting to see these sorts of things—the motherhood statements that are part of this bill. We are going to see a little bit more fighting it out with the states, and a return to the days of the blame game. The Rudd government—or the first Rudd government; there might be another one yet in the next couple of months; who knows?—talked about ending the blame game and being the adults in the room and stuff like that. But now we are going back to the Prime Minister and the government looking for more opportunities to try to blame the states, particularly now that the people in so many states have rejected Labor. It gives the government the opportunity to try and shift a little blame, throw a little smoke, throw a little mud out there, to try to demonstrate that it is not them on that side of this chamber but someone else who is to blame, someone else who is letting them down. That might be the case in South Australia, but we saw in the election last weekend in Western Australia that the Liberal and National parties were returned strongly there, with a great vote of confidence from the electors. I will go into the reasons why that state government was returned and the good things that it is doing in education.

If you wander around the hallways of this place, you will see on the office windows of most members from the other side a nice big green sign with the words 'I give a Gonski' on it. Being the fairly worldly person that I am, having spent 15 years in the Army, I have heard that phrase used before with the word 'Gonski' replaced by another word. I have never found that a particularly edifying word, and I have never found that expression to be a particularly great way to carry an argument. If you look for the source of it—and someone has to admit responsibility for such coarseness and such pointlessness—where does it come from? The Australian Education Union. There is a little bit of posturing with some of the ads on TV and these sorts of posters. They like to imply that they actually care about the children of this country. But, as we have found in various places around the country, they are fundamentally concerned with themselves, in the way that so many unions are—'Let's make sure that there's a career stream at the top of the Education Union'—and the fact that they can muddy the waters a little bit—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! It being 1:45 pm, the debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The member for Cowan will have leave to continue his remarks at a later hour.