Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise tonight to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. This is a bill that cuts $22 billion of funding from Australian schools. It would leave Australian schoolchildren, particularly public schoolchildren, worse off. For that reason, we will oppose this legislation.

Consequently, I move:

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

''the House declines to give the bill a second reading because the bill:

(1) would result in a $22.3 billion cut to Australian schools, compared with the existing arrangements;

(2) would see an average cut to each school of around $2.4 million;

(3) removes extra funding agreed with states and territories for 2018 and 2019, which would have brought all under resourced schools to their fair funding level;

(4) would particularly hurt public schools, which receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the Government's $22.3 billion cut to schools, compared to 80 per cent of extra funding under Labor's school funding plan; and

(5) results in fewer teachers, less one-on-one attention for our students and less help with the basics''.

Labor opposes the principles and the practical effect of this legislation. It takes us from a sector-blind, needs-based funding model established under Labor to the exact opposite—a sector-specific system which cuts support from some of our neediest students. This bill would entrench a system that is not fair, that is not needs based, that is not sector blind, and our practical objection is that it rips $22 billion from our schools over the decade. It continues to leave students who have a disability with uncertainty, it abandons important reforms and it surrenders our ambition to improve Australian schools.

At the heart of our differences with the government lies a difference in values. Labor believes that no matter how rich or poor your family is, where you grow up or which school you go to, as a community we should make sure that you get a great education. It is the promise we make to every Australian child at their birth. As John Dewey said:

What the best and wisest parent wants for his own child, that must the community want for all of its children.

If I were the education minister I would want every single classroom in Australia to be a classroom that I would be confident that my own children would be able to learn in. I want no day, no minute wasted in any child's education because the people or the resources were not there to teach that child properly.

Labor understands that getting a great education is the ticket to a lifetime of opportunity. A good education is crucial to allowing young people to get good, well-paid, rewarding jobs to become the innovators, the carers and the business and community leaders of the future. But a strong education system is also a critical building block for a strong economy and for our national prosperity, and education is the best chance we have to tackle disadvantage and help young people to go on to have happy and fulfilling lives. In contrast, those opposite have never really valued an education system that delivers for every child. They have cut education whenever they have had a chance. They tried to cut $30 billion from the 2014 budget. They have been particularly neglectful of funding for public education. That was the legacy of the Howard government, and it continues in this bill.

We have been told by some commentators that we should take the win, that we should be grateful that the Liberals have finally paid lip service to the principle of needs based funding. Well, whatever the Liberals may say, this funding is not needs based, and it is not sector blind. As a matter of logic, it cannot be sector blind when it entrenches different funding levels for government and non-government schools, and it cannot be needs based when thousands of public schools and parish Catholic schools lose funding and some of the wealthiest schools in the country get a funding increase.

So, at the heart of our needs based funding model is the Schooling Resource Standard: the amount of money, based on evidence, that every child in Australia needs in order to get a quality education, and loadings on top of that to make sure that kids who start behind get the help they need to catch up. David Gonski and his panel found that all levels of government needed to work together to get schools to that fair funding level. Labor set the target of fair funding at no less than 95 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for all schools. The panel said that what mattered was the total resources that a school had available to educate a child, not whether that funding came from the Commonwealth or the states. Labor's fundamental principle and promise was that all schools and all school systems would get the extra funding they needed by 2019, or 2022 for Victoria. They would get the fair funding level in every state and territory and every system.

The review recognised that this was a hard task. It said:

Not all states and systems have the same capacity to fund their school systems adequately.

Knowing this, we were prepared to give some states and sectors more help to make sure that every child got their fair funding level. But we also locked the states and territories into lifting their effort, their funding, because we were not prepared to allow the states and territories to cut their funding while we increased ours. We put in 65 per cent of the extra funding needed to get all schools and systems to their fair funding level, and we asked the state governments to put in 35 per cent of the extra funding needed.

Of course, all of these requirements were chucked out the window when the member for Sturt became the Minister for Education. Nowhere in the Gonski review does it suggest that public schools deserve to receive just 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard from the Commonwealth government or that non-government schools should receive 80 per cent. In fact the arbitrary imposition of this eighty-twenty rule means that this bill enshrines a sector specific rate of Commonwealth funding for different systems. It means that some wealthy schools will actually be much better off, while thousands of public schools and parish Catholic schools will be worse off. And there is no requirement for the states and territories to ever lift their contribution to take their public schools closer to the Schooling Resource Standard. At no stage has the government provided any defensible reason for this eighty-twenty rule.

Perhaps worst of all, this package is not fair. In 2013 those opposite campaigned to match Labor dollar for dollar on schools funding and to deliver proper funding for students with disabilities by 2015. This bill breaks both those promises. They have had four years in government, and neither one of those commitments has been met. This $22.3 billion cut is the equivalent of losing 22,000 teachers. Even with the lower level of funding, there is a much longer time line for that funding to be available in schools. Around 90 per cent of the government's much lower funding will not even begin to flow for the first four years—not until year 5 of this arrangement. Under the government's proposal, schools will not reach the new lower targets until 2027—after 80 per cent of children sitting in classrooms today and tomorrow have finished their schooling. These new lower targets will not be reached until some 15 years after the original review of school funding. Just remember that, under Labor, this is going to happen in the next couple of years. This is a lost opportunity for a generation of Australian children. We do not want to waste a day of these children's education, let alone waste years with this sort of delay. It is immoral. These children will have started and finished their schooling without ever reaching their fair funding level.

The abandonment of a fair sector-blind needs-based system of education funding has particularly negative effects for public schools. More than 50 per cent of the extra funding in this package goes to private schools. Under Labor's school funding plan, 80 per cent of extra funding would have gone to public schools—because public schools still educate most of the children with the highest needs. Seven in 10 children with a disability are enrolled in public schools, seven in 10 children from a language background other than English are enrolled in public schools, eight in 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are enrolled in public schools and eight in 10 children from the bottom one-quarter of socio-economic disadvantage are enrolled in public schools. Because of these cuts, only one in seven public schools will reach a fair funding level by 2027.

Compared with the existing legislation and arrangements, New South Wales public schools will lose $846 million over the next two years while, just as an example, The King's School in Sydney, with fees of about $30,000 a year, gets $19 million extra over the decade. South Australian schools will lose $265 million over two years, while Scotch College in Adelaide, with fees of about $25,000 a year, gets almost $10 million extra funding over the decade. Tasmanian public schools will lose $68 million over two years, while The Friends' School in Hobart, with fees of about $18,000 each year, will get $19 million more over the decade.

The Northern Territory, with the nation's most disadvantaged schools system, gets the smallest increases—not even enough to cover inflation. Take Anula Primary School in suburban Darwin. Twenty-two per cent of its students are Indigenous and around half of the students have a language background other than English. By 2027 this school will get about $4,232 per child from the Commonwealth government. That is an increase of just $554 over 10 years. Ten years!

Compare that with Trinity Grammar School in Sydney, with fees of up to $24,000 a year for primary school children. That will receive $7,799 per student, which is an increase of $2,734 per student over the same time period. Trinity Grammar has great resources. It has a low-need student population. How does it get an increase in funding from the Commonwealth government that is five times larger than a public school in suburban Darwin? In what way is this needs based funding? How can those opposite claim that this is fair with straight faces?

Tasmanian public schools get the second-roughest deal from this government. These systems will have no choice but to reduce the number of teachers and the extra support they provide—things like speech pathologists, school counsellors and extra literacy and numeracy teachers, all of the things that we have seen from the early years of investment in needs based funding. How is it fair that the poorest kids get the worst deal?

I really have been quite shocked by the attitude of members opposite, who are prepared to back these funding cuts in their own electorates. Yesterday, the member for Gilmore backed $19 billion of cuts to schools in her electorate over the next two years alone. We used the example of $1.3 million from Nowra East Public School alone. It is shocking—school after school loses funding in Gilmore.

Today, the member for Corangamite backed $11 million of cuts from public schools in her electorate over the next two years. Just one example: Belmont High School in her electorate stands to lose between $1.2 million and $1.6 million. To his great credit, Adrian Piccoli, the former education minister in New South Wales, from the National Party, said that Gonski matters for country kids. The needs based funding model matters for country kids.

The Deputy Prime Minister is actually backing cuts of $26.3 million to public schools in his electorate over the next two years alone. Is he serious? Does he really believe that kids in his electorate would not benefit from an extra $26.3 million over the next two years? There will be $1.6 million in cuts to Peel High School alone while, just as a comparison, The Armidale School, with wonderful facilities and fees of up to $20,000 per year, gets an extra $16.3 million over 10 years. In what world is this fair?

The member for Sturt backs $12.7 million of cuts in his electorate, including Linden Park public school getting a cut of $895,000 and Norwood Morialta High School getting a cut of $1½ million. For the member for Boothby, there are $17 million of cuts in her electorate, including Mitcham Primary School getting a cut of $650,000. Perhaps the strangest one, though, is the member for Melbourne. If the member for Melbourne supports this legislation, like his education spokesperson does—and media reports have him supporting this legislation—he is backing cuts of $10 million from schools in his electorate over the next two years alone, including Parkville College losing between $2.1 million and $2.5 million and Carlton Gardens Primary School losing over $100,000. I just do not understand. I do not understand what the government is doing, and I do not understand why the Greens would back these sorts of cuts, including to the public schools that they pretend that they are standing up for.

It is not clear whether members opposite do not know what is happening in their electorates or they do not care. But they should absolutely take heed of the warnings from the head of the New South Wales education system and from the Catholic schools that you cannot trust the numbers in the government's own funding calculator and the fact that school systems are warning principals, teachers and parents not to trust those numbers. But we should not be surprised. After all, this is the government that, as well as the census debacle and so on, actually presided over a Naplan online debacle that the schools had to ban because it could not get the program right.

As I have said, public schools will be very hard hit by this, but Catholic schools will also be very hard hit by these cuts. Catholic parish schools have warned that the cuts will force them to raise fees or, in some cases, close schools. The Reverend Anthony Fisher, the Archbishop of Sydney, said in The Australian Financial Review on 8 May:

What's already apparent is that the government's new 'capacity to pay formula' will force fee rises of over $1000 for a very significant number—at least 78—of the Catholic primary schools in Sydney alone. For some areas of Sydney fees could more than double. Modelling in other states has found the same.

In fact, modelling since then has suggested much larger rises too.

Catholic schools say that they are set to have lower funding allocations in 2018 than they have in 2017.

So we have seen a Liberal Party, which says that freedom of choice is hardwired into its DNA, absolutely abandoning Catholic parish schools. In fact, this morning, the government leaked school data to the newspapers in a transparent attempt to embarrass Catholic schools—embarrass principals, teachers and parents, who are fighting for funding—and stop them running a campaign standing up for their schools. Incidentally, this is the same government that refuses to release all of the data and all of the modelling that it is basing its numbers on. You cannot actually tell how the government has got to the numbers in the school funding calculator.

Under this government's proposal, there is no guarantee that Catholic schools will ever reach their fair funding level. And, instead of respectful discussions requested by the bishops, we have had insults hurled by the Minister for Defence Industry and the Minister for Education, accusing Catholic principals, teachers and parents of—and I am quoting—'dishonest behaviour'. The worst examples are here in the ACT, where there will be significant funding cuts as a result of this package. Good Shepherd Primary School in the ACT, with fees of around $3,300 per year, will see a funding cut over the next decade of $2.6 million. This low-fee local catholic school will see a cut to funding of $2.6 million over a decade. Just as a point of comparison, Geelong Grammar—one of Australia's best-resourced schools—will get a funding increase of $16.6 million over that same period. I ask again: how is that fair?

We are also profoundly deeply concerned about the lack of detail about how students with disability will be supported in this bill. There is no clear funding attached to this announcement. I have written to the minister. I have asked him to share what each school and each system will get to support children with disabilities in their learning. To date, he has refused to provide that information. It is simply not good enough to see a bill introduced into the House of Representatives without this information available to parents of children with a disability. What effect will this bill have on funding for the education of their children? Do they not deserve to know that before they are being asked to support, not support or criticise this legislation? Do we as their representatives not deserve to know that before we are asked to sign on, sight unseen? This government has, incidentally, flagged their intention to reduce funding for some wealthy independent schools. I want to put on the record today that we support that move and, if the government were to bring in separate legislation that achieves that end, we would be happy to vote for it. But it is important to note that, while some wealthy schools will receive lower funding growth over time, many wealthy schools will receive very significant increases under this government's funding formula.

The government that have been trying to defend their broken promise on matching Labor's funding dollar for dollar. They have been trying to defend their $30 billion of cuts in the 2014 budget. They have been trying to defend those cuts by saying, 'Money doesn't matter.'

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That's right—they say it all the time!

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They have been saying: 'Money doesn't matter. It's all about the reform.' Well, I ask members opposite: where is the reform in this bill? Where is the reform that is expected of school systems? This bill actually removes from law the commitments to deliver quality teaching and learning, to deliver school autonomy and an increased say for principals and school communities, to deliver transparency and accountability and to deliver for students with extra needs. It removes those commitments from law. The first objective of our act was to ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a 'high quality and highly equitable education for all students.' You will not find that in the government's bill. Does it not matter anymore? Does a high quality and highly equitable education not matter for Australian students?

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It matters to us!

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The government says that a new national agreement will be taken to COAG mid-2018.

Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sometime down the road.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Sometime. It is the vibe—who knows. What will be in that national agreement? We do not know. What we do know is that years of reform have been wasted because, first of all, the Liberal's first education minister, the member for Sturt, said reform was 'just red tape'. He said that states and territories can do what they like; reform is just red tape. This education minister wants to take reforms out of the legislation through the bill that is before this parliament. We are also told, incidentally, that sometime next year bilateral agreements will be sought with the states. I thought they were against state by state, territory by territory arrangements. Is that not what they have been railing against?

This bill also reflects the reduced expectations in our education system as a result of the $22 billion of cuts. This bill has cut the targets that we set. It no longer aims for Australia to be one of the top five highest-performing countries in reading, maths and science by 2025. It no longer aims for our schooling system to be considered high-quality and highly equitable by international standards by 2025, nor to halve the gap between the outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students by 2020. After all their talk about the need to reverse Australia's declining education performance, this government will not back itself to achieve better.

This bill is unfair. It abandons a needs-based, sector-blind funding model. Labor created a needs-based, sector-blind funding model because we wanted to end the divisive system-versus-system fight for funding, because it is not the system that matters—it is the child. We created needs based funding because we want to make sure that all schools have the resources they need to deliver a great education for every child. We created needs based funding because we believe that children from disadvantaged families and communities should have the best chance at succeeding in life.

But instead of properly funding all our schools, this government is giving big business a $65 billion tax cut. It is giving millionaires a tax cut. What sort of society would we be if we were to take funding away from a proper education for our schoolchildren and give that money to multinational companies and millionaires as a tax cut? This is not just robbing individual children who miss out; it is robbing our nation of the full value of the gifts and talents of every Australian child.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the amendment seconded?

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the amendment and reserve my right to speak.

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The original question was that this bill be now read a second time. To this the honourable the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has moved as an amendment that all words after 'That' be omitted with a view to substituting other words. If it suits the House, I will state the question in the form that the amendment be agreed to. The question now is that the amendment be agreed to.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a riveting half an hour! I sat there with great passion and listened to the voices in the background there, and the question I had to ask myself was: 'Hasn't anyone got a calculator?' Everyone sat behind the member for Sydney and they listened with great passion, but no-one got out a calculator. I never thought that increasing funding was actually a cut! I do not know where that came from.

I think back to when I was a young man and I was playing guitar; my wife saw me playing guitar and she thought, 'If I hook-up with him, he's going to be a rock star!' There was going to be this great thing in the future—that I was going to be a champion rock star—

Honourable Members:

Honourable members interjecting—

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! Leave the chamber!

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

but, unfortunately, she did not get a rock star; she got a politician—quite a step down! If you had heard me play guitar, Mr Deputy Speaker, you would have known that I was never going to be a rock star; I was only ever going to be something at quite a level down, and that might just be a politician.

If we all look at the budget from 2013, where they put forward the proportion of money that they claimed to have put aside to fund education, we see that they did not put the money aside. So it is easy to say it is a cut, but it is not a cut if you do not put the money on the table.

The disturbing part to me is that those opposite, at this instance, think that they are ready to take on government again and that they are ready to take on the Treasury and to manage the books of Australia. I think the lesson that everyone should get out of that last half hour is: they are not ready—not yet. And the reason they are not ready is that they have not worked out that, before you spend money, you have first got to put the money aside. Before you can deliver a project, you have got to explain to the Australian people how you are going to fund it.

In half an hour there was a great opportunity for the Australian Labor Party, who want to be the next government, to explain to the Australian people how they are going to fund it. Anyone can say, 'I'm going to do this and I'm going to do that,' but unless Labor can explain to me how they are going to fund it, it is an empty promise, just like my wife might have thought I was going to be a rock star. Once she heard me play on my guitar she realised it was indeed an empty promise.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I hope she's not listening now. She would be very disappointed!

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She knows it was an empty promise and she is disappointed! But not as disappointed, I have to say, as the Australian people would be if they were to put you in power again and realise that your promise once again is empty. Show me where you have made provision for an additional $22 billion. You cannot do it. You still refuse to do it. The thing is, if you are going to give out an extra $22 billion in education in this current environment we are in, you have to start to list the things you are going to cut. What are the things you are going to cut? Ah, you do not want to talk about that. No, you do not want to talk about that. The reason is, of course, when you actually do get the Treasury you have to find savings before you can spend. You have to put the money aside. This is the difference between us, the responsible financial managers, and you, who have not yet done the legwork in opposition. Opposition should be a time to reflect, a time to plan, and a time to show to the Australian people that you are worthy of being an alternative government. But not yet.

What we have done in this instance is actually put money aside. There are 119 schools in the electorate of Mallee. There are 23,062 students. Every one of those 119 schools will receive more money. In everyone's language, receiving more money is not a cut but an increase. My esteemed colleagues here have better financial backgrounds than me, but I always thought that if you give someone more money it is not a cut.

Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it's not!

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right; it is actually an increase. Every one of those 119 schools will be better off. Those schools' principals have been coming to me as early as yesterday, saying, 'We support this legislation,' because this is, in reality, more money for those schools. Every student is better off. An additional $5.7 million across the electorate of Mallee will go into education.

Can I just draw back for a sec here and say that money alone does not deliver results. There are, in fact, three things that are important for education. There is, of course, the culture of the school and the teachers. When I go around and visit the schools, one of the things I do as a federal member is give away Australian flags. When I give away an Australian flag I make sure I visit the school. One of the things that is important is the culture of the teachers. When I give away these flags it gives me a chance to walk in, talk and have a look at these kids and see whether they are engaged. I have to say that the teachers I have in the Wimmera and Mallee—my patch; a third of the state of Victoria—are very engaged teachers. They actually care about their job, they care about their students and they work very hard.

The second thing that is important is the facilities. The facilities, I have to say, have largely been mismanaged by the state Labor government. Some of the facilities I have in my state schools in Victoria frankly need a fairly good upgrade but are neglected by the Andrews government. If we look over the last 15 years, it has largely been Labor governments that have run the state schools in Victoria, and it has been very poor. Within these facilities I always come across the product of the Gillard government's Building the Education Revolution program. What a great name! That is a great name: a revolution. Building the Education Revolution. Every single time, without fail, the schools say to me, 'If only we could have administered that funding better.' In contrast, the Catholic schools were given autonomy to manage their money, whereas in Victoria it was administered in such a way that they had to use a very set precinct about the way it was delivered. The delivery of that has been appalling.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Who was in government at the state level?

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, it was very clearly directed from the Gillard government. Bear with me here. The Catholic schools were able to get local contractors. Instead of building a school hall, I recall, they were able to actually build things they wanted to build. It is not just money; it is actually how you deliver it. That is in contrast to the Gillard government's Building the Education Revolution.

The third thing that delivers good education is the home life. I do not think enough is quite made of this. It is one thing to talk about education being teachers and facilities, but the third thing is the home life. If you do not have parents who are engaged in their children's education, if you do not have children who are getting breakfast, for example, then is it little wonder that we will have disappointing educational outcomes? The challenge for us is that—over progressive years it goes from: 2016, $16 billion of federal money; 2017, $17 billion of federal money; 2018, $18 billion of federal money; then, there is a significant ratcheting up of another $18 billion on top that we are delivering. The thing that worries me is we still are not seeing our literacy and numeracy rates increasing. Part of that, I have to say, is the home life. We have too many students in the electorate of Mallee who are going to school without breakfast. I think that is something that is getting lost in the discussion around education funding. Education for a child is not just the teachers and it is not just the facilities; it is also the home life. More work needs to be done in this space to start to tackle holistic education if we are going to have our young Australians reach the potential that we want them to reach.

We have done a little bit in our office in that we deliver posters. Fifteen thousand posters have just recently gone out of '100 ways to praise a child'. They are little posters that you can stick in people's toilets. They are helping parents to encourage students in their self-esteem. We now have growth charts, as well, to try and get people to eat better. We have times tables charts. We have ABC charts. All of these sorts of things are about encouraging the home life, which is part of a holistic education. One hundred and nineteen schools and 23,000 students will be better off. This government is actually standing behind the education of our children.

When it comes to education, the ability to know what is the difference between a cut and an increase is to understand when you are getting spun a lie and when you are not. It is when you are able to do determine what somebody is telling you. I hope to goodness that our education produces people that can think for themselves rather than people that listen to the waffle that we just heard for the last 30 minutes.

The future of our education system is good because we are looking at it and delivering it, and because we have put the money aside. A needs-based funding system does work for regional Victoria, which I represent, because we have needs. I have to say: the government that I am a part of is, for the first time, able to really put our hand on our heart and say, 'We are addressing this.' We have listened to the work of David Gonski through his report. We are implementing in the most efficient way and in the best way.

Incidentally enough, there are only 15 financial members of the Australian Labor Party in the electorate of Mallee—only 15, I have to say.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

True believers!

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

True believers! I will say they are true believers; misinformed, but true believers they are. At election time, those 15 members were handing out at the pre-poll. As people were walking in, they were saying to them, 'Health and education.' 'Health and education' was their slogan. It sounds very impressive. Who is not going to vote for health and education. You should have seen the look on their face when I said to them at the time, 'Health and education, and lower taxes.' They were very happy with that. It is no wonder that the two-party preferred in Mallee is 75-25. But if you look at—

Mr Keogh interjecting—

Yes, health and education—

Mr Keogh interjecting—

I did. Health and education, and lower taxes. And if you look at—

Mr Keogh interjecting—

I did. What a great commitment! And if you look at the electorate of Mallee—

Mr Keogh interjecting—

Andrew Hastie (Canning, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Burt will refrain.

Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

people realise, because they are small business people and country people with high bulldust radars, that if you want to pay for something you have to put the money on the table first.

So I challenge the Australian Labor Party, as they talk about this and as they talk about their education package, that they will take the opportunity, over all this speaking that they have before them, to lay on the table exactly where the $22 billion is that they are going to commit into the future, how they are going to pay for it and what they are going to cut out of the current budget, or take out of the current budget, to show that they are going to deliver it. If they fail to do that, they are proving to the Australian people that they have wasted the last four years, that they have not used the opportunity of being in opposition to do their preparation work, to put their books together, and to say to the Australian people that they can trust the Treasury books in their hands. In contrast, we have a fully-funded package that delivers for the 23,062 students in the Mallee. Every one of the 119 schools will be better off, there will be more money, and they will be funded properly by this government.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 before the House is a betrayal. It is betrayal of the Gonski report. It is a betrayal of students. It is a betrayal of parents. It is a betrayal of teachers and school communities. But, most fundamentally, it is a betrayal of our collective future. That is why I am proud to join the deputy leader, the shadow minister, and all my Labor colleagues in making clear my opposition to this bill and everything it represents. It is not needs based funding as we understand it on this side of the House. In Labor, when we talk about needs based funding, we are talking about the needs of individual students to get the educational support they need to fulfil their potential. On the other side of the House, it is very clear that the need is base politics—the basest of politics. We see that in the broader priorities this government has put before us in refusing to invest in schools, refusing to invest in our human potential and choosing instead $65 billion in tax cuts for companies, the majority of which will be realised by overseas shareholders. That is the poverty of this government's vision for Australia. That is its lack of confidence in Australians, particularly young Australians. We are focused today, as we join this debate, on what is at stake, and I stand up here as a Victorian member who is extremely conscious that in the next two years $630 million will be ripped from public schools in my state. I cannot begin to imagine what will be lost in terms of individual lives.

It was interesting to be in the chamber for the contribution of the previous speaker, the member for Mallee. There are a few things in his contribution that deserve a response—firstly and fundamentally, his reference to the importance of someone's home life as a foundation for education. This shows how he and too many of his colleagues fail to understand needs based school funding. For us, we are determined to make sure that the support we put into schools and schooling overcomes the disadvantages that come to some through the lottery of birth, the lottery of a postcode. Members opposite, including the member for Mallee, are blind to this. They are blind to it, but it is something that we see as critical to our challenge in supporting equity and excellence in schools education. He also laid down a challenge about funding, and I think we need to respond to it here. We have got runs on the board in a couple of senses. Firstly, we found the funding. We prioritised the funding for the National Plan for School Improvement when in government. Secondly, in the last term, in the last parliament, the member for Adelaide, who was a fantastic shadow minister for education, and the shadow cabinet made the tough decision to continue to support the full Gonski. This week, as we approached the debate on this bill, we made the same decision. We prioritise education, not tax cuts. On the maths, I say this to the member for Mallee: taking $30 billion out and putting $8 billion back is a cut and a pretty big cut, with profound consequences.

I think it is worth reflecting on how we come to be debating this issue, because all of the questions of schools funding are complex in Australia—they are complex by reason of the history of our Federation and the history of how schooling systems have evolved in Australia. For more than 40 years there was an interminable argument about the Commonwealth's role in funding schools education in Australia. It took a Labor government, the government of Julia Gillard, to bridge that gap, to end the wars over schools funding and to recognise that quality education is a national responsibility and should be something that matters to every Australian. That is a Labor tenet. It took a Labor government to over those 40 years of inertia and conflict.

Of course, since then, we have seen obfuscation, denial and failures of process as well as substance. The Deputy Leader of the Opposition made clear that our opposition to this bill is based on principle, in terms of it failing to secure needs-based education, but it is also based on some of the practicalities. She spoke about the practicalities in terms of the funding arrangements. But the practicalities that go to process are significant also, because they highlight so many of the flaws that are contained in the bill which is before the House.

The member for Sturt promised a unity ticket on schools funding at 2013 election. That was the election where I was first elected, and I remember the signs up in my electorate: 'Dollar-for-dollar matching'. Well, that was of course a lie; it has been proven to be a lie. Since then, we have seen him crabwalk away from that promise. And in the current minister we see a minister who is capable of talking around any issue without getting to its crux, and that is what has characterised his engagement in this portfolio from the moment he took on those responsibilities. He has failed to engage with the states and he has failed to engage with the schooling sectors, particularly systemic Catholic schools, as anyone would have observed. This failure to engage characterises the failings which emerge in this legislation—those practical failings.

Government speakers have been speaking a lot about transparency. But, whatever this proposal is, it is not transparent. We do not have the data. We know that the data from the funding calculator that our Prime Minister so proudly displayed in a ranting performance in question time today is not adequate. We do not have the evidence before us to properly assess all the claims which are contained in the materials underpinning this bill. And that just is not satisfactory, because this legislation is so important. The quality of schooling is so important not only to individual Australian children but also to all of us, if we are serious about Australia's future as a high-wage, high-skill economy.

In question time today we saw the hollowness of the government's agenda—the recourse from the Prime Minister and the minister representing the Minister for Education on tired talking points. These were things that were drawn out during the contribution of the shadow minister, in particular this tiresome reference to overcoming 27 separate arrangements. In the provisions contained in this bill there will of course be separate arrangements, but they will be a blunt instrument without the strings attached to require an effective partnership between the states, the territories and the Commonwealth to get to the core of the Gonski vision, and that is a common student resourcing standard across the country. Under Labor, we were to reach that recommended standard for most schools in two years time and, for the rest, those in my state of Victoria, by 2022.

But what is before us now in this arrangement? Abandoning Commonwealth responsibility for our national education standards; abandoning Commonwealth responsibility to every child in school today, because 10 years from now only one-seventh of public schools will have reached the schooling resourcing standard—only around 15 per cent in 2027. Often when we look at long-range forecasts and decisions in this area, there can be arguments for looking to a 10-year vision. But let's think about a schooling cycle. As a parent of a child in grade 1, I think about how far down his schooling journey he will be by 2027. This sort of delay cannot be afforded; it comes at a cost that is much, much too great. And that is what makes the cheap politics of the Prime Minister so much more than simply disappointing; as I said at the outset, it is a betrayal of all of us.

On this side of the House we stand firm for this principle: every young Australian deserves every chance to reach their full potential and have a quality education. We recognise the economic benefits for them but also the weight of evidence about the wellbeing that comes from being successful at school. Fundamentally that is why, in 2013, Labor introduced a funding model to ensure that every student would receive a great education. Reference to the Schooling Resource Standard guaranteed that young Australians in most disadvantage would receive the extra support to get the individual attention to reach their potential.

And now we have a government which has turned its back on those students in particular, as well as all of our students. What is at stake here is a cut of $22 billion, the equivalent of sacking 22,000 teachers. These cuts will impact most significantly on our public schools. Under Labor's model, the majority of the additional Commonwealth investment was going to government schools. As the member for Sydney said, these schools educate the vast majority of students with disability—a matter I hope to have time to return to further—most kids who do not speak English at home, most Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander kids and most kids from low-income families. This model is providing much less for those schools and so much less support for those kids. Accordingly, it is a model which, almost by definition, will undermine the education of those children, including many in my electorate of Scullin.

Mill Park Secondary College in my electorate has pioneered some fantastic innovations in teaching practice which will be fundamentally undermined by cuts of $1.8 million. Cuts of a similar level, or nearly as high, will impact on Epping Secondary College down the road. The other day I was outside Epping Views Primary School, which will be the victim of a cut of $800,000 over the next two years. This will dramatically impact that school's capacity to service a growing and diverse population.

What the Gonski review fundamentally said was that the Commonwealth and state governments need to work together if we are to ensure that every child receives the education they deserve. Of course. What matters here is the total resources provided to schools, not which government provides those resources. Labor understood that in government and Labor understands that now. The contrast on the other side of this place is instructive—whether it be the contemptuous disregard shown by the member for Sturt in the agreements that he entered into or the more fundamental withdrawal from responsibility that we are now seeing from Minister Birmingham. Fundamentally, the agreements that we entered into recognise this. The Prime Minister has turned his back on those agreements. He says in effect that it is not the total funding that matters. Under this bill, let's be clear: the states are not locked into keeping their share of the bargain and are only required to maintain the 2017 per student funding level. This is not enough, especially for those students most in need of extra support.

Underpinning this are concerns of process. There is no detail about how students with disability are to be supported through this bill, which makes significant changes to those arrangements. We on this side of the House remember the promise that the disability loading would in effect be finalised by 2015. Well here we are, in 2017, and uncertainty continues. It is clear that, under this government, every Australian does not count when it comes to getting a quality school education.

When we go beyond the high-level concerns—and it is difficult to do so, because they raise such profound issues—and look to the detail of this bill, we see many other causes for concern. In particular, there is the removal of critical objects from the former bill that shaped our attitude to the purposes of a national engagement effectively taking national responsibility for school funding and the outcomes that come from schools.

When we look at this bill we see a rushed job.

Debate interrupted.