Ann Sudmalis (Gilmore, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Earlier, I was discussing just how bad the strategy of constantly repeating mistruth is. It is both insulting and deceitful for everyday Australians, and certainly confusing for parents everywhere, including those living in my electorate of Gilmore. I talked about the bubble of politics—the argy-bargy of debate that can be easily dissected into truth and false facts, or fake news, as some of my colleagues referred to. However, many parts of the media are not as savvy, and, clearly, from some of the debate today, neither are some of those in the opposition. Every member of the opposition over there is repeating the same fairy story. There was no funding for the fifth and sixth years of their proposed education funding. I believe this is a pretty shameful way to behave. Labor's 2013 election commitment to education was unfunded then, and it remains so, despite some Labor candidates stating that every dollar will be replaced. I ask: show me the money. Where is it coming from? No member of the shadow Labor ministry has confirmed this information is in fact truth. I wonder, does the shadow Treasurer know that the Labor team has committed to $22 billion? I imagine not. It will leave a massive, unfunded commitment.

Education funding is calculated using a really complicated model that has a reference to a base amount per student, plus loadings. Those loadings are put there to target schools and students of disadvantage, including those from lower socioeconomic areas, students with disabilities, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders and students with low English proficiency. There is also a consideration of school size and location. In my case, the New South Wales government has a different methodology, for which I cannot account. Commonwealth funding to government schools in New South Wales has been growing faster than the state funding. Under the coalition government, from 2014 to 2017, total funding to government schools in New South Wales has been $7.2 billion, an increase of 43.7 per cent, and the second largest increase across government schools in Australia. The future increase from 2015-16 through to 2020 will be an additional $563 million. Our funding growth means there is no reason schools cannot continue to support teachers with their new or existing initiatives, such as specialist teachers or intervention programs. Buildings, playground equipment and yard maintenance for government schools is actually the responsibility of the state government. Overall, the coalition government is growing investment in schools from $16 billion to $20.1 billion, on top of more than $14 billion the coalition has been delivering for regional and remote schools. There have not been and nor will there be any cuts to education funding in Gilmore.

However, there is a great deal more to education than having well-maintained buildings and increased funding: there is the quality of our teachers and their efforts in every way to help each and every child reach their individual potential. I know that the majority of our teachers love their work. They love the children that they teach. I acknowledge that. I have seen their work in action and the results they achieve.

The budget has committed future real funding for education, giving certainty. This is much preferred by parents and teachers, rather than some dreamlike, nebulous amount that, to this minute, remains unfunded—like an empty piggybank. I question the reasons behind the Labor Party denying initiatives for truly delivering a needs based funding model. Why will they vote to see government schools receive, at most, 4.7 per cent legislated funding growth compared to the coalition's plan for a 5.1 per cent annual increase? Why will they vote for schools of identical need to receive different levels of funding for their Schooling Resource Standard just because they are in a different state? Why, after using the name of Gonski as a call to arms for teachers unions around the country, is Labor now going against David Gonski's endorsement of the coalition's plan?

Why do they prefer different funding methodologies that advantage some non-government schools over others? And if they want to continue the 27 special deals that they implemented they will see needy students in one state get up to $15,000 less than the same sort of student in the same sort of school but in a different state.

Labor is trying to have an argument about funding, but the legislation before parliament is about delivering a real needs based model to distribute that funding. Spending is not a substitute for reform. It is remarkable that after years of posturing on the Gonski that the Leader of the Opposition now stands opposed to the Turnbull government's consistent implementation of a needs based funding model.

I began with a reference to the Schooling Resource Standard, which is the central focus of the Gonski reforms. From 2018, new arrangements for Commonwealth schools funding will be focused on needs with the Schooling Resource Standard, as recommended by that review in 2011. The resourcing standard for each school will depend on the size and composition of its student population, the number of students who need extra help through having a disability; those who come from a disadvantaged home, who may never have read a book at home; Indigenous students; and the size of the school and its location.

I call on the Labor to stop this ridiculous rubbish, treating Australians as if they were gullible sponges absorbing constant repetition of untruthful statements so that eventually they believe them to be true. Mums, dads, grandparents and families just want to know that the current programs running in their children's schools will continue. With our increases, these programs will continue.

Let's just examine some real case scenarios of funding for the students in Gilmore. If a student is attending Shoalhaven High School, this year the federal government is contributing $3,708 to that child. Next year it will be $3,896. Nowra East Public School, the school in my electorate that is now known throughout the country—not necessarily for the terrific job they do—this year receives $3,528 for each student, and next year they will receive $3,707. At Vincentia High School each student is allocated $3,380; next year it will be $3,551. And, as a final example, at Moruya High School each student is allocated $3,419 this year, and next year it will be $3,592.

Every single school in Gilmore gets an increase in education investment from the Commonwealth government. The figures are averaged out per student, but in the end it is a number gained by adding to the base according to the needs. Eventually, the school principal, working with his or her staff and parents, chooses how best to utilise the money allocated to their school in the best interests of their enrolled students. The teachers and principals just want to know that the time they have spent developing new programs or having the training opportunities to grow in their professional development to deliver great programs for our children will continue. They want certainty in relation to this. With our investment in education, all of the above will happen.

Contrast this certainty of funding to imaginary dollar figures that are unfunded. It has been quoted that sometime somewhere they will get that from revenue: 'Oh, does that include borrowing from overseas? Well, whatever it takes.' This is not appropriate for Australia. We need to spend within our revenue sources, particularly for education.

As a parent and a past teacher, I note that certainty wins, absolutely, over fake promises. The teachers in my region—in schools like Sanctuary Point Public School, Nowra East Public School and Nowra Public School, then going from Bombaderry down to Ulladulla and Milton and then further down to Batemans Bay and Sunshine—are amazing. They have done fabulous things with our children and they just need to know that the money they are getting next year will be more than the money they are getting now. They need to know that the money they are getting over the next 10 years is going to be more—more than CPI—so that principals can actually develop programs like the robotics at Sanctuary Point, like the video classes or like some of the other things they are doing with STEM. They are doing amazing things, and yet there are children in those schools who have literacy problems so they are bringing in helpers for literacy. Each and every one of those programs will continue, and each and every one of those parents needs to be reassured that each and every one of those programs will continue.

I am tired of the opposition scaring my parents and my custodial grandparents by telling mistruths—which are then regurgitated in the media—to the public that their children will miss out. It is wrong, it is inappropriate and they should stop doing it.

Our children deserve so much more respect than you are showing them. Our teachers deserve more respect. You are degrading the work that they have done and you are pretending that you have got a funding bucket that will commit to what you are promising. You do not. You never did and you still do not. I am absolutely ashamed of some of the tactics that you are using. For goodness sake, education is far more important than that.

Stephen Jones (Whitlam, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Regional Development and Infrastructure) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is a sad day. It is sad day for the parliament and a sad day for the country because today the government has asked the parliament to approve its plan to downgrade the aspiration for Australian students, their education and the country—like the government abandoned its plans for jobs and growth in last week's budget. It is a very sad day indeed.

Let us be very clear about what the bill before the House, the Australian Education Amendment Bill, is going to do. You can tell a lot from the amendments that this bill brings forward, which will seek to change the objectives in the Australian Education Act. The act currently has as one of its objectives the provision that in Australia all students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach their full potential so that he or she can succeed, achieve his or her aspirations and contribute fully to his or her community now and into the future. That is right—this is the provision that members opposite are about to vote to have removed from the act: the aspiration and the objective that all students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, irrespective of where they live.

It goes further. The government is asking us to remove from the act the proposition that puts in place targets, including targets that will ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high-quality and highly equitable education for all students by having regard to the following national targets: for Australia to be placed, by 2025, in the top five highest performing countries based on the performance of school students in reading, maths and science. So in a few hours members opposite are going to vote to remove that target from the Australian Education Act. They are going to vote to remove from our legislation the requirement that we strive to meet a target of putting Australian schools in the top five highest performing countries in the world in maths, science and English.

It goes further. We are going to be voting to remove from the act a proposition for the Australian schooling system to be considered a high-quality and highly equitable schooling system by international standards. We are going to be voting against lifting year 12 or equivalent, or certificate II attainment rates, by 90 per cent. Have you ever heard of such a thing? We are going to be voting against lifting the attainment of year 12 students by 90 per cent. We are going to be voting against halving the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in year 12 or equivalent. We are going to be voting against that. On this day, of all days, we are going to be voting against halving the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018, from a baseline of 2008. Can you imagine it—on this day, of all days, coalition MPs are going to be voting against that, and they have the temerity, as the member for Gilmore has just done, to stand there and lecture us on values when they are voting against these propositions. It beggars belief.

There is a very good reason why they are asking the parliament to vote against these propositions. It is because they know, under their plans, they cannot meet them. They know, under their plans, they cannot meet these objectives that we have previously signed up to. The reason they cannot meet them is that they have ripped $22 billion out of the school education system. The member for Gilmore asked recently how we were going to fund it. Well, we would have a lot more money to provide for education if we were not dropping $65 billion on a corporate tax cut. Now that is an unfunded promise! We would have a lot more money to spend on education if we were not dropping $65 billion on an unfunded tax cut for big business.

I want my kids to grow up in a country where education is a fundamental human right, not a privilege, and where it does not matter what the circumstances of a child's birth are—they will have access to a great local school so they can reach their best potential in life. It is what animates every Labor member of parliament, and has for decades.

In 2008, a Labor government led the states in a ministerial council on education, employment and training which issued the Melbourne Declaration on Educational Goals for Young Australians. We managed to get all states and territories to sign up to two goals: (1) that Australian schooling promotes equity and excellence, and (2) that all young Australians become successful learners, confident and creative individuals, and active and informed citizens.

We knew that we could not meet those goals unless we, as a government, stepped up and redressed the inequities of the school funding system that existed then and which still persist today. Labor undertook a landmark review into school funding on this basis.

We also invested over $16 billion in school infrastructure, spending $296 million in the Illawarra and south-east on 188 separate projects. Local communities were welcoming these projects at the very same time as members of the Liberal and National parties were ridiculing them.

In my community and in my region, this was the first investment that many of those local schools had seen in over 50 years, bringing a new classroom, a new science lab, a new library or a new community hall. It was the first investment that they had seen in decades. They welcomed it, and they saw this as a first instalment in Labor's vision for a better education system in this country.

Perhaps the most significant Labor legacy in our local schools is the investment not just in bricks and mortar but in the funds schools need to give every student the opportunity they need, through more teachers, improved teacher training, more resources like learning support officers and teachers' aides, improved standards and better classrooms and resources. These funds give schools quite simply the resources they need so that schools can distribute them as they know best, to give their students the best chance of success.

The Schooling Resource Standard was a sector-blind model which clearly defined the funding all schools needed to deliver a great education. It was a funding model that guaranteed extra funding for kids with poorer outcomes, to give them the extra help they needed.

These cuts tear at the very throat of that resource standard. The changes that the Liberal government has introduced into this parliament since 2014 represent $22 billion in cuts to education, while over $65 billion is being given in tax cuts to big businesses.

Parents and teachers know that schools will be worse off because of these decisions. They know it. They tell us, and I am sure they are telling members of the coalition parties as well. It is the equivalent of cutting more than $2.4 million from every school in Australia over the next decade. That would employ over 22,000 new teachers.

The review of school funding recommended that all governments work together to ensure that every child has the best chance to succeed in school and in life. The Labor government offered the states two-thirds of the extra funding needed and locked states into increasing their funding by one-third. None of this would work if we were putting more money into the top of the bucket while states and territories were draining money out of the bottom of the bucket. So it was a condition of our agreement with the states and territories that we shared the burden of increasing funding to the schooling system in total.

When the member for Sturt became the Minister for Education he famously tore all this up. This was his no strings attached promise to the states in their education policy mark one. They tore all this up; in their first budget they tore up the funding agreements, particularly in the out years. They now ask us to give them a pat on the back because of the $30 billion they cut out they are putting $7 billion back. Teachers and parents and school communities will not be fooled. Indeed, in my own electorate they know that this will cost $20 million in 2018-19 alone. That is why yesterday, at the local primary school at Barrack Heights, local mum Rosemarie Roach was one of many who gathered at a community meeting to meet with teachers and principals, and they had a very simple request to the government: please keep your promises—our children really need you. They are not my words; they are the words of Rosemarie Roach, a mother from the school. Under Labor, Barrack Heights Public School would receive over $215,000 next year, in 2018, but under the Prime Minister's plan the school will receive just $36,000. That is the difference in one school in one year. That is a huge cut on what was agreed to, in just one year.

Make no mistake, the Prime Minister and the minister are walking away from a fundamental part of the Schooling Resource Standard which was agreed with the states, which was agreed with the territories and which was understood by every school in this country. Is it any wonder that we have at this very moment school ministers from Liberal state governments around the country jumping up and down? They are being far more critical—they are saying harsher things than I have ever said this place—about this Prime Minister and about the education minister and about what they are proposing to do to the school funding system. They are saying far harsher things than I have ever said, because they know that what the government has done is renege on a contract, renege on an agreement.

Today I am calling on all members of the coalition parties to look at what is happening in their own electorates and look at what is going to be the result of these changes to the school funding system. I am particularly calling on members who represent regional, rural and remote electorates, because we know these are the areas where education results are, quite frankly, not up to where they need to be if we are going to meet the aspirations we set out in the act. We know that regional communities, particularly communities with lower SES ratings, are struggling—they do not have the resources they need to ensure that their kids can get the education they need to compete in a modern world. There are huge gaps in participation rates and huge gaps in completion rates. When you compare what is happening in the inner cities with what is happening in the rural and regional parts of the country, the city and metro areas have participation rates almost double those of regional areas throughout the country.

We are calling on members of the National Party, we are calling on members from regional and rural constituencies, to do the right thing by their electorates. It is not unprecedented for members of the coalition parties to exercise their votes in the interests of their constituencies as opposed to the interests of and the political plans laid out by their government. In 1973, when the Whitlam government put the Schools Commission Bill to the parliament, it was hotly contested. The then Leader of the Opposition, Malcolm Fraser, opposed it in the House and his colleagues opposed it in the Senate. After cool consideration by Country Party members, they understood their poor regional schools and poor systemic schools in rural and regional Australia were the very schools that were going to benefit from the changes, and they crossed the floor. They crossed the floor and voted with the Labor Party to ensure that the Schools Commission Bill was passed into law, a bill which delivered better funding and better outcomes for regional and rural schools throughout the country.

We are calling on those same MPs, the coalition MPs that represent rural and regional Australia, to do the right thing by their communities and consider voting with Labor to ensure that we do not do the damage that this bill is going to do to school education and the funding system that is needed to deliver on the aspirations in the Melbourne Declaration and the promise that was made to all state governments throughout the country. (Time expired)

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. It is a great privilege to be able to contribute to this debate on behalf of the people of Goldstein, particularly because the central thrust of this government's proposal is to focus on equality of opportunity for every Australian child. One of the tragedies of this debate, as we just heard from the previous speaker, is highfalutin rhetoric designed to achieve a political gain, rather than focusing on what is in the best interests of Australian children to make sure that no matter where you come from, no matter what your circumstances, your background or who your parents are, every Australian child has the best chance to be able to secure a good education that is funded and enjoys public support to make sure you have the best chance to be successful in life. That is the central thrust of everything that sits at the heart of this education package, ably led by the education minister, Senator Simon Birmingham. That is, in the end, why I applaud it.

One of the most disappointing parts of this debate has been the continual effort by those on the opposition benches to talk about funding cuts that are simply fictitious and imaginary. Do not get me wrong: they are not alone. They are being aided, for instance, by the state government of Victoria. I had a constituent who emailed me only a few days ago saying, 'I have just read a news story in The Age newspaper.' I could not find it on their front page, and I am not surprised, because they should have been embarrassed by it. It was basically a carbon copy of a state government of Victoria press release, going through how the federal government, despite spending $18.6 billion additionally on education across Australia, was somehow cutting education across the board and to every single school.

That seemed to me a rather fictitious proposition, but I persevered. I have an inquisitive mind and sometimes like to see what the basis is of the fallacies and lies put out there by the Australian Labor Party and particularly the Andrews government. I read through the story and it became clear that they had simply generated a whole bunch of numbers which helped support their argument, because rather than focus on how to improve the outcomes for Australian children, they would rather dedicate the lives and energies of bureaucrats in the education department towards running a fictitious political campaign—arguably an abuse of their time and resources. You could tell, because there was not a single specific number. There was a number that said, 'This school loses somewhere between $200,000 and $400,000 a year'—whatever school it was that was specifically listed. That seemed to be pretty spectacular, considering that it was supposed to be an exact identification of how much money was going to be cut.

So I continued to engage with this constituent, and I said, 'I do not think that is right, because if you use the education department's estimator about how much money is to be spent on the school'—I will not name the school—'it showed quite a substantial increase in expenditure.' Eventually we got to the bottom of it and found a state government of Victoria funding estimator that they applied to every single school. This constituent said—this is what they said to me; I did not make this up—'Every time I enter the name of a school, there was a cut.' I said, 'Do you think perhaps they should reveal how it is calculated; what the evidence base of it is; where the information came from?' None of that was present. All that was available was, there was this school and there was a funding cut, within these huge parameters of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then I pointed him to the education department's estimator, which said, 'This is your school; this is the amount of money you get now; this is the amount of money you will get next year; this is the amount of money you are going to get in 2027 based on enrolment data.' Obviously the last part is hypothetical, but with specific dollars. Then it breaks it down, aggregated for the school and also for the students.

I said, 'Which data do you trust more—the one that is specific and gives you a clear indication, or this round number put up by the state government?'

Eventually we found that the state government number of $22 million was based on a fictitious promise that they could never back up, that they could never fund, to increase the amount of expenditure on education. They had simply rounded it out by the number of students, weighted a little bit.

It is quite common to say that some people cannot lie straight in bed when you are saying something that is not accurate, but the truth of the Australian Labor Party today, particularly when it comes to education funding, is they could not lie straight in a coffin. That is how dishonest this campaign is. It is simply not true. The federal government is spending more money on public schools, independent schools and the Catholic education system than has ever been spent. That is the truth. That is a factual accuracy. Nominally, there is a huge amount of money being spent. There is a significant increase in funding to independent schools, to Catholic schools and also to state government schools. Not a single school in the electorate of Goldstein is losing a dollar of funding. Every single one is seeing a dollar increase.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Lucky Goldstein!

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Lucky them, indeed. I am glad to see that members of the opposition on the frontbench now are acknowledging the fact that every single one of them is going to get a dollar increase. And it does not matter whether you come from a Catholic education background, an independent school education background or a state school background, every single child in the Goldstein electorate is going to see an increase in their funding. In some cases it will be a quite substantial increase, particularly if you go to a state school. More often than not these are schools which provide opportunities, and we want them to provide equal opportunities, to children who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds—though not exclusively, and we need to acknowledge that. But, for those people who start life a bit rough, the state system does provide enormous opportunities.

So when we hear the fictitious lies—as we heard from the previous speaker—that have been put out there by so many people, it frankly drives you mad. They then misinform and mislead constituents and we have to go back and clarify the facts. By the way, the constituent I mentioned accepted the facts and was a little horrified at the lies and deception that had been put out there by the Australian Labor Party. They then had to go and educate others and say to others, 'No, that is not true; there is more money going into schools, including to the school that my child goes to, to make sure that they can have the best educational opportunities in life.'

That is the first half of this education package. Yes, we are using the needs-based funding model that was originally recommended by David Gonski. We congratulate him for his contribution to this debate and we congratulate him for supporting the government in implementing it. But we also support him for the second half of this package in a way that the opposition will not. They go silent and want to distance themselves from any suggestion that there has been a fulfilment of what Gonski recommended—that is, to shift the focus in education to where it should be, not just on dollars and cents but also on outcomes. Let's face it: money matters—buildings have to be built, schools and teachers have to be funded and resources need to be provided and books need to be bought—but, in the end, you can spend dollars wisely or you can spend them poorly. You can hire the best and you can skill and up train teachers so that they can have the best opportunities in order to make their maximum contribution and to make sure that, when they engage with children, they give them the most active, energised and educational opportunity.

We all know what it is like to have an amazing teacher at school. I do and the member for Robertson does and, I dare say, even the member for Bruce might have had a good teacher during his school experience.

Mr Morton interjecting—

Though maybe it sometimes does not show, as the member for Tangney remarks. We want teachers who are engaged and provide the best education for students. Yes, there needs to be a focus on their salaries and all of the other things, but we need to make sure that we get the best education outcomes for students. If it comes down to spending more money and getting no better outcome, that is not money well spent. Money is well spent only when you get improvement in results for students—when they have a more engaged and inclusive education environment and when they have the opportunity to realise their ambitions, whatever they may be. Some people want to go on to tertiary education, whether at a TAFE or at a university. They may have the same experience if they want to go and engage in a skills based program or an apprenticeship and go on to become small businesspeople or traders. We love it all, because, when Australian students go through the education system and gain the skills they need to go on and live a happy and fulfilling life, that is the foundation of this great nation's success.

That is what the focus of this education package is: to recognise not only that students require needs based funding but also that the money should be spent well to underpin their being able to have the best success in their life. The bill realigns the legislative framework to support a funding model that is fair, transparent and needs based. It ties funding to reforms that will improve student outcomes and provide strength and accountability mechanisms. That is the strength of this package, by delivering not just the money but also the tied outcomes.

The schools in my electorate—and I am sure I am not alone in this—will achieve enormous benefits from doing so. That is the feedback I am getting from schools. There are people who have raised concerns because scare campaigns have been run. I am not disputing that. People in my electorate have raised those scare campaigns with me and asked about the accuracy of the information, and I have made it clear that the information is inaccurate and then gone on the journey with them and proved to them that what they have heard is not the case. And they have accepted that, because they can see the intention of this government, which is to focus on how we achieve the best opportunities for every child, because we are not focusing just on dollars and cents; we are focusing also on outcomes.

There is also, as there should be, proper protection and assistance for children with a disability. The bill changes the calculation of the student with disability loading to include differentiated loadings to better reflect the needs of students in the top three levels of adjustment. Having worked with people who have a disability, I know that is extremely important. And it is important not just for the children who have a disability, and the educational challenges they face, but also in terms of the challenges presented to their parents, to make sure that they can provide the assistance and support that their children need and to make sure that their parents can also work with the schools to achieve the assistance and the support they need.

These changes are enormously important and extremely welcome. The minister, Senator Simon Birmingham, should be congratulated for this enormous contribution to improving the lives of children who have a disability. But, more than anything else, the cherry and the icing on the cake of this package are the long-term commitments and long-term agreements that it gives. One of the things we hear consistently across the board, no matter which school it is, is that they want certainty. They want the opportunity to plan their future with confidence, to be able to make sure that schools know where they are going to be in 10 years time so that they can make important decisions about hiring the best people, about building the skills and the capacity and investing in their people to deliver the best outcomes for students. By giving a clear and unambiguous 10-year commitment on the frame, direction and trajectory of funding, school principals, where they have the power to do so, can go ahead and plan around what they need for their future. I cannot think of something that is more important than giving school councils, principals and students the confidence they need to deliver the best outcomes, which I would have hoped we would all want to see.

Unfortunately this sometimes childish debate from the opposition—and I say that with a heavy heart and a bit of deep reluctance—put forward by, say, the member for Bruce, who sniggers up there in the back like a 12-year-old, getting up there and having this constant confected and fictitious debate about funding, corrodes that confidence that schools need in order to make those decisions in the interests of students. I would have thought that the lesson of the debate over the past few years is that we have to do as much as possible to enable those schools to plan for their success. That should be, I would hope, what the members opposite will stand up and argue for, as I am sure many of the members on this side will. They can stand up and plan with security and confidence about the direction of government policy.

In closing my remarks, I support this legislation because it provides the assistance and needs based funding for students—tick. But more important than that is that it focuses the discussion on making sure that that money is spent efficiently and effectively and that it is outcomes focused—tick. A+, as the member for Moreton would say; and maybe even A++. And for giving security and confidence to the schools sector in the long term: double-tick, smiley face, and A ++. (Time expired)

Julian Hill (Bruce, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

'A++'—I like that. I rise to add my remarks to what can only be described as an enormous fraud. This is not a policy. It is not an investment plan. It is not a fair bill. But it is marketing spin of the first order. It is the government trying to con people to think that this is in fact a funding boost, that it is fair to students and that it is a good outcome for Australia, when it is actually a $22.3 billion cut as compared to the existing arrangements. We all saw the extraordinary moment in question time where the Prime Minister refused to endorse the words that his government put out when announcing this policy.

In my electorate of Bruce alone it representatives a $17.2 million reduction in funding over 2018 and 2019 to government schools, which is an enormous amount of money, some hundreds of thousands of dollars, in some cases millions, per school. You have to acknowledge the chutzpah—or that great Australian phrase, 'more front than Myers'—of trying to claim this as a funding boost when you are actually cutting. It was a good gag for the first couple of days. It did get some good early headlines. I felt sorry actually for the member for Sturt, the former minister who likes to style himself as a great 'fixer'. He was going to fix the universities and he was going to fix school funding. Then he saw his successor, Minister Birmingham, come up with this great 'fix' that got such good headlines. But then of course, as is always the case, when you see past the spin—when the opposition here starts doing our job and looking at the detail and comparing the numbers; when the principals; the schools sectors; the Liberal state governments even; the Premier of New South Wales, supposedly a friend of the government—when all of the rest of us have a look at the actual reality behind the spin, of course the government's case falls to bits and the scam is exposed.

What this bill really does is remove extra funding that was agreed with the states and territories for 2018 and 2019, funding that would have brought all under-resourced schools to a fair funding level. And it especially hurts public schools, which receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the government's proposal compared with 80 per cent extra funding under Labor's proposals.

In my state of Victoria, when you chunk this up—just over two years—and this is a $630 million cut, a reduction. I know we keep being told it is not a cut. But these were signed agreements. You read the agreement, and it says this was the money. This was the money we were going to get with the agreement. But, under this bill, under this government's arrangements, we do not get that money. That sounds like a cut. It is a cut. So my 36 schools get $17.2 million less. And this absolutely matters a lot. I could, if I run out of things to say, which is highly unlikely on this topic, stand here and read out into the Hansard all of the schools and the figures, but you can find them on the website. I had a lovely catch up yesterday and this morning with Glendal Primary School from Glen Waverley—they were visiting the parliament—a fantastic primary school that had been investing in numeracy, literacy and robotics. They had a team go to America for the international robotics championships. They are losing $400,000 over the next two years that were signed up.

But if I had to pick one school whose situation is manifestly unfair and draw the House's attention to it, it would be Dandenong High School. For anyone who does not know Melbourne, Dandenong High School sits within the second-highest disadvantaged municipality of all 79 councils in Victoria. It is a fantastic school, and under the Gonski agreements that had been signed with Victoria, Dandenong High School would have received an extra $1.6 to $1.8 million over the next two years. They now will not receive that if this bill goes through and those agreements are ripped up.

Let's stop and think about that. The Dandenong community is an incredibly multicultural place. It is a settling place for asylum seekers and refugees. There is entrenched intergenerational disadvantage in many pockets of the school's catchment. Despite this, and mainly because of state Labor government investment over 10 to 12 years, it is doing fantastic things. It is blessed with a wonderful principal, Susan Ogden, who is providing great leadership to the school and doing great things with equity funding—numeracy, literacy and leadership programs.

I met with Dandenong High School leaders when they were up here a few weeks ago. For anyone who watches The Voice on TV, here is a plug. The leading contestant, Hoseah Partsch, is a disadvantaged Dandenong High School student who visited our parliament only a month ago. We are all behind him. His story was written up in The Daily Telegraph. He entered the competition hoping to win the money to buy his family a house because at one stage he and his family were living with six people in a one-bedroom apartment. This is the kind of student that Dandenong High School is so proud to represent. So it beggars belief that, of every single high school in Victoria from year 7 to 12, Dandenong High will lose more money under this bill when this agreement is ripped up than any other school. It makes no sense, for anyone who knows Victoria, that you would take the most money off one of the most disadvantaged schools. How is this fair?

I have said before that my electorate of Bruce, with 53 per cent of people born overseas, is Australia's future; and I firmly believe that this school is Australia's future, yet the government is cutting funding. Every member will say education is important—and I believe we all believe that. But I can say without hesitation that for people in my electorate there is no more important issue than education. I told the House in my first speech that I had doorknocked over 14,000 homes over 13 months. My favourite question that I asked was 'What was most important to people?' and the standout answer was education—whether it was young people at uni or TAFE, parents with schoolchildren, or grandparents worried about the whole spectrum. The reason for this is the high value that migrants, above anyone else, place on education. When people come here they sacrifice everything for a better life for their kids; they have that laser-like focus, knowing that education is a pathway to a better life for their children because it brings opportunity. We know that through the waves of Australian migration. We had the post-World War II Greeks and Italians, people who worked four jobs and just wanted to get their kids to get to uni. And then we had Asian migration—more recently, from the subcontinent—and people from every part of the world.

The starkest demonstration of that occurred in Glen Waverley in my electorate when I was doorknocking. I doorknocked two houses that were next door to each other. I discovered that one of them was inside the school zone for Glen Waverley Secondary College and the other was outside it. The price difference for the house inside the school zone was $230,000. That is because people in my community are so determined to pursue what they see as the best education for the kids.

Of course, people understand that this is not just key to their kids' opportunity, it is key to Australia's future. Education is the critical enabler of our future prosperity. They are 100 per cent correct. This is not a lefty, radical, pinko plot kind of view either. The OECD's Economic Outlook in 2016 said 'education and public investment are the two areas of public expenditure that are estimated to be associated with higher long-term productivity'. And you cannot have an innovation economy, which we hear so much about, without investing properly in education. The OECD said 'better and more education is associated with higher growth and productivity, and also greater income equality.'

I am an unlucky soul on chamber duty; this week, yet again, and week after week, the member for Hughes was speaking. Anyway, I sat through it; it was entertaining, if nothing else. And we got lectured about choices, budgets. Labor is absolutely clear on the need to choose education. I will quote from an article which I actually filed away when I read it last year because I thought it summed up so much of why it is important to invest in education—particularly at the disadvantaged end, which so many schools in my electorate cater to. I quote from an article by Jessica Irvine in The Sydney Morning Herald:

Economists call it picking the low-hanging fruit: the strategic policy choices that deliver the biggest social return for lowest cost … It is spending money to help disadvantaged students get the best out of their education. Kids from low socioeconomic backgrounds are our greatest untapped source of potential growth. They are our most undervalued stock—

if we put it in human capital terms—

Investing in public education for disadvantaged students makes solid economic sense.

So, of course, the government's response is to cut the most funding from the most disadvantaged schools!

The member for Hughes in lecturing us about the budget did not mention that the government's choices are a two per cent tax cut for everyone in this chamber. Everyone in the country earning over $180,000 gets a tax cut. There is a $65 billion tax cut, which is unfunded, for big companies, and a $36 billion part of that is in a bill which is back on the Notice Paper again. And there is a $22.3 billion schools funding cut, which their own advice admits. Of course, they will fight to the death to protect tax breaks that overwhelmingly go to the top end. With negative gearing, the top 20 per cent of income earners get around a 50 per cent benefit, or, even worse, with the capital gains tax, the top 10 per cent receive a 70 per cent subsidy.

The choices that the government chooses to put forward and call them 'fair', to me, reveals an eternal truth about the Liberal Party. They do not actually care about equality of opportunity. It is a lingo they have picked up. They talk about needs based funding; it is a spin. They are a party of privilege and established wealth. They are not wealth generators. They are wealth preservers. I was thinking this morning that, if they were a financial advisory firm and you were knocking on their door, they would not let you in unless you already had $5 million in the bank. That kind of high wealth advisory firm is their market niche.

There has been a lot of focus on money in the contributions that I have heard in this debate. We argue about figures and 'Is it a cut?' or 'Isn't it a cut?' 'I know what will be said next and what we will say—and here we go.' There is a lot of focus on money, but there is an irony that, in this debate, the marketing spin on the bill is about convincing people that the government are spending more dollars and that it is outcomes now that matter. You might remember the MPIs which many of us sat through before the government made this announcement—this was late last year and earlier this year—where we said there was a $30 billion cut, because there was. The government said: 'No. Money doesn't matter. It is not about money. Really, we are just wasting money. Look, we spent money for a couple years and our results haven't gone up and so really we should just stop spending money. Money doesn't matter, because it is outcomes.' Now we have entered a parallel universe where a $22 billion cut is spun as an $8 billion increase. I cannot work that out—but anyway. Meanwhile, another shocking aspect to the bill is that the government are quietly crab-walking away from outcomes.

Labor's funding model, under the Australian Education Act 2013, enshrined the following objective into Australian law:

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

Then there are a series of targets—hard targets. Governments of all persuasions avoid enshrining hard targets, because they know that they can be held to account for hard targets. But we put clear targets in legislation that if we did the full funding that was recommended, the full funding that was required, we were prepared to sign up to Australia being in the top highest performing countries by 2025 based on the performance of school students in reading, mathematics and science. We set further targets about school completion for year 12, certificate II and certificate III levels and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander student completion. But this bill removes that goal; it removes those targets from legislation—and that is a disgrace.

We on this side will not forget, we must not let the other side forget and we must not let the people in our electorates or the electorates we will seek to win at the next election and form government forget that this government was elected on a lie that they would not cut a single dollar from education, that it did not matter who you voted for, you were going to get the same cents and dollars on either side. They were elected and it was cut, cut, cut, cut. It is this kind of behaviour that breeds cynicism and breaks trust, as we all hear from our electorates, and it frustrates me. We know outside the chamber that many of us do get on.

Ms Madeleine King interjecting—

Many of us do. They are not all bad—misguided but not all bad. Bipartisanship is desirable, compromise, dialogue. I never give up hope. There is always room for improvement on the other side, member for Brand. But we are stuck in this ridiculous debate with alternative facts, where the government pretend this is not an enormous cut overall in school funding that had been agreed. They hide behind this fig leaf of half a truth. I think the member for Hughes talked about 'an acorn of truth' when he admitted there is a $22 billion cut, but that is just an acorn of truth!

Sure, this legislation replaces what was in the legislation—a slightly lower funding level. But this is a claim that is fundamentally misleading, because the dollars in this bill are less than the agreements which were struck with the states. This is a cut. It is a reduction, whichever way you look at it. I hope that sense may prevail and that a negotiation may proceed. It will not happen in this place, we know, but it may happen through the Senate process. In the coming weeks and months, however long it drags on, the people in our communities, the principals who I have been speaking to, the parents, the teachers, the state governments, the minor party senators and others will see sense, will reflect, and perhaps some agreement can be reached that we can all vote on. But, until that time, Labor will not give up our campaign to remind the community what this bill and what the government's plan really represent: it is a funding cut, and in my community it is, unambiguously, an attack—a reduction in funding for some of the most disadvantaged schools in our state of Victoria, and, indeed, the nation, and we should not stand for it.

Lucy Wicks (Robertson, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to rise in support of the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. Over the past few weeks, I have heard from a whole range of people from across my electorate of Robertson on the Central Coast about the impact of these important changes. In fact, just yesterday Debra Walls, the principal of Green Point Christian College, a school in my electorate, contacted me because she wanted to share with me exactly what this legislation will mean for her school. She said: 'When I saw the funding increase I was gobsmacked. It means having the ability to have more teacher aids to help kids with learning disabilities with autism or dyslexia. Now we can help kids achieve and be the best they can be.' As the daughter of a former Christian school principal on the Central Coast myself, I can well understand what Mrs Walls means, because this legislation will ensure that Green Point Christian college will receive a boost of more than $4,500 per student over the next 10 years. This brings the total funding per student to $11,800 in 2027. For the more than 1,000 students at the college, many of whom I have met during their recent visits to parliament, it will mean they have access to the quality education they deserve.

It is also going to make a real difference in Bensville at the Coast Christian School. The Coast Christian School, under this plan, is set to receive $4,700 more per student in 2027, taking their total per student funding to more than $12,000. Their principal, Alison Graeve, told me what this funding will do for the school. Alison said: 'It is going to help with tiered learning for those students with a disability. It is going to assist the most vulnerable students and make a real difference at our school.' I visited the Coast Christian School not too long ago, to visit their year 5 and year 6 fair, and I was inspired by so many young, bright minds of the students there. That is why I support this legislation—because it is investing in the future of students across my electorate and setting them on the path to academic excellence and better opportunities in life. Like Alison and Debra, I know that this bill will secure important changes to our school funding model.

This legislation includes a number of measures to support parental choice, certainty and stability for schools and it will tie funding to reforms that will support better student outcomes. But, above all else, this bill will deliver real, needs based funding that is fair for all students, including in my electorate on the Central Coast. In suburbs like Woy Woy, Umina Beach, Kariong, Gosford, Erina, Narara, Terrigal and Kincumber, this bill is about ensuring access to the quality education students in my electorate deserve.

Measures in this bill will improve the act, making funding arrangements more transparent, accountable and efficient. Through a 10-year transition period, all government and non-government schools will get a consistent share of the Schooling Resource Standard. It includes new indexation arrangements that mean, initially, indexation will be growing faster than real costs. It will set our schools up for the future, and ensure that funding is truly based on the needs of our students, placing value on outcomes as well as funding.

This is a government that is committed to investing in education and in equipping our students for the jobs of the future. Starting from 2018, Australian schools will receive an additional $18.6 billion in funding over the next 10 years. Under the coalition, funding for education has grown and it will continue to do so, with our total investment in the 10 years to 2027 a record $242.3 billion. In New South Wales, funding will increase by more than 67 per cent over the next 20 years to a total of $73.9 billion.

In my electorate of Robertson, schools in every local community will be receiving significant increases in funding because of this needs-based funding model. The total increase in federal government funding for the 48 schools in Robertson over the next 10 years is $311 million. That is great news for each of these 48 schools and their 23,556 students.

Importantly, this bill is ending Labor's 27 special deals that would mean schools would have to wait up to 150 years to get their fair share of funding. By 2022, under the Quality Schools package, funding would have grown to $30.6 billion—a 4.1 per cent growth per student. This is real needs-based funding. It will level the playing field by getting rid of Labor's special deals and ensuring that funding is delivered fairly to all schools in every state and territory.

Our plan will also mean that schools in my electorate of Robertson get their fair share of support and do not suffer because of these special deals under Labor. Every student at the 48 schools in my electorate will have a fairer deal thanks to this government's plan. That is a fairer deal for Our Lady Star of the Sea Catholic Primary School, Henry Kendall High School, Point Clare Public School, Central Coast Adventist College, Woy Woy South Public School, Holy Cross Catholic Primary School, Gosford High School, Kincumber High School and Brisbane Water Secondary College—just to name a few. In fact, Brisbane Water Secondary College at Woy Woy will see its funding increase by more than $40 million over the next 10 years. For the 1,500 students at this school, it means nearly $2,000 more per student in 2027. These increases are part of this government's plan to back our teachers, supporting them to improve student outcomes. This is a fair system that is good for students, good for teachers, good for parents, good for our community and fantastic for Australia's future.

At Umina Public School funding will increase by $1,400 per student in the next 10 years, meaning that a total of $3,700 will be available for each and every student come 2027. For Narara Valley High School it also means $4,600 per student in 2027. St Patrick's Catholic Primary School at East Gosford will see funding rise by $3,000 in the same 10 years. For St John the Baptist Catholic Primary School in Woy Woy it means more per student in 2018, as well, and nearly $4,000 more per student in 2027. Up at Peats Ridge Public School funding will increase to $5,300 per student. At Kulnura Public School it will increase by more than $1,800 per student over the next 10 years. This does not sound like a cut to me.

This legislation means a fairer deal, as well, for students with a disability, ensuring that needs drive funding allocation. For Aspect Central Coast School, which is a wonderful school dedicated for students with autism in Terrigal, this legislation will see funding boosts of more than $39,000 per student. This will ensure that our students and teachers are getting the support they need. But these are just some of the schools in my electorate that will be better off. I would encourage all parents, teachers and students to find out how much their school would be better off by using the online school funding estimator. This new funding estimator gives our principals and teachers the information they need in order to make long-term plans for their schools. It is all part of our commitment to real needs-based funding that is fair, consistent and transparent.

As I have heard already from principals on the Central Coast, these changes will make a real difference in our classrooms, setting students on a path to academic excellence, offering them more opportunity and offering greater support for schools that are falling behind. I am looking forward to meeting with student leaders, teachers and parents around the Central Coast over the coming weeks to get their thoughts on our plan and what this means for our students. I am also writing to local principles. I am keen to hear how this funding will personally help their school. I am looking forward to seeing more students benefit from our needs-based funding model for schools, endorsed by David Gonski, that is all about fairness.

Unlike previous Labor governments, we are linking our investments with school reforms that have been proven to boost student results. This government will deliver the real Gonski needs based funding that Labor did not and scrap the 27 special deals that saw money taken away from schools that needed it most. Labor can promise all the funding in the world—and they do—but their promises are worth nothing more than Monopoly money. We on this side of the House know that you cannot spend money that you do not have or that you do not fund. Just like with the National Disability Insurance Scheme, Labor did not fully fund their education promises in 2013 and they are not funded now. Where Labor left a budget black hole, we are ensuring that the NDIS is fully funded so that we can support those who need it most. We are guaranteeing the NDIS to support a better life for the almost 2,900 participants just in my electorate of Robertson alone. Like our commitment to education, we have ensured that the NDIS will be fully funded.

This is the same Labor Party that took the original Gonski report and turned it into 27 special deals, with different rules for different schools. It is the same Labor Party that failed to deliver a real needs based funding model or even to properly fund it. It is the same Labor Party that is continuing to mislead the public with their funding cut claims. The fact is that funding under this government has grown and will continue to grow. Any suggestion by members opposite to the contrary is simply false. However, Labor representatives on the Central Coast, including the Labor candidate for Robertson and New South Wales' Senator Deborah O'Neill continue to peddle funding-cut lies, claiming that our local schools will be worse off. Considering that all 48 schools in my electorate of Robertson are set to receive funding increases through this bill, Senator O'Neill and the Labor candidate for Robertson's claims, just like a Labor budget, simply do not add up.

Senator O'Neill and the Labor candidate for Robertson have spent a lot of time recently talking about fairness and equality on the Central Coast, but what they have not said is how Labor's 27 special deals are fair to students in my electorate. How is it fair to make funding promises with Monopoly money? How is it fair to make promises to people when they cannot deliver them? If Labor on the Central Coast want to know what is really fair they only need to look at this government's fully funded commitment to real needs based funding for schools and to properly funding the NDIS. Our students deserve access to education that is fairly funded and encourages academic standards.

While we know a strong level of funding for schools is vital, what is even more important is how the funding is used. That is why David Gonski will lead a new inquiry into improving the results for Australian students. The review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools will focus on the most effective teaching and learning strategies to reverse declining results and seek to raise the performance of schools and students. The review will provide advice on how funding can best be used to improve outcomes. Mr Gonski is set to deliver his final report to the government by December this year to inform new school reform agreements for states and territories set to begin early next year. This government is not just increasing funding; we are no longer simply accepting that results have been declining while funding has been growing. We are focused on improving educational outcomes for our students and on delivering quality education for each and every student.

As a former high school teacher on the Central Coast and a mother of two young children of school age, I know how important it is not only to properly fund our schools but also to use that funding in the most effective way—something that this government also understands. I know that each and every school should have an equitable share of funding, not just 27 special deals for states, territories, unions and non-government school leaders. Now, with the privilege of serving our community as the member for Robertson, I am reminded so often of the talent and potential of our young people on the Central Coast.

Principals across the Central Coast, along with Deborah, Alison and so many in our community, want to see our students—especially those who need it the most—get the support and quality education that they deserve. I, like every member on this side of the House, want to ensure that our students get the quality education they deserve, delivered through a fair, transparent and consistent funding model. This government is choosing fairness and quality over special deals. We are choosing consistency and transparency and we are choosing to invest in our students' futures, in our communities' futures and in our nation's future. I commend this bill to the House.

Madeleine King (Brand, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill and its impact on students and families around this country and, more specifically, those students and families from Western Australia. I will not support this terrible Liberal government bill, because this bill would result in a $22.3 billion cut to Australian schools compared with the existing arrangements. I will not support this bill, because it would see an average cut to each school of around $2.4 million. I will not support this bill, because it removes extra funding agreed with the states and territories for 2018-19 which would have brought all under-resourced schools to their fair funding level. I will not support this bill, because it will hurt public schools. They will 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 which was made under the Labor school funding plan. This bill will result in fewer teachers, less one-on-one attention for our students and less help with the basics for those that need it most.

I will not support this bill, because it will cut important aspirational targets which are good for this country. This Liberal government will no longer aim for Australia to be one of the top five high-performing countries in reading, maths and science by 2025. This bill will eradicate the aim to halve the gap between the outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students by 2020. So I will not support the Australian Education Amendment Bill, and neither should anyone else. It is a shame it has even been put before us.

These are significant measures and they have wide-ranging and far-reaching ramifications. We all know that history is important, so let me take us back for a little refresher. First of all, I want to go back a bit in time, only four years ago, to 2013. It is election time. The writs have been issued and the public will go to the polls in a month. The education sector is pretty satisfied at this time. Parents are relieved to know that true needs based funding will be a reality across the country. No matter what happens, the Labor-led education funding reforms are enshrined in legislation, the Labor-led charge and leadership to ensure needs based funding is rock-solid and the then opposition leader, the member for Warringah, has stated, 'There is no difference between Kevin Rudd and myself when it comes to school funding.' That was the start of the unity ticket on school funding. Remember that? That was when the Australian public were led to believe by the Liberal Party that they supported genuine needs based funding in schools. Well, it did not last long. There was a backflip less than a day after from the Liberal education spokesman at the time, the member for Sturt. He stressed that Liberals would only honour the first year of Labor's fully funded reforms—a little crab walk off the stage. And then, days before the election, the member for Warringah and the member for Sturt promised to match Labor's commitment to fund education over the forward estimates. Remember that? That is the unity ticket I was talking about.

Fast forward to 2017, and we can see this for what it always was—purely low-grade electioneering. It was only after the severe public reaction to the disastrous 2014 federal budget that the government truly realised how much students, teachers and families depended on needs based funding for the fair and good education that Australian children deserve and need. That budget, the 2014 budget, saw a Liberal government rip $30 billion out of schools over a decade by strolling away from its promises to Australian children and to Australia's future. That budget disaster cost them a Prime Minister and a Treasurer. Even as they slowly came to terms with the enormity of their decisions for the future of young Australians, it has taken two years to come up with a scheme that attempts to disguise their twisted version of needs based funding as a funding increase, all supported by a natty little content-lite, facts-lite calculator website. It is on the internet, so it must be true—and, as the Prime Minister invented the internet, it really, really must be true! But, Mr Deputy Speaker, as you and I know, a leopard does not change its spots. There was $30 billion ripped out of education in the 2014 budget and $22 billion ripped out in the 2017 budget—I wonder what will happen next. What this natty little website does not tell the public is how much the state governments will contribute to the education of their children. It does not state how much their own fee contributions will build on the education of their children and the students. It only tells part of the story, and in doing so misleads the Australian public.

This side of the House, along with education experts, state governments, the Catholic school system and right across the country parents and parents and friends associations, can see what this scheme is—a $22.3 billion cut to funding schools across Australia., I am not fooled, Labor is not fooled and the Australian public are not fooled. Let me be clear—I know I have said it a couple of times, and I will keep saying it: under the proposed arrangements, in this bill, $22.3 billion will be cut from schools across Australia compared to the existing arrangements. Those opposite have said this is an unbelievable figure, and in some respects I agree—it is unbelievable. It made my jaw drop. How on earth, after their clearly now-abandoned cries of bipartisanship support for education, can this Liberal government continue to rip and tear holes in the hopes and dreams of students and parents and still choose to give big business a $65 billion tax cut? The Treasurer confirmed this recently in question time. It is unbelievable that they would rip out education funding which is equivalent to sacking nearly 22,000 teachers; it is unbelievable that on average each school loses $2.4 million; it is unbelievable that only one in seven public schools will get their fair level of funding, which is supposed to be 95 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard, by 2027.

We on this side of the House are not the only ones stunned with disbelief. The outrage is felt around the country, and it is real—despite what members opposite may say. The New South Wales P&C Federation said on 3 May this year:

The Turnbull Government must not renege on the funding promised under the Gonski agreement signed in 2013.

The Liberal government likes to demonise unions, but I stand with the hardworking and committed teachers and school staff that form the Australian Education Union, who said on 4 May this year:

The Prime Minister has effectively abandoned the most disadvantaged schools and their students.

The Daily Telegraph on 3 May reported that the Liberal New South Wales education minister is considering court action to safeguard the state's share of education dollars. It was also reported on 3 May that the Queensland education minister has said that government schools across the state will be $300 million worse off. It was reported in The Sydney Morning Herald on 5 May that some Catholic schools will be forced to dramatically increase fees or close their doors. Again, these are just some of the comments aimed at the federal government in a veritable bombardment of criticism against these proposed cuts.

This protest salvo of return fire from public interest groups, parents and friends associations, governments, schools, students and many others pales into comparison with the missile launched by this Turnbull government that will leave a smoking crater of broken promises where genuine needs based funding once stood. The devil is in the detail here, and nowhere is this more evident than in the proposed removal of extra funding which was previously agreed to with the states and territories for 2018-19, which would have brought all under resourced schools to their fair funding levels. It takes the axe to public schools, which will receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the government's proposal compared to 80 per cent of extra funding from Labor. That is some unity ticket—that is a funding disparity of 30 per cent.

It is often claimed by the opposite side of the House, the government, that the coalition are the better economic managers in this country. Hardly a day goes by when the Liberals do not wistfully look back in time to the excesses and ease of the immobile Howard government and claim that doing nothing at all qualifies for financial management accolades. The Liberals believe their supposed economic genius is justified—how can this be so, how can this be true, if they are not willing to invest in the future education of young Australians? It has been consistently shown in research papers, academic discussions, economic reports and Productivity Commission reports that investment in education lifts standards of living dramatically across a nation. Global Partnerships for Education informs us that one extra year of schooling increases a single person's income by 10 per cent, and each additional year of schooling can raise our overall annual GDP. By ignoring this type of data and instead pushing us backwards, this Liberal government endangers our economic prosperity and the economic growth of Australia in the long term. If the Liberals want to run future election campaigns on this supposedly safe economic foundation, they may want to take a second glance at the pillars of education they intend to demolish, lest that foundation begin to collapse—if it has not already.

Let's take a closer look at my own home state of Western Australia. How the Liberals plan for education in WA is supposed to help the education sector over there. I can tell you now that the announcement was met with fury, not least of all from the new WA state government itself. Is it not enough that we have to fight tooth and nail to get fair Commonwealth funding for transport infrastructure in WA? Is it not enough that we have to be dudded repeatedly when it comes to the outdated GST redistribution system across the country—despite the fact that a large chunk of the federal cabinet comes from Western Australia? Is it not enough that we have to make do with a dismal share of investment in naval shipbuilding in order to shore up support for the re-election of the Minister for Defence Industry? No, apparently it is not enough. The federal government continues its war on WA by ripping out $649 million in Commonwealth education funding from 2018-19 to 2021-22.

I might take a moment to explain something the federal government may not be aware of. Twice a year in Western Australia a census is carried out by the WA education department that determines funding allocations for students who are at a social disadvantage—students with disabilities, Aboriginal students and students who are having to learn English as a second language. The WA education minister, the Hon. Sue Ellery, has called the government out on it and highlighted that there is no possible way that the Commonwealth could base funding arrangements around this census, around the actual need the department establishes, but have no knowledge of the results—none at all. And now these students have been placed at risk because of reckless decisions and political point scoring by a federal government that would not consult with the WA education sector and take into account the sensitive processes run by the WA education department—processes that assess the actual need of WA school students. The minister, along with the WA treasurer, the Hon. Ben Wyatt, has called them out on this lack of proper consultation and slashing of funding, calling the figures released 'disingenuous and inaccurate'.

The WA education minister is right to point out: 'WA Liberal federal MPs need to explain to their local schools why not only are we getting ripped off with the GST; now our school funding is also being short-changed.' Again, it is unbelievable—absolutely unbelievable. How much more must Western Australia be penalised? What torturous thought bubble is the Treasurer and his Prime Minister going to come up with next for my state of Western Australia?

My electorate of Brand is home to some of the most disadvantaged communities in the metropolitan area of Perth. The 2011 census recorded the suburb of Calista—where I was born—in Brand as the fifth most socioeconomically disadvantaged SA2 area in the Greater Perth region. In the rest of WA there are many other communities that are worse off, including those in remote communities with a high Indigenous population. How on earth are we supposed to help lift these communities without properly investing in their future and the future of their children, to give parents a chance for their kids to have the best possible opportunities in life, the opportunities that some people never had as children? This is 2017. The world has changed. Educational standards and the syllabus has all changed.

In Brand we have schools giving fantastic opportunities to their students, and it is the same around the country. These successful programs and these positive learning environments are under threat from a mammoth $22.3 billion cut to school funding that this Turnbull government is proposing. It is wasteful and it is shameful. We have seen the data, the statistics, the budget papers and the press releases. It is all very well to quote numerical figures and cloak it in a conservative ideology, but what does it all mean? How does it work? At its most basic, this bill results in fewer teachers. Fewer teachers means less one-on-one time for individual students and less help to get through the basic curriculum. It is no good for students. It removes the requirements that state governments increase funding for schools, meaning that 85 per cent of public schools will not meet their 2027 fair funding targets. State governments that have underperformed have been left off the hook.

What is most absurd is how it affects different parts of the country. I feel for the Northern Territory at this time, too; it sees a growth rate of 1.3 per cent over 10 years. People should be ashamed of what they are proposing for this country.

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

In the words of a famous song, 'I believe that children are our future. Teach them well, and let them lead the way.' Well, children are our future, and the Turnbull government is focusing on teaching them well so that they can lead the way in the future, through the measures in this bill—measures that tie funding to improvement in student outcomes through evidence based reforms.

The Turnbull government is equally committed to our children's future through fair, consistent, transparent, real, needs based, record funding, providing long-term certainty for parents and schools, based on the Schooling Resource Standard, a model developed by the original Gonski panel. I repeat: this is record school funding, that will continue to grow—$18.6 billion in additional recurrent funding; a total of $243 billion over 10 years, which is a record in Australia.

And gone will be those 27 special, very secret, Labor deals—deals that saw schools with the same characteristics treated differently, where students with the same need in the same sector were treated differently, depending on which state they lived in and which of the 27 different deals actually applied to them. These were the deals done by the Labor government that completely undermined the integrity of the needs based funding model.

But what really concerns me is that, despite increased funding growth over a long period in Australia, our performance in national and international assessments has declined or remained static. It is not acceptable that large numbers of Australian students did not reach intermediate international benchmarks in science and maths.

That is why the Turnbull government is acting now. We need to equip our students with a strong foundation in literacy, numeracy, science, technology, engineering and maths. These skills are really critical in regional and rural areas like my electorate of Forrest, which is undergoing change and will continue to do so in the years ahead.

I recently read a very thought-provoking article by David Kennedy and Nathan Taylor, who wrote about the effects of automation on regional Australia, on regions like my own. They write of how the growth of online services eliminate many routine tasks done by keepers and accountants; of the construction jobs where robotics will replace manual labour; of how Komatsu uses drones to coordinate automated bulldozers; and of companies getting 3-D printers to use cement to construct housing. The article said the jobs of the future will be in tasks involving cutting-edge, high-level creativity.

Well, in WA for instance, we already see Rio's autonomous vehicles—the 73 416-tonne dump trucks on mine sites in the Pilbara. They are controlled from a central control in Perth. They work 24 hours a day, seven days a week, 365 days of the year, carting iron ore. And of course this is done by GPS, radar and laser sensors. I recently saw a remotely-controlled bobcat for use on a mine site developed by Hotweld Engineering in Bunbury in my electorate.

We will see more jobs in control rooms and in innovation, and fewer on various mine sites. So we will need people with the skills to fulfil these roles. We will need all the skilled and talented individuals we can retain in rural and regional Australia.

Measures within this bill are a key part of this future, through that focus, as I said, on literacy, numeracy, science, technology, engineering and maths. In this bill, the government is actively choosing fairness, equity and quality, where student outcomes are valued just as much as student funding.

I have got no doubt that parents will really appreciate the improved accountability and transparency, the ministerial reporting requirements, and the publication of Commonwealth funding to schools on an annual basis. Parents will know exactly what Commonwealth funding their child's school is receiving, from Augusta in the south of my electorate to Nannup and Balingup in the east, and from Margaret River, Busselton and Bunbury on the coast to Yarloop and Harvey in the north.

What I am really pleased about is that David Gonski will conduct a review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools. The review will provide advice on how the extra Commonwealth funding should be invested to improve Australian school performances and to grow that very important student achievement. The review will contribute to the evidence based need, to ensure the funding is used in ways that make a genuine difference to student outcomes. The review will focus on practical measures that work, both from within Australia and from around the world, so that we improve the results for Australia's children.

There is further work ahead with the states and territories to develop and deliver a new national schooling agreement to help address declining student performance. I was at an Australian Primary Principals Association friends' event last night, and I have no doubt that they will be keen participants in the discussions ahead, bringing, as Minister Birmingham said, their thoughtful, reasoned and considered approach to the table in all of their discussions.

The guest speaker, Lisa Rogers, spoke about principals as instructional leaders and about the moment-by-moment decisions that teachers make in classrooms. I look forward to their contribution to David Gonski's review. This is the group that demonstrates the importance of strong positive leadership in schools. I have very many fine examples of those who I have worked with in different ways in my electorate of Forrest. They are wonderful principals who are instructional leaders.

But I also hope that David Gonski investigates how much time our teachers in kindy and primary school spend on basic parenting tasks that seem to be taking up more of their time—perhaps simple things like toilet training—and if the children around Australia are actually coming into kindergarten and primary school ready and prepared to learn. It is about how the primary schools are providing students with the skills and knowledge to continue their high-school-level education immediately, and about how the high schools are providing students with the skills and knowledge they need to continue their university-level courses or vocational education and training immediately. And even though this review is focused on primary and secondary education, I hope that David Gonski tests the effectiveness of these combined levels of education by talking to employers, to see whether universities and VET providers are producing employees who have the skills and knowledge needed in their employment, and identify where the gaps may be.

Mr Gonski will report by December this year, ahead of the negotiation of a new school reform agreement with states and territories in the first half of 2018. I can say that I am really looking forward to his recommendations. Our reforms in quality outcomes in schools are in the areas that make a difference: strengthening literacy and STEM skills, such as requiring minimum literacy and numeracy standards for school leavers, and ensuring that English or humanities and maths or science are studied to get an ATAR.

Focusing on the importance of teacher quality: I think that everyone in this place, if they were honest, could talk about the value and influence on their lives—not only on their lives but on their student lives as well and in their ambitions—of the effect of a passionate teacher. A dedicated and passionate teacher actually has an effect not only on their learning but also on their life. One such person in my life was a wonderful teacher at Harvey High School, Fiore Rando. I know that he has educated, encouraged and inspired generations of young people in my part of the world.

And there is our focus on the importance of parental engagement. We do need parents actively engaged in their own children's education. I am on the independent public school board of Cooinda Primary School. There we see directly how important that direct parental engagement is in what that the board is doing and will achieve with the school. I strongly support the government's key reforms there. The importance of very strong leadership cannot be underestimated in our schools; it is a key driver.

Our year 1 reading, phonics and literacy assessments will help to assist in the early identification and intervention needed for some students. We will keep our very best teachers in the classroom. By aligning our legislative framework with our national policy objectives this bill provides a strong foundation for achieving our long-term vision for Australia's students in schools.

The amendments in the bill will commence on 1 January 2018, in line with the school year, to enshrine a faster and fairer 10-year transition period to ensure that by 2027 all government schools and all non-government schools will be funded on the same basis by the Commonwealth as well as attract a consistent share of the Schooling Resource Standard. From 2017 the Commonwealth share of the Schooling Resource Standard will grow for government schools from an average of 17 per cent to 20 per cent in 2027, and for non-government schools from an average of 77 per cent in 2017 to 80 per cent in 2027. The share of funding provided by the Commonwealth will increase across Australia, bringing it to 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for the government sector. It is a significant increase. It reflects the Commonwealth government's historic role as the minority public funder of the government sector and the primary funder of the non-government sector.

The Turnbull government, as we know, has fully funded our education plan. This will ensure students across the country receive funding based on need and that all students will be treated equally. As the Commonwealth will be increasing its share of the standard over the next 10 years, overall funding will grow over and above enrolment growth and indexation. This means that the Commonwealth will be providing $4.4 billion more over 2018-21 than if funding grew just in line with movements in CPI.

It has been reported that the states welcome the Commonwealth funding and may shift their own funding to minimise their own costs. The bill introduces a requirement for states and territories to actually maintain their real per-student funding levels as a condition of Commonwealth funding to prevent cost shifting to the Commonwealth. As we in this place all know, the Commonwealth does not own or operate a single school, so it is important that school funding by the states continues.

We will establish a transition adjustment fund that will provide support to assist vulnerable schools to ensure the move to the new funding formula is smooth. The Turnbull government has been very clear: the delivery of reforms will be a condition of funding for states. The bill stipulates that states and territories will be required to be party to a new national agreement to receive Commonwealth funding to avoid the situation we have had previously—that of participating and non-participating states. A new agreement will set out a shared vision for the development and learning of young Australians and reinforce the importance of progressing evidence-based reforms that actually improve student outcomes.

This bill supports all Australian schools by taking action to strengthen the legislative framework that underpins the Australian government's significant investment in education and by updating the act to ensure effective and efficient administration. As I said at the beginning of this speech, children are our future and we need to teach them well. We also need to ensure we fund schools appropriately, and that is precisely what the Turnbull government is doing with this plan. I commend this bill to the House.

Cathy O'Toole (Herbert, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. I rise in this place this evening to stand up and fight for the Herbert principals, schools, teachers, parents and, more importantly, the students. What I find absolutely extraordinary is that I stand in this place this evening, in a week where we have recognised the 1967 referendum, the Mabo High Court decision and 20 years since the Bringing them home report, to talk about a proposal of unbelievably unfair needs-based funding. Our first nations children deserve a fair education that is based on Labor's needs-based funding. Education is their only way out of poverty and disadvantage and into a life of purpose, meaning, contribution and citizenship. That will require for each and every one of them, regardless of where they live in this nation, access to a quality education. I think it would be fair to say that only Labor will deliver that education funding.

The Prime Minister and the Minister for Education have got to be absolutely kidding if they think this legislation fools anyone. This government likes to use little catchphrases to try and piggyback off some of Labor's greatest initiatives—the latest classic being Gonski 2.0. But this is not Labor's needs based funding for schools, and what the government is peddling could never be confused with Labor. This government fails to have Labor's understanding and commitment that all children should be able to reach their full potential no matter where they live, whether it is in the rich suburb of the Prime Minister's electorate in Wentworth or in a strong worker's suburb like Garbutt in Townsville, or on Palm Island. Those opposite will never be Labor, because the Turnbull government has no compassion or empathy for families, workers and pensioners—absolutely no heart to help others out and no guts to simply do the right thing. This is a government that is for top hats and not hard hats. This is a government for multimillionaires, not battlers. This government has cut $22 billion from our schools just so that Malcolm Turnbull can give a $65.4 billion tax cut to big business. Parents, principals and teachers know schools will be worse off because of the Liberal's $22 billion cut to education. This is the equivalent of cutting $2.4 million from every school in Australia over the next decade, or sacking 22,000 teachers.

The review of school funding report found that what matters is the total resources that a school has for each and every child who walks through the school gate. The Turnbull government is trying desperately not to make this debate about funding. Guess what? That is exactly what it is about. It will not be the schools in Wentworth, inner Sydney or Melbourne that will miss out. No. It will be the schools in regional, rural and remote Queensland that will be left out, and, of course, they need it the most—and that is not to mention the Northern Territory. The schools in Herbert that have some of the most dedicated teachers and staff, devoted P&Fs and P&Cs and some of the brightest students in the country will be ignored by the Turnbull government as it rips $22 billion out of education funding.

North Queensland has been subjected time and time again to the continual mistreatment by this government. There is absolutely nothing in the budget for North Queensland—not even a mention. This government cutting $22 billion in funding for schools is like rubbing salt into our wounds. Our community knows that this is where these funding cuts will hit the hardest. It will be schools like Aitkenvale State School that have used their Labor needs based funding to start up a language program. Here is a school where the student population is one-third refugee, one-third Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and one-third mainstream—that is, two-thirds of the school population for whom English is not their first language. The innovative language program set up by the Aitkenvale State School places children who are struggling with English into a dedicated language classroom, where they experience intensive English lessons so that they can be proficient in English in order to return to mainstream lessons. This ensures that they do not fall behind and that they can have access to a good quality education. This program not only takes pressures off students but also reduces the pressures on teachers in the classroom, allowing them the time and space to focus on the curriculum for mainstream children—and no child is left behind as a result. It is very apparent that this government has no idea that its cuts will put this language program in jeopardy.

Mundingburra State School is another fine example of how Labor's funding helped students and families. This school was able to employ an Indigenous liaison officer, who directly supports families to ensure that their children attend school every day. This has significantly increased the attendance rate for struggling families and students. And then there is Heatley state high school. This school has employed a highly qualified literacy and numeracy expert teacher, who has identified those students who are struggling. She has ensured that they have the assistance they need to catch up to their peers in order to reach their potential. I have seen the difference that this teacher has been able to make to students' lives. For example, one particular student, who is in grade 10, had a reading and writing level of year 5. This student used to act out in the classroom and had behavioural issues. When the expert teacher started with this young man, it took him 30 minutes to write just one sentence. In less than 10 months of intensive support and engagement, this young man can now write stories—pages long—and has recently put together a PowerPoint presentation for his class. The behavioural issues have stopped and his studies are improving every day.

Labor's approach to needs based funding has changed these students for the better. Labor's approach to needs based funding has enabled each of these schools to identify their gaps, plan for change and enact the change necessary to make sure that no child was left behind in their community. I say to the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education and Training: you are putting these students' education at risk. You are threatening their futures by placing their education funding in jeopardy. You are taking away the ability for teachers to be flexible and innovative in developing teaching and learning strategies that make a difference and, most importantly, engage students in the learning process.

The Turnbull government claims to be the government of the ideas boom. Well, let me tell you, when it comes to education it is very obvious that they do not have any idea whatsoever. They have no idea that for this country to lead in innovation into the future, we must invest in education for every child, regardless of their social status, family income, culture, race or religion. The big ideas that will lead to the future prosperity of this great nation will not come from this backward government, but, given a fair go and a great education, they will come from our sprouting students. That is why we need to protect genuine needs based funding through Australian legislation and legislate the government's commitment to deliver for all schools and all students.

But the legislation proposed by the Turnbull government will do completely the opposite. This bill removes the commitment to deliver quality teaching and learning, to deliver school autonomy and increased say for principals and school communities, to deliver transparency and accountability, and to deliver for students with extra needs.

Under what the Turnbull government is proposing, some 85 per cent of public schools will not have reached their fair funding level by 2027. That is eight years from now. Under their model, less than 50 per cent of extra funding goes to public schools. Labor's needs based funding model was providing 80 per cent of extra funding for public schools. We know that public schools still cater for seven out of 10 children with a disability, seven out of 10 children from a language background other than English, eight out of 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and around eight out of 10 children from low-income families. Labor's new funding model also had full public funding for all loadings for disadvantage, so the Catholic and independent schools that educate children with extra needs would also get the funding necessary. You would have to be blind, deaf and dumb over the last few weeks not to have heard the cries from Catholic Education against the Turnbull government. They have every right to be concerned over the Turnbull government's education cuts, as their funding model penalises some Catholic schools in some of the most disadvantaged parts of this country. There is a grave concern that they will suffer real funding losses and will have to increase their fees or cut teachers at these schools.

I am a former student of a Catholic primary school and St Patrick's College in Townsville, and a currently registered teacher and a former teacher myself. I also have a sister and brother who are both principals, one in the public system and one in the independent system, and a number of extended family who are teachers. The teaching expertise in our family goes back to my grandmother. I warn this government now that I am asking many questions of principals, P&Cs and P&Fs in the schools in my electorate. I can assure you that you will hear me loudly and clearly if you cut $22 billion from schools that is vital not only for public schools but also for the Catholic schools in Herbert.

What is even more of a joke from this government is that they are saying that the new national agreement will not even go to COAG until mid-2018. Does this government have absolutely no idea of the work that is involved for a principal and a school community to plan in advance? Schools cannot be expected to plan with five minutes notice, but apparently this government seems to think that that is possible. So to every state and territory, to all the teachers, principals, staff, P&Cs and P&Fs, now is the time to stand up and fight back. Do not agree to anything except for Labor's full rollout of needs based funding. The Turnbull government is waiting until mid next year for a COAG agreement. Maybe it would be a better idea to have an election mid next year and kick this disgraceful coalition government out. This government will and must pay for its blatant inability to listen to expert educators and not acting in the best interests of all of our students.

There is a clear difference between Labor and the LNP. Over the next two years alone, Labor would have invested about $3 billion more than the LNP into schools to get each and every school up to their fair level of funding. Labor's funding model and the Australian Education Act 2013 enshrined the following objective into Australian law:

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

That is exactly what the Turnbull government wants to remove from the act. This government is so out of touch, so backward, so self-centred, actually believing that it could not preserve in law that all students are entitled to an excellent education allowing them to reach their full potential.

Further to that legislation objective, they are scrapping fundamental targets that ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high-quality and highly equitable education for all students by having regard to the following national targets: Australia to be placed in the top five performing countries based on the performance of school students in reading, mathematics and science by 2025; Australia's schooling system to be considered a high-quality and highly equitable school system by international standards by 2025; lift the year 12 (or equivalent) or certificate II attainment rate to 90 per cent by 2015; lift the year 12 (or equivalent) or certificate III attainment rate to 90 per cent by 2020; at least halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in year 12 or equivalent attainment rates by 2020, from the 2006 baseline; and halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and other students in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018, from the 2008 baseline.

These are admirable targets that should not be disbanded. But when you do not want people in this country to know just how out of touch you really are in relation to education, and how useless a government you really are, of course you would scrap targets, because then there is nothing to measure just how bad your funding model really is. The irony of scrapping these targets is that the Minister for Education, Simon Birmingham, wants to get rid of classroom tests; but that would also mean he gets rid of his own tests in terms of the targets to measure how effective his funding model is because he knows that his ranking will be 'F' for fail.

Only Labor will ever invest in schools. Only Labor will ever fight for principals, teachers and students. Only Labor can ever be trusted with education. And only Labor will restore the LNP's $22 billion in cuts and properly fund our schools. Because it is only Labor that truly believes that every child in every classroom deserves every opportunity to succeed in life. (Time expired)

John McVeigh (Groom, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are debating one of the most important areas of legislation for any government—the education of our children and the proper resourcing of the schools and teachers who support them. The Turnbull government's approach with this bill is to ensure a fair, transparent and consistent schools funding model. Those themes of fairness, transparency and consistency are so critical in this debate and they are the principles that those opposite are simply ignoring in not supporting this bill. Of course, it reflects some of the core concepts recommended by the Gonski review, which the former Labor government often talked about but were clearly never committed to funding or implementing properly.

Instead, they tolerated and condoned inequities in the system and went about the awkward and inconsistent approach of special deals across the country. They were not and clearly are not interested in the principles of fairness, transparency and consistency that the government promotes in this amendment bill. Further, whilst those opposite continue with their political games, the government is getting on with the job, as it has been doing right across the portfolios in terms of community security, economic stability, growth and jobs—and in this case education arrangements, which will cease by the end of this year, by developing this legislation to set school funding for 2018 and beyond.

This bill puts in place an extra $18.6 billion in recurrent school funding, which will bring our total 10-year investment to a record $242.3 billion from 2018 to 2027. Labor feebly suggests that this record expenditure is a cut, whereas in reality the only cuts to education that are on record are Labor's hollow promises of the past that were never a real program of government, were not funded beyond 2017 and remained unfunded under their current policies. But it is not just about the dollars. The Turnbull government's approach to ensuring quality in our education system, in line with our Quality Schools, Quality Outcomes policy, is focused on ensuring student outcomes are prioritised as much as student funding. As I said, it is only the Turnbull government that is getting on with the job of ensuring quality in our education system, and that is important due to our country's declining education performance, a decline that must be addressed.

National and international evidence proves that we must step up our efforts. It is simply not acceptable that large numbers of Australian students did not reach intermediate international benchmarks in science and mathematics. If we want our country to be competitive in a global environment with all its opportunities and challenges in a significant period of change and innovation that will not abate, our children must be technologically literate. They must have strong foundations in literacy and numeracy, and in science, technology, engineering and mathematics. That is why the Turnbull government's Quality Schools, Quality Outcomes reform agenda is so essentially focused on strengthening teaching and school leadership, developing essential knowledge and skills, improving student participation and parental engagement, and ensuring better evidence and transparency.

As the person in this House who represents the wonderful electorate of Groom, I am so very proud to see this agenda underway in my community—in Pittsworth, Oakey, Toowoomba, Highfields and so many villages in between; in preschool and in primary and secondary school settings. Like so many in this House, I am a proud student from my own region. I began school at state school and continued my primary schooling at St Thomas More Catholic Primary School in Toowoomba before proceeding to St Joseph's College and Downlands College to complete my secondary education. We have a significant education sector in our region, servicing not only our local communities but many communities and many families, through our boarding schools, right throughout southern inland Queensland, northern inland New South Wales and beyond. Tremendous child-care and preschool facilities complement our fine schools, as do the TAFE, the University of Southern Queensland and the nearby University of Queensland campus at Gatton.

I am fortunate indeed to be married to a teacher. My wife, Anita, teaches in the Catholic education sector. I have had the privilege in past years of being a member of the Catholic Education board for the Toowoomba diocese, and I have been a board member and chairman of the Downlands College board as well. All of our six children have been educated in Toowoomba schools in the Catholic education system. I am particularly proud that two of our daughters are completing their education degrees, one in primary school teaching, the other as a secondary school trainee teacher currently on prac in Central Queensland this very week. As I know, they are both passionate about their future careers and, like their mum, they are already getting that unsurpassed satisfaction of seeing students learn and develop such that they too, in turn, can take up their full roles in our society.

As a student, parent and partner of a teacher, and as a board member of a schooling system and school board chair, I know what it is like in state, Catholic and independent schools to strive for a focus on education quality, to maintain budget, to manage and provide for those outcomes, to satisfy families' desires for their children to admire and benefit from the efforts of passionate, professional teachers and, above all else, to ensure high-quality outcomes for children throughout our region.

The challenge has been significant, and it remains. We must continue to improve year by year. That is why I am so proud to be a member of a government that is committed to such outcomes in a fair, consistent and transparent way. In our electorate of Groom, we are blessed with 73 primary and secondary schools, including state, Catholic and independent institutions, and including a number of boarding schools. Every one of those schools, large and small alike, will see an increase over the next 10 years. Every one. These schools in Groom will see an estimated $1.9 billion in total Commonwealth funding over the period 2018 to 2027. Each of our schools will receive their fair share of funding based on need, with more transparency and ties to reforms to boost our education outcomes.

Let us stop for a moment to consider some of those increases from 2018 to 2027 to just some of the schools across Groom, in Toowoomba and across the Darling Downs. Highfields State Secondary College, the magnificent new school just north of Toowoomba, established by the former LNP state government: $4.5 million. One of our well-regarded boarding schools, Concordia Lutheran College: $13.5 million. The magnificent Clifford Park Special School: $3.5 million. St Mary's College, a traditional Christian Brothers college, now a diocesan school, established in 1899: $20.1 million. Kingsthorpe State School in a significant growth corridor: $1.7 million. Harristown State Primary School, with an amazing and eclectic student body: $3.5 million. Just across the road, Harristown State High School, under the leadership of Ken Green: $17.6 million. The historic Toowoomba Grammar School, established in 1876, whose students joined me at the Australian War Memorial here in Canberra just last week: $21 million. Centenary Heights State High School, where my sister started her teaching career, now led by Mary Anne Walsh: $13.5 million. Meringandan State School, on another significant growth corridor: $1.7 million. Toowoomba Christian College, a burgeoning school at Highfields: $17.5 million. And St Joseph's College, also originally a Christian Brothers college, now a co-educational diocesan school: $18.2 million.

In my 10 or so months in this House, I have regularly taken the opportunity to talk about the wonderful electorate of Groom, and the fact that it is leading regional Australia in economic development and export activity and that it maintains an employment rate and standard of living which is the envy of much of the rest of the country. This is due in no small part to the ongoing leadership and investment of the Turnbull government, the former LNP state government and the Toowoomba Regional Council, all of whom partnered in infrastructure and policy settings that have allowed our region to absolutely blossom. As you would be familiar with, Mr Deputy Speaker Hogan, our agricultural base lies amongst the best farming and grazing regions in the land. We are a resource and energy powerhouse, with a significant mining industry heritage. We have facilities involved in coal, solar, wind and gas based energy activities. We are leaders in these areas as well. As I have said, we are the education capital of much of southern inland Queensland and northern inland New South Wales, and we continue to grow as a health capital for those very same regions across these two states. Our arts culture is evolving dramatically, and technology and innovation in data storage, robotics, composite fibre technology and agricultural engineering, amongst other areas of activity, are capturing worldwide attention. Of course we have two defence bases in our region—the Oakey Army Aviation Centre, Swartz Barracks, and Borneo Barracks at Cabarlah, a significant signals and technological warfare unit.

The essential part of the puzzle in securing our future as a region, given all those assets, given all that innovation, is that our education system has to be based on a fairer, needs based, more transparent and consistently supported arrangement. To maintain that focus in Groom for businesses and our families and to continue to create the jobs of the future, a quality education system with guaranteed funding from government is absolutely essential. We need those skills, and education has to go hand in hand with job creation for our region in the future. That is why this bill promises so much for Australia, especially in my electorate of Groom.

Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I join my colleagues in speaking on the Australian Education Amendment Bill, which, frankly, encapsulates just how out of touch this government has become. You would think, when you listen to this debate, that we are talking about two different pieces of legislation, with those on the other side touting the bill as the best thing for our schools and those on this side joining with state governments, who run our public education system, joining with the Catholic education system and joining with those who have been fighting for such a long time, our teachers and our parents, for proper needs based funding for our schools.

I do not think there are many on the backbench who actually understand the complexity of what this government has done with the formula for schools funding. I do not think they understand that what they have now done is take as a baseline the $30 billion of cuts that former Prime Minister Tony Abbott inflicted on our schools and then use that to claim they are providing additional funding to our schools. That is not the Schooling Resource Standard that was part of the Gonski reforms, and it is a very poor decision that this government has made. Make no mistake—the government's legislation cuts $22 billion from what the schools, the states, the Catholic Education Office and the independent schools were expecting as part of needs based funding for our schools. That is what this legislation does—it removes from law the commitments to deliver quality teaching and learning. It entrenches inequality in our school system and it will mean that far too many students will be left behind.

In order to understand why we have ended up with this piece of unfair legislation before us, we have to look at the government's approach to schools and education overall. At every moment, this government has attacked school funding and undermined Labor's needs based reforms. Who can forget the promise that voters saw as they were heading into the voting booths in 2013, that the Liberals would match Labor's school funding commitment dollar for dollar? They said that they were on a unity ticket when it came to school funding. Well, that absolute untruth turned out to be a complete untruth. Those promises did not even last a year.

And then we had the former education minister, the member for Sturt, boasting about how he was handing over school funding with no strings attached, undoing the transparency and accountability mechanisms that the previous Labor government had put in place. The government could not be trusted then and they cannot be trusted now. A change in Prime Minister and a change in minister have not changed a thing when it comes to their unfair approach to school funding.

What we have on the table is a desperate attempt to re-badge their failures in education policy. What we have is a $22 billion cut. They are trying to distract from their appalling history on schools policy and trying to distract from their damaging plans for the future of our schools. There are clear and compelling reasons why we need to fight this government's proposal. Access to education is fundamental to the economic and social progress of our nation. Education, alongside universal health care, is the most important investment a government can make to tackle inequality. It is the difference between lifting children out of intergenerational poverty; closing the gap on outcomes for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples; ensuring that children from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds are included; and providing opportunities for children with disabilities to reach their full potential and not be left behind in what is becoming such a fast-paced world.

We ask a lot of our education system: our teachers, our students and the parents of these children. We want to support better quality teachers. We want better educational outcomes and we want to lift the outcomes for children who experience disadvantage. We want to develop children who are great readers and who are able to unlock mathematics; children who learn to code, to participate in healthy physical activity and who learn music, art, other languages and about other cultures. We want all of these things for our children because we know that these are the skills that are required to grow and develop our economy. And yet we have a government which does not want to invest properly in our schools in a way that is needed to achieve all of these things.

The fact that this bill seeks to remove as one of the objectives of the Australian Education Act the words:

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

says everything about this government. They want to remove that objective; they are simply not interested in the power of education to actually change people's lives.

In government, Labor developed the Schooling Resource Standard, a funding model that clearly defined the funding required for each child to attain a great education regardless of which school sector they were in. It includes loading for specific disadvantage, targeted to the students who need the most help: extra support for Indigenous students, students with a disability, students in remote and rural areas or students in areas of particular disadvantage. The funding commitments we made for the Commonwealth were based on the total resources available within each state and within each school sector.

Let's just remember what the review into schools funding itself said:

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

This is something that the government seems to have been forgotten. To get all our school systems onto an even playing field across the country and to close the cross-border gaps we have to recognise that different states and territories are in different places with different starting points, and that different sectors are at different starting points, in order to lift everybody up to that standard.

We reached agreements with states and territories to ensure that schools whose total resources fell below the Schooling Resource Standard would reach that funding level by 2019. In the case of my home state of Victoria, that year was set at 2022 in recognition that it needed further time to lift up to that resource. We offered two-thirds of the extra funding needed to get all the schools up to the Schooling Resource Standard, tying our contribution to state commitments to increase their funding by one-third. What this government has done is said that none of that matters. They say that the total funding that schools have does not matter, and they have now retreated in this bill to a Commonwealth-only funding model, an offer that does not lock states into keeping or increasing their commitments to schools.

Let's look at what exactly they are proposing in this bill. I really hope that the backbench have actually read and understood the complexities of this funding model and why this is actually a substantial retrograde step for schools in their own electorates. When you look at the detail it does become pretty clear that it is not needs based funding—and it is certainly not fair. Their plan would see a transition to a flat Commonwealth contribution—remembering you are not looking at the total resourcing of schools now—of 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for all government schools, and 80 per cent for all non-government schools. It is not sector blind, it is absolutely sector specific. This rule locks in a sector specific rate for different systems and will result in some wealthier schools being better off, and those schools that desperately need extra support continuing to be left behind.

Importantly, there is no requirement for the states and territories to ever lift their contribution to get our public schools closer to the Schooling Resource Standard. They are walking away from the targets in the current act. These targets were put in place by Labor to build internationally competitive education systems across our county to meet our future needs. The impacts of the government cuts are very clear. It is an average of $2.4 million from each school across the nation. That is what the $22 billion is.

Over the weeks since the budget, I have spoken to a number of principals in my own electorate, and they have told me how much they stand to lose under this government's proposal. The local Catholic Education Office has told me firsthand the damage that it will do. We are in a fairly disadvantaged lower socioeconomic area, but they are saying that even in that circumstance where they get additional funding—not under this model but the one in which the distribution works—they will still have to charge their parents $100 to $200 extra in school fees in their Catholic primary education system. And that of course is at the current rate of growth that the government is proposing. They are saying that in future years that will potentially blow out to $1,000.

Parents in my electorate are not wealthy, and families sending their children to Catholic parish schools are not wealthy. Many of them choose to go to Catholic parish schools because they have kids with special needs and under that system currently they are able to access better services—or more support services—than they are through the public education system, because the public education system is so poorly funded. What this government is doing is cutting those Catholic schools. But what it is doing to public schools is frankly absolutely appalling. The Catholic Education Office says that they were not consulted on these changes; they were ambushed. They are facing cuts and they are going to have to, as I said, raise fees for parents who send their kids to Catholic schools. Local public schools in particular are worse off. According to figures released by the Victorian government, schools in my own electorate stand to lose over $14.7 million in funding just in the next two years, 2018 to 2019.

I cannot believe that Ballarat Specialist School, a school that has some of the most disadvantaged children in my constituency, is set to lose $1.1 million. Bacchus Marsh College will lose $1.4 million. Mount Clear College will lose $1.6 million. Ballarat Secondary College will lose $900,000. Daylesford Secondary College will lose $500,000. Darley Primary School will lose $300,000. Buninyong Primary School will lose $300,000. Urquhart Park Primary School, who were here in this parliament in the last couple of days, will lose $200,000 over that period of time. These are not just numbers on a page; they represent fewer teachers, less resources and less support in our public classrooms. These cuts will mean that kids who need the most help will not be given the support they need.

Many of us—and I do not talk publicly very much about this—have children who have disabilities and children with special needs. I see, every single day, the enormous struggle those kids have in school. And it is heartbreaking—absolutely heartbreaking—that they cannot get the support they need to learn. Teachers are trying with the resources that they have to do the best they can with those kids. Kids on the autism spectrum disorder who are not eligible for aides because their IQs are at a certain level beyond where they would be eligible are not causing great disruption in classrooms, but they are falling behind every single day. Children with dyslexia, other speech disorders, other learning disorders and ADHD are all falling behind in our education system. The results are lifelong. If they cannot catch up, if they cannot keep up, if they do not get the support they need academically, socially and emotionally in those schools, we know that those children end up with greater mental health problems. They end up not having the same capacity and opportunities in life. They end up, really, having major disadvantage going forward.

As a parent of a child with a significant learning difficulty, it breaks my heart that you are doing this. I cannot believe that you are doing this to children in public schools with disabilities. I am lucky that I have the resources to try and support my child and my school. But there are parents struggling every single day. You are now saying, 'Your kids do not matter. Your kids in regional areas, areas of disadvantage, do not matter.' That is what you are saying with this bill.

For students with disability, as I said, the cuts are particularly harsh. The Catholic Education Office in Ballarat has told me that their funding for students with disabilities will fall by roughly half. That is simply unacceptable. When you have the government telling us that they are now great champions of the NDIS, you should hang your heads in shame.

Remember: this government went to the 2013 election promising to fund the full disability loading. But students with disability have seen nothing but broken promises. In government, Labor put in place the More Support for Students with Disabilities program, with $100 million of year in additional funding, to specifically support students with a disability. Frankly, this government's decision to cut the funding for children with disability and impose $22 billion of cuts is an absolute disgrace.

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

It is always a pleasure to rise in this House and speak about the importance of education for our community and the wonderful opportunity that we have created in this bill, the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, to increase funding over the next 10 years to schools right around Australia. It is my pleasure today to rise in the House to speak in support of this bill, which will provide a needs-based funding model for every school across the country, particularly in my electorate of Forde over the next 10 years.

The Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, or Gonski 2.0, as it has been colloquially termed, is delivering a real Gonski needs-based funding model that those opposite did not deliver. We are delivering record—and growing—funding for schools. Over the next 10 years, a record $242 billion will be invested in schools recurrent funding from 2018 to 2027, including $81 billion over 2018 to 2021. Funding for schools will grow from a record $17.5 billion in 2027 to $30.6 billion in 2027. The funding, importantly, will grow, on average, faster than broader inflation, with total Commonwealth funding growing by approximately 75 per cent over the next 10 years and funding per student growing at an average of some 4.1 per cent each year. Every school and every student in my electorate of Forde will be better supported well into the future through this school funding model. In my home state of Queensland, schools will receive a funding increase of some 91.5 per cent over the next 10 years. At a national level, funding per student for all sectors will continue to increase in real terms as a result of this truly needs-based funding model.

Importantly, when we came to government after the 2013 election, we were the first to invest additional funds in the Queensland education system through an $800 million investment that those opposite never provided. That went straight to our local schools across Queensland and resulted in programs such as the Great Results Guarantee, which ultimately became, with a change of state government, the Investor Success Program. When I speak with my principals around the schools in my electorate, they speak of how great that additional money has been in helping them run programs specifically tailored to the school cohort. Over the next 10 years, funding for government schools will continue to grow, to nearly $100 billion, from 2018 to 2027.

With this bill, the coalition is putting an end to some 27 special deals with states, territories, unions and the non-government school leaders that have distorted funding needs and would have some schools waiting up to 150 years to get their fair share of school funding support. This school funding plan will mean that schools in my electorate of Forde will receive their fair share of support sooner and will ensure that they do not suffer as a result of Labor's special deals.

While the government believes in a strong level of funding for schools, how that funding is used is just as important. That is why I support the government's new inquiry, led by David Gonski, which will look into improving results for Australian students by focusing on the most effective teaching and learning strategies in an effort to reverse declining results and seek to raise the performance of schools and students. Our reforms are aimed at setting up our schools for the future to deliver a fair needs-based funding model for all Australian students.

Last week I was very pleased to be joined by the Minister for Education in my electorate of Forde, where I represent some 41 schools and around 32½ thousand students. We had the pleasure of visiting Upper Coomera State College, where we met with school leaders and with Principal Chris Capra. The school runs an extremely successful cafe program to give students practical work experience. The minister and I had the pleasure of dropping in for a coffee and asked the students about their cafe and what they were learning from the experience. They shared the enjoyment they are getting from learning those basic, practical work skills. I would like to thank Zarraffa's Coffee franchisees for their support of the cafe and provision of equipment and coffee. It is just like going to any one of my local Zarraffa's stores.

Afterwards we visited the library to join a STEM class with some of the primary school students. The government understands the importance of technology and innovation as the future of Australian industry, and we can see every day the increasing importance that technology and innovation play in our lives. So it is important that our school students are brought up in an environment where they are exposed to technology, coding and a range of other subject areas that, when I went to school, we probably did not even think about. We are supporting our students through initiatives that encourage studies in STEM projects. It was terrific to see the year 6 students try to navigate a sphere through an obstacle that they had to actually program themselves. It was a lot more difficult than it looked. After every exercise, the teacher would change the course, and so they had to reprogram the sphere. Looking at these subjects and what is being done in our schools today, we see the change since I was at school. This is about preparing those kids for the future, for jobs that may not even exist today.

On leaving Upper Coomera State College, we visited Leapfrog Childcare Centre at Ormeau to chat with the educators there. As part of our overall education package, as a separate part of that, it is important that we put in place childcare reforms in this budget as well. This was a great opportunity to discuss those opportunities with our local childcare centre operator. Importantly, when you go and talk to the local childcare centre operators—and even when I talk to the schools, as I do on a regular basis—you discover the increasing level of interaction between our schools and our childcare centres to ensure that the kids who are going through child care are properly ready to go to school. What they are seeing as a consequence of that is the kids' capacity in their early years of school; they are much better adjusted and much better prepared because they have actually gone across to the school and understand a little better what the school environment is really like.

We then held two forums—one with our local school principals and one with local teachers. I am very pleased to say that these forums were very well attended and the feedback we attended was extremely positive. I would like to thank the minister for making himself available to speak with not only our school principals but some of the leading teachers from schools across the electorate of Forde. Principals and teachers alike expressed their satisfaction and their approval of the fact that they actually had an opportunity to speak with the minister directly.

But what was equally important was that we had one of these forums early last year. At that particular forum, we said to the teachers and to the principals in particular that we were focused on a needs-based funding system and that we would be increasing funding above what they were already receiving. Many of these principals had said to me that, with the Great Results Guarantee money that they receive—or Investing for Success (I4S) money as it is now—they were able to run programs that they had not previously been able to run and they wanted to continue those programs. A number of principals at that forum last week shared their pleasure and their delight for their school community and for the students and their teaching staff, who do such a tremendous job every single day. Not only do they now know that they are going to receive at least the same quantum of funding they received previously; we are actually going to increase their funding next year. So not only can they continue their existing programs that are starting to achieve some significant results in their school—in fairness to Queensland Education they have done a really good job of allowing the state school principals to prepare the programs that are applicable to the student cohort in their school—they are not dictated to on how they have to spend the money.

So this additional funding that we are now putting into the system with this bill is only going to build on that fabulous foundation that we as a government put in place as a result of the extra $800 million that we provided to Queensland schools in 2013 after we came to government. It has put at ease the minds of the principals and the teachers, who now know they will have the funding and the capacity to run these very important programs. It is this funding plan, and what we are looking to do with schools more broadly, that has an objective of setting our students on a path to academic excellence and to achieve real needs-based funding for students from all backgrounds in every town and city, in every region and state and in every classroom. It gives the capacity for our schools to run different programs that work for different kids in different situations.

Across my electorate of Forde I have a wide variety of schools, with a wide variety of students from a wide variety of socioeconomic backgrounds and with a wide variety of capacity. I know that schools in my electorate have the capacity to bring in extra teachers or extra support staff to help those students that may be finding the education process a little bit difficult or are struggling with a difficult subject. It is amazing, when I talk to some of these teachers and students, how some students are fabulous in one subject but really struggle with another subject. If the school has these extra resources they can help those kids in those subjects where they may not be so strong. Those kids have the capacity, in the subjects they are strong in, to actually help their fellow students in a collaborative effort we see increasingly in schools. It is not only this encouragement to the teachers and to the principals, but the capacity for students to achieve their best.

This is what this education funding package is all about: recognising the importance of putting in place the resources necessary to ensure that our students who go to our great schools all around the country have the capacity to be their best. It is a reflection of what the budget more generally is designed to do and what this government's objectives are more generally—that is, to create the opportunities for Australians in all walks of live to strive for their goals and to achieve their best. I am proud to be a member of this government which is putting in place a plan for education funding, creating certainty for the next 10 years for the school community across Australia and for those in my electorate of Forde. I do want to see the students in my schools succeed and be their best. I know they have a tremendous contribution to make to the future of this great country. I commend this bill to the House.

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

As the member for Lalor I rise tonight to speak on what I consider to be the most important piece of legislation to come before this parliament: the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. I say so with no hyperbole. I say so because it is my life's experience of working in the state education system in Victoria as a school teacher, as a principal class officer and as a principal. I stand here tonight as someone who absolutely understands school budgets and who absolutely understands, after 27 years in the state sector, what the Gillard reforms and the Gillard funding model meant for schools across this nation. I stand here to defend that model. I will rise as often as I can to defend that model because this is a once-in-100-years opportunity to deliver the equity that is required to bring the standards up in our schools.

This funding model is about equity. It is about quality. It is about Australia aspiring once again to be in the top five countries by 2025. The Gillard Labor government commissioned a review, and we know that that review determined that there was a Schooling Resource Standard for primary and secondary schools that needed to be reached for that equity to be assured. That was just the platform. That is the base that was determined that each school needed for each student to ensure that they got the support they needed. On top of that come the layers around disadvantage and the increased funding around disadvantage.

I stand here as the member for Lalor, the youngest electorate in the country, with 56 schools across the sectors. Some of those schools are as large as 2,000 or 1,500 students. We have some of the largest primary schools in the state. I know what this government's failure to deliver, reflected in this legislation this evening, means on the ground. I know that in my electorate, where we are educating the children of 70,000 families, if this legislation is passed and the opportunity to put in place needs based sector blind funding is missed, so will those children's futures be missed.

This review of school funding was commissioned to look at schools across the country and determine what was needed—and what was needed was for all schools to meet a student resource standard. We needed all schools to reach that student resource standard, with assistance from the federal government. We needed 27 agreements, because we have eight states. That is eight state sectors. That is eight state Catholic sectors. That is every other grouping of independent schools across this country. There were 27 agreements because there were 27 different sectors that needed come to an agreement with the federal government to ensure that their sectors could reach this student resource standard. That is what we are talking about here. Just to give some insight: when I left education in Victoria to become the member for Lalor, primary schools in Victoria were funded around $6,000 per student and secondary schools around $8,000 per student. The student resource standard that we were talking about in 2014 was $9,271 per primary school student and $12,193 per secondary school student. That was set to go up using the indexation model. We know on this side of the House how we planned to do that. We knew that, in delivering a large amount of funds to bring schools up to that student resource standard, years 5 and 6 were critical. This piece of legislation walks away from sector blind and needs based funding. It will reinstate the Howard model of funding for schools across this country—the Howard model that had the funding wars going on election after election, with sector against sector and school against school. That model did not deliver the equity required in our system for excellence.

These resources are critical for schools to have the aspirations that we need them to have to bring up the standard for children, and this legislation is a real cut. Speaker after speaker has talked about the promise that those opposite made at the 2013 election. The member for Boothby was in here today speaking on this legislation. She may not have known that at the 2013 election corflutes were at the schools in Boothby with that promise written on them—and that promise was seen by every family. What is really important for people here to understand is that this is not just a debate for today; this goes back decades. Under the former Labor government the breakthrough occurred, and we got consensus on what was needed to lift our schools. We got consensus around the fact that the problem in our schools' performance against those international standards was equity. We set in place not just funding reforms but reforms around what we expected of our schools. We know that what is being proposed here is a cut. We have heard speaker after speaker say that it is a cut. The government acknowledges it is a cut in its own paperwork when it says that it is a '$22.3 billion save'. It is not a 'save' if the children of the 70,000 families in my electorate have the transformative power of education taken away from them—and that is what we are debating in this chamber tonight.

We have heard a lot of talk from those opposite about numbers. Just for the record, I think we need to make it clear that the numbers that we on this side of the House are using are the numbers for the next two years and the numbers that those opposite are using are numbers for the next decade. Just take that in for a moment when you think about the cuts that are being proposed to be delivered for the next two years. I want to preface that a little. As I said, this debate goes back for decades. Some of this work goes back a decade. I was working in schools under a Labor federal government when national partnerships agreements hit the ground and funding came through the doors of the school I was working at to look at extended hours, to look at the impact of literacy and numeracy coaching and to study and evaluate the impact that these resources could have on student outcomes in our school. I know that in my electorate where that money flowed to highly disadvantaged schools huge differences have been made in student outcomes; schools are now punching above their weight. But I also know what a long journey that has been for the teaching fraternity across Victoria, and across the country. I know the things that schools are learning because I was in schools and I learnt beside the teachers delivering in those classrooms.

We are analysing student performance and student learning at the micro level. Teachers are working every day to ensure that they know every child's learning capacity and every child's learning level. Teachers are working harder than they have ever worked in a very new way. To make the efficiencies, they need to be collaborative; because to actually be able to monitor, assess and do the diagnostics on every child in every class that you teach takes an extraordinary amount of time. So the efficiencies they are getting are through collaboration.

Years 5 and 6 of this funding model are absolutely critical—to deliver to those teachers who have honed their skills who have found new ways of working. Years 5 and 6 of this funding model are supposed to roll in and give them the resources they need to sustain and continue and refine the things that they are learning. I hate to think what is going to happen to the schools in my electorate that are aiming so high and working so hard if years 5 and 6 do not deliver the resources that they need. We have teachers working incredibly hard. The morale of the teachers across this country will sink—it will fall off a cliff—if this legislation passes this evening, if this government is allowed to implement this fake equity funding model that they are bringing into this chamber tonight.

They want to reintroduce the Howard model to our school system, to all sectors. I note our Prime Minister was on my television screen, saying that he was going to 'end the funding wars'. The funding wars ended when the reform and this funding model were delivered. The funding wars ended when that government stood at polling booths at schools across this country and said: 'Dollar for dollar, we will deliver exactly what Labor has promised.' Yet in here today they stand and read from scripts and say they are going to put in a pittance of what is required, a pittance of what the study and the review found our schools need. It is an absolute pittance.

This is a shameful day. This is an absolute opportunity that everyone agreed was required for Australia to compete. It was required for all Australian children to get the quality education that they deserve, so that we could walk in our country and say, 'Postcode will not determine your future'. That is where this debate started, and tonight those opposite want to wind that debate back.

There have been lists. There has been lots of talk about numbers. We know it is a $22.3 billion cut. I know that in Lalor that is an extraordinary amount of money being pulled out of our schools, because it is $21.5 million across the next two years. There have been lots of figures used tonight by those opposite. But I have a few figures that might shock them. The electorate of Indi is set to lose over $1,800 per student towards reaching that SRS; Mallee, $1,800; Gippsland, $1,600; Wannon, $1,600 per student. The electorate of Murray will lose $1,600 per student; Dunkley $1,344 per student across that electorate. That is the difference we are talking about, and this is for the next two years. In McMillan, the figure is nearly $1,300 per student; Corangamite, $1,200 per student; Deakin, $1,100 per student; Chisholm, $1,044 per student; and Casey, $1,000 per student.

Could those opposite for a moment stop and think about what that means? When the Catholic sector say they may have to double fees, they are the numbers that they are looking at. The Catholic sector still aspires to reach this SRS, and they know what funding is required to reach this excellence. They know how many teachers they need to put into their schools; they know at the school level what is needed. The member for Forde stood here tonight and showed fantastic insight into the schools in his electorate and what they need and the programs they are funding, and yet he is going to vote for a package that is going to rip dollars away from what is already happening in his schools.

There is no doubt in my mind that we stand right now in this chamber at a seminal moment in Australian history. I implore all senators on the crossbenches to support Labor in standing strong with a promise to deliver what we have promised our schoolchildren and their families. When you go to a low fee paying Catholic school, your fee is not covering the cost of running that school—the federal government is kicking in to do that. Catholic schools know what the SRS is, they know what they are aspiring to. This government is breaking a deal. It is breaking a promise that it made with schools across this country. It is asking all of us to accept low expectations, low aspirations and low commitment to education in this country.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill. We can do nothing in this place that is more important than making sure our children get a quality education. No matter where they come from or how much their parents earn, every Australian child should be able to access the school that they deserve and need. That way we give our schoolchildren the best possible start in life. But, it is an investment in our future. We are never going to beat our competitors in South-East Asia and Asia or Africa or indeed South America or other places on the basis of driving down wages; we are going to beat them with the creativity, ingenuity, skills, talents and abilities of our people, which we will foster in education, from preschool through primary school, high school and tertiary education. This is why the Labor Party has consistently fought for Australia to have the best education system in the world. It is why we introduced the original Gonski reforms, to give every student, no matter what their circumstances, access to an excellent school experience; it is why we enacted the Schooling Resource Standard, to establish clearly and definitively the level of funding required for schools to deliver a first-rate education; and it is why we will today fight against this government's disgraceful attempt to drag school funding levels down through its sham of an education policy.

The government's education policy is nothing more than a sham—it is a con. Their own documents that they produced when they announced Gonski 2.0 show a $22 billion cut to school funding in this country. They have no credibility, and it is why the various sectors—Catholic, state sectors, state education unions and indeed conservative governments at the state level around the country—are up in arms, as well as Labor governments. This is a budget that hands millionaires and multinational companies huge tax breaks. It is shameful that the government cannot find the necessary money to match Labor's commitment to Gonski needs based funding. I was a candidate, as member for Blair, at the time, and who could forget those banners, those corflutes, on election day in September 2013? Liberal candidates—certainly the candidate who ran against me in 2013, and then fronted up in 2016 again—were saying that the Liberals would match Labor's education funding dollar for dollar, only to break that promise in the first budget in 2014, slashing, according to the budget papers, $30 billion in education funding. They have no credibility.

Debate interrupted.