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

My question is to the Prime Minister. Wasn't Stephen Elder, the executive director of Catholic Education Melbourne, absolutely correct when he told Alan Jones this morning:

… a small parish primary school that is opposite housing commission flats, where parents are making sacrifices to send their kids to this school ... 10 per cent of the kids are on healthcare cards … they are saying—

the government—

that it is richer than Geelong Grammar. That is how flawed this system is.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The remarks you referred to are not correct; they are wrong. And they are wrong for a number of reasons, but I will cite Catholic Education from the Archdiocese of Brisbane, which makes this point that applies across Australia. All federal funding for Catholic schools, under our model, is calculated on a per-school basis, consistent with other non-government schools, the purpose being to deliver on David Gonski's vision of ensuring that school funding is needs based and consistent so that a non-government school in the same location with the same students will get the same funding, whether Catholic or Anglican or any other denomination. That is the vision. But the funding is provided, as the archdiocese observes and as the gentleman you referred to knows very well, to the Catholic system in a lump sum, and they can distribute it as they wish and explain how they distribute it.

The government is being thoroughly transparent in how it calculates the funding on a transparent, consistent needs basis, using the same SES criteria that have been used by federal governments, both Labor and Liberal, for many, many years. The honourable member knows that, and she is betraying the principles she has claimed to adhere to for many years. She can twist and turn as much as she likes. She can tie herself into tighter and tighter knots on the ABC if she wishes. But she cannot escape the fact that everything she argued for, every principle she said she stood for, she has abandoned; every skerrick of commitment she gave to needs based funding has been thrown away for political gain.