Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have received a letter from the honourable the Deputy Leader of the Opposition proposing that a definite matter of public importance be submitted to the House for discussion, namely:

The government cutting billions of dollars from Australian schools.

I call upon those honourable members who approve of the proposed discussion to rise in their places.

More than the number of members required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

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

Of course, all of us in this place acknowledge the member for Longman and her incredibly brave speech. It's impossible to speak after her without acknowledging that.

Mr Deputy Speaker, I'm sure that you would remember, as many on this side do, when the Prime Minister and the education minister proudly unveiled their new schools funding calculator after they'd made changes to the schools funding arrangements. It didn't last very long. It got taken down quick smart, because what that schools funding calculator allowed schools to do is look up how much worse off they would be under the government's changed funding arrangements. It was down for five months. It's finally been replaced by something that doesn't really allow us to compare apples with apples. This whole exercise has been about covering up for the fact that those opposite are cutting billions of dollars from our schools.

Just this week, we've released information from the Parliamentary Budget Office and the National Catholic Education Commission that shows just how much worse off schools will be over the next two years. In fact, over the next two years alone—this year, calendar year 2018; and calendar year 2019—Australian schools will be $2.19 billion worse off than they would be under Labor's funding arrangements. The extraordinary thing about this is that the cuts don't hit every sector equally, do they? In fact, the cuts hurt the poorest kids in the poorest schools the most. If you look at the cut to public schools of $1.88 billion over the next two years, that is 86 per cent of the total value of the cuts. Guess what? Public school kids are 66 per cent of the kids, so the largest share of the cuts by far, a disproportionately large share of the cuts, hits public schools. Public schools get 86 per cent of the cuts, Catholic schools get 12 per cent of the cuts and independent schools get just two per cent of the cuts. How does that work?

In South Australia, this has been a really incredible hit to the schools budget—$210 million cut from South Australian schools over the next two years alone. Government schools losing—

Mr Tudge interjecting—

It's in the budget papers, you moron.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Sydney will withdraw.

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

I withdraw. I withdraw the name. One of the things that are extraordinary about this is we've got a Liberal South Australian education minister who has cut $210 million from South Australian schools, but who helped him do it? Who allowed him to do it? It was the Xenophon Team's votes in the Senate that allowed these cuts to hit South Australian schools. It wouldn't be such a surprise, because you've got an ex-Liberal and a bunch of ex-Liberals helping a Liberal government cut the budget in schools, except here is a letter from then senator Nick Xenophon firmly promising—hand on heart, no equivocation—that he would never agree to cut the schools funding package that Labor delivered. The letter states:

I write to reiterate in the strongest possible terms, the commitment of the Nick Xenophon Team in relation to the implementation of the Gonski funding model … we stand by full implementation and full funding of Gonski. In particular we support the current system of indexation—

the current system of indexation—

and will oppose any moves to change it.

Well, he didn't oppose the moves. He backed them right in through here and through the Senate, and they would not have got through the Senate without the backing of the Nick Xenophon Team. He writes to principals:

I look forward to working with you and your members to ensure Gonski funding is defended and maintained for the future of Australia's children.

This same man seeks to be the member for Hartley. What does this do to schools in the electorate of Hartley? Norwood Morialta High School will lose $1.4 million over the next two years. That is a lot of cakes he's going to have to buy at the cake stall; it's a lot of sausages at the sausage sizzle that the local member is going to have to make up for. It's a few pieces of art at the art fete they might have, as many schools do. What about East Marden Primary School? Every year, they have a fundraising effort where they sell voucher booklets to raise money. How many voucher booklets is the member for Hartley, Mr Xenophon—if he is successful—going to have to buy to replace the $640,000 cut from this school this year and next year? This year and next year, $640,000 will be cut from this school. This contrasts, of course, with the Weatherill government, which has been investing in schools, with 800 new teachers and $1 billion of infrastructure upgrades in recent years. It is the largest ever spend by a South Australian government, with Norwood Morialta High School getting an extra $30 million and East Marden an extra $7½ million.

We are absolutely committed to reversing every dollar of the funding cuts that this Liberal government, with the help of the Nick Xenophon Team, smashed through this parliament—every single dollar restored. But I have to say that this is not theoretical future funding that we are talking about; these cuts are hitting this year. The Liberal government shoved these cuts through this parliament with the help of the Nick Xenophon Team. If that money had been allowed to flow to South Australia as intended, $210 million would have paid for 280 more school support officers, 186 more speech therapists, 203 new counsellors and 505 new teachers. Imagine the difference that would make in South Australian schools if those opposite hadn't cut the original funding that the South Australian government had signed up to and expected quite rightly to receive from the federal government because they had a signed deal with the federal government.

And all this while it's not just South Australia that's being affected. Tasmania will lose $68 million over the next two years alone. Think about the difference $68 million makes in Tasmanian schools. And those are not our figures; that is what the Liberal Deputy Premier says is the cut to Tasmanian schools. Nevertheless, he's prepared to back in the cut because he'd rather suck up to his friends in Canberra than stand up for Tasmanian schoolchildren. That's why Tasmania needs a government led by Bec White to actually stand up for Tasmanian schoolchildren.

This extra funding is critical to our schools. It's this extra funding that has been cut by those opposite that means more one-on-one attention for kids who are struggling, help to identify the kids that are struggling, help to make sure they catch up, help to make sure their literacy and numeracy is first rate. It means extra investment in science and coding—making sure they have the specialist teachers to teach these specialist subjects. It means more extension activities for kids who are gifted and talented. It means more help with the basics and more help for all of the enrichment that makes a school experience a great school experience. We should expect to deliver the best education in the world to Australian schoolchildren, not rip the guts out of school kids' education as those opposite are doing.

And why are they doing it? This is the bit that really gets me. Why are they doing it? So they can give $65 billion of big business tax cuts that they hope will one day trickle down. Well, history has taught us something different, hasn't it—$65 billion of big business tax cuts straight to the pockets of overseas shareholders instead of properly funding our schools so that our kids get every assistance. We want every Australian child to get a great education. We want every Australian school to be a great school. And it is appalling that those opposite have cut $2.19 billion this year and next year from our schools. The cuts hit public schools and Catholic schools the hardest And what are those opposite doing? They are still defending it. They are not even embarrassed. They should go and face their school communities and explain themselves.

Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Contrary to the claims of those opposite, the Turnbull government is delivering record Commonwealth investment in Australian schools. There are no cuts to school funding. Labor are well aware that there are no cuts to funding, but they continue their own special version of events. So let me say once again that there are no cuts to school funding. There are a few things that I'd like to put on the record again today. I know that I have previously put them on the record, but they do need to be said and said again so that those opposite understand exactly what is happening with school funding, which is that there are no cuts.

I believe the Minister for Education and Training, Senator Simon Birmingham, has done an outstanding job with school funding, as he has done with the entire education portfolio. The Quality Schools package is going to deliver an extra $25.3 billion in recurrent funding for Australian schools over the next 10 years from 2018 through to 2027. That's on top of the 2016-17 budget settings. This brings the total Commonwealth recurrent funding to $249.8 billion over the period 2018 to 2027. For the first time, real needs based funding is going to be provided, and that will grow from $17.5 billion in 2017 to $31.1 billion in 2027.

This government is providing record levels of funding, and we're doing that because we understand how important school education is to our young people. But also—and I have said this many times in this place—we see education as a highway from child care and preschool, through to schools and potentially into vocational education and higher education. It is a highway, a journey, that our young people undertake, and it's very important that we get school funding right. But it's also very important that we make sure the money put into education funding is used appropriately and wisely. We know that each child in Australia deserves the support and opportunity to succeed. They deserve schools that are well and fairly funded and that encourage the highest academic standards. David Gonski has agreed to lead a new inquiry into improving the results of Australian students. The review to achieve educational excellence in Australian schools will provide advice on how this extra Commonwealth funding should be used by Australian schools to improve student achievement and school performance. The review will make recommendations on the most effective teaching and learning strategies to reverse declining results and to seek to raise the performance of schools and students. David Gonski will be providing his report to government very soon.

There are two issues. One is funding, and there are probably some things that I'd like to add on that before I actually discuss a little bit more the reason why we have to make sure that we are giving students at school the opportunity to do well and succeed. I actually want to talk about the funding that is going to each of the sectors, but I'm going to clarify what appears to be some Labor confusion over the funding distribution across all sectors. Let me start by saying that states and territories are responsible for the overall quality of school education in their jurisdictions. States and territories are also the major funders of schools. While they provide the majority of funding to public schools, the Australian government is the majority funder of non-government schools. At the sector level, current government funding, both Commonwealth and state and territory, accounts for 94 per cent of funding for government schools, 73 per cent of funding for Catholic schools and 42 per cent of funding for independent schools.

In dollar figure terms for each of the sectors, the government sector will receive a total of $33.65 billion over the period 2018 to 2021, which is over $2 billion extra and growth of 27.6 per cent. Over the next decade, the government sector will receive a total of $104.5 billion, meaning an additional $5.9 billion, which is growth of 79.6 per cent. The Catholic sector will receive a total of $28.44 billion over the period 2018 to 2021, which is over $1 billion extra and growth of 15.1 per cent. Over the next decade, the Catholic sector will receive a total of $81.89 billion, meaning an additional $3.23 billion, which is growth of 48.8 per cent. The independent sector will receive a total of $21 billion over the period 2018 to 2021, which is over $1 billion extra and growth of 22.8 per cent. Over the next decade, the independent sector will receive a total of $63.42 billion, meaning an additional $3.16 billion, which is growth of 66.9 per cent. So they are significant increases, and it's clear that there are no cuts to school funding.

I indicated previously not only that it is important that we get the funding right but also that how that funding is used is important, and it's important because we want to give our young people, our school students, every opportunity to succeed and do well, so that they are able to go on to life after school—whether that's going directly into employment or following a vocational education pathway or perhaps going on to university.

If we want to talk about funding cuts, when Labor was in government they ripped $1.2 billion out of vocational education, when they did multiple cuts to employer incentives over, effectively, a 12-month period. That crippled the sector—particularly in the non-trade areas, where we had a significant decline. In fact, the single biggest decline over a 12-month period was under the last 12 months of the Labor government. So it was a significant ripping of funding out of the vocational education sector.

We are now in a position where, because of that, we have a significant issue in the vocational education sector, where—if I use apprentices as an example—we cannot attract enough people into the sector to meet our current skill needs, let alone our future skill needs. The Turnbull government, in last year's budget, announced the $1.5 billion Skilling Australians Fund. It is designed to inject much-needed funds into the apprenticeship space. When I speak about apprenticeships, I'm talking about Australian apprenticeships, so it includes apprentices and trainees. We know that a lot of work needs to be done just to start to lift us up to the levels we were at back in 2012-13 because, in some areas, we know that we are going to be experiencing high growth. The disability sector, for example, and health and ageing are some priority areas for us where we know that we need to make sure that we have people who are properly skilled for the future. So the $1.5 billion Skilling Australians Fund will put a much-needed injection of funding in there and deal with the fact that we have a shortfall in apprentices. We're looking at, over a four-year period, supporting an additional 300,000 apprentices, at the pre-apprenticeship level, the apprenticeship level and the post-apprenticeship—the higher apprenticeship—level, and that is to make sure that we will be meeting our trades and non-trades needs and our trainee needs into the future.

That is only a small snapshot of some of the work that needs to be done in vocational education, but some of that work is so needed because of the damage that the Labor Party did to vocational education when it was last in government. So the coalition government has put a lot of time, effort and resources into making sure that we look at the education system as a whole. As I indicated previously, I believe the work that Senator Birmingham has done has been truly outstanding. He has looked at education as a whole. He has done a lot of work in the school space in particular. The announcements that he has made will address the funding issues—will get rid of the 27 deals that Labor put in place that distorted the funding to the various sectors of school education. He has dealt with that. He has come up with a proposal. He has engaged with David Gonski to make sure that the funding that has been put in is going to be well used into the future.

Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Veterans' Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was interesting listening to the assistant minister at the table, because in one breath she said, 'There've been no cuts; there've been no changes—nothing to see here,' and then, in the next breath, she says, 'Look, we changed the system because Labor's system wasn't right.' Well, it's time the assistant minister called it for what it is. The truth is that the government ripped up the agreements with the states and territories when it came to school funding. They ripped them up. And they got into government and said, 'We will not honour this,' despite having, at the election in 2013, run with: 'We will match Labor dollar for dollar.' Of course, when they got into government they ripped it up.

What that has meant is that, coming into 2018-19, $210 million has been ripped from South Australian schools. There are so many schools in my electorate that are missing out as a result. Just in the state seat of Black, a very important state seat, Hallett Cove East Primary School is going to miss out on $340,000, while Hallett Cove school will miss out on $1 million. These are serious cuts to schools in 2018-19. No matter how many times the government says that these are not cuts, they are cuts. The funding was written into agreements, signed by states and territories, but the then opposition—now the government—said they would abide by them but, when they got in, they ripped them up. If there wasn't any change and there weren't any cuts, as the assistant minister suggested, then why did we vote in the parliament about it? Why did we actually vote to change legislation about how we fund our schools? We voted because this government ripped up the agreement to fund our schools and, as a result, it cut billions from our schools.

Now, we are facing a state election in South Australia and, when it comes to state elections, there's always a lot of discussion about education. I'm sure the opposition leader Steven Marshall has been talking about education. Although I have not heard much about it, but what was he doing when this government was voting to rip money out of schools? He was silent. He didn't say a word—not a peep from that mouth. But I'm not surprised about that because he hasn't been very vocal in sticking up for South Australia against this government in so many areas.

I was surprised about the way that the Nick Xenophon Team voted, because they say they are the champion of education. I wasn't surprised the Nick Xenophon Team did a deal with the Liberal Party—that was not surprising. In fact, the Nick Xenophon Team has done many deals with the Liberal Party, including the changes to child care that will leave 279,000 families worse off. In South Australia, that equates to 16,037 families worse off. That is what the Nick Xenophon Team voted for when it came to childcare changes. So I wasn't surprised that they voted and did a deal with the Liberal Party. I was surprised about the Nick Xenophon Team's vote, because of this letter which came out just before the 2016 election. He wrote it to the Australian Education Union, saying: 'I write to reiterate in the strongest possible terms the commitment of the Nick Xenophon Team in relation to the implementation of the Gonski funding model. In particular, we support the current system of indexation and will oppose any moves to change it.' Then they came into the parliament hoping that no-one in South Australia would notice, hoping that over in Canberra it wouldn't get back to South Australia, and they voted to cut money from our schools.

This is what we are facing here. We are facing a Liberal government that teams up with the crossbench to cut money from South Australian schools. In this state election, the issue of education should come up, and voters should very clearly think about which party will be best for South Australian schools. Who will stand up to Canberra and this Liberal government to fight for South Australian schools—not come in here and cut $210 million from our schools? Every school is affected. In fact, 86 per cent of public schools will be affected. The government needs to be held to account. This cut will hurt schools, it will hurt children and it will hurt families.

Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I must confess that the federal government here feels somewhat like a third wheel in this Labor Party attack on Nick Xenophon and South Australia. All the South Australian MPs are sitting up there, like free-range eggs, popped in there so that they can be on TV tonight. You are hoping that more than five people from Adelaide are actually listening. Well, for those who are listening, if you guys have some quarrel with Nick Xenophon, why don't we surrender some additional time for you to go on with five-minute bleats about how much you hate the Xenophon party. Clearly, today's debate is only about the South Australians consuming a little bit of oxygen in Canberra in the hope of helping their state colleagues.

For anyone whose notice it might have escaped, this complete preoccupation with cuts is just an ongoing Labor Party tactic dating back to the 'Mediscare' cuts campaign. Isn't it ironic? It hasn't escaped anyone's attention on this side that the once great Labor Party, the great social policy reformers of this nation, have been reduced to being whingers about cuts. It doesn't matter what it is in the area of social policy, they've completely abdicated the quality debate and all they can talk about is cuts. That actually does this nation a great disservice. This fetish with how many dollars of funding there are while completely ignoring how it's spent lets everyone down. It lets down their voters; it lets down policymakers; it lets down the nation—because we're not improving our schools one bit as long as we're quibbling over dollars.

Let's go right back to why we say cuts are a fairytale and Labor keep talking about cuts. It's because the word 'cuts' works very well for Labor voters, and they keep saying it because it keeps revving up the troops. The reality is, of course, that in education the $17 billion we spend every year will go to $31 billion in the next 10 years. That's a 77 per cent increase, but, of course, over in Labor land, we call that a 'negative 77 per cent cut' and everyone understands what we're talking about. That's an extra $25 billion this year, amounting to $250 billion in total being spent over those 10 years.

For those who are listening and bothered by this internecine battle between South Australian Labor and Nick Xenophon, I want to point out what is self-evident. That is that, when we agreed in 2013 to your funding proposals, we did so over the four-year forward estimates. No government can be bothered with what happens in years 5 and 6 because it's not in the Treasury papers. The reality is it's called 'funny money'. The reality is it's called 'the never-never'. Five and six years in advance, the great convenience was that Julia Gillard never had to worry about that money because she never had to find it in the first place. So Labor's denominator, Labor's starting point for cuts, is imaginary amounts of money which Treasury never had to find, and they never managed to find them because they desperately wanted Wayne Swan to minimise the deficit in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 years.

The education debate is about a globalising workforce. It's about a digitally enabled workforce and how we train them and teach them. It's about the impact of our interventions on progress and growth. It's about whole-of-school initiatives that can improve graduate performance. It's about how we define success. These are the things that this great parliament should be focusing on, not these ridiculous fairytales about cuts, which, I'll confess, are initially very attractive to Labor voters. But those mums and dads out there, when they learn those cuts are imaginary numbers and, in reality, the funding's going the other way, feel deceived by that party. They feel utterly deceived when they're told about it. To honestly improve educational performance in schools, we need a focus on quality that isn't happening here. What this government has, of course, is the Teacher Education Ministerial Advisory Group, solid recommendations about setting high standards and strengthening measures for quality teacher outputs, reconstituting the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership, overhauling the way we accredit initial teacher education programs and getting universities to really focus on evidence based pedagogical approaches.

While we have that party over there, where the only thing they know about education is when the next P&C meeting is, we will never have a debate about quality. While you're worried about the South Australian election, you'll never engage in this big picture. So listen, I urge you, to the Association of Independent Schools of New South Wales chief executive, who said it's time to stop the bickering. It's time for the Labor Party to stop egging on parts of Catholic education to complain about cuts when they know overall, when leaders within Catholic education know and independent schools know as well, as does the rest of Australia, that there are nothing but massive education funding increases for this nation. (Time expired)

Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It was interesting listening to the previous speaker, the Liberal from Queensland, because he trotted out the exact same excuses that Nick Xenophon has been trotting out in the face of these cuts. A cut is a cut is a cut. If, in your first budget, as Mr Hockey did, you own up to these cuts, it's a bit hard to deny them years and years later. It's a $210 million cut. That is what's happening. And guess what? The government on their corflutes, without compromise, excuse or caveat, put up dollar-for-dollar matching: 'We're going to match dollar for dollar in education.'

Then they get into government and they change things. But the only reason they can change things is because the Nick Xenophon Team, and St Nick himself, broke his promise. We know what happened: he wrote to the Education Union before the election and said, 'I write to reiterate in the strongest possible terms the commitment of the Nick Xenophon Team in relation to the implementation of the Gonski funding model.' Then he talks about his colleagues—Griff, Kakoschke-Moore, Sharkie—who will stand by full implementation and full funding of Gonski. What do they do when they're elected to this place? I'll tell you: they voted 57 times to cut funding to South Australian schools and national schools. What damage did it do to schools in my local electorate? I'll tell you. At Craigmore High School, in the seat of Elizabeth, it means a cut of $880,000 over two years. At the South Downs Primary School, the school that my mum taught at many years ago, before she got pregnant with me: $116,000 over those two years. At the Mark Oliphant College: $1.2 million. That's rounded; it's actually an extra $77,000 on top of that. Parafield Gardens High School: $817,000. Virginia Primary: $290,000. I've got a whole page of cuts. So don't tell us they're not real cuts. Don't tell us they don't really make a difference. They make a difference to Craigmore High School. They make a big difference to South Downs Primary School. And they make a big difference to country schools as well. In Greenock Primary: $95,000 over those two years. At Kapunda High School, where I studied: $425,000 over those two years.

Being raised in a country town, I can tell you something. The one thing they dislike more than people who lie—they really dislike people who don't keep their word in the country—but they don't like sanctimonious hypocrites, either. And we know that St Nick, lately of Hartley in South Australia, but who has run for every other political office in South Australia as well—is a sanctimonious hypocrite, because he goes on and on about trust in the political system. He goes on and on about 'breaking the two-party duopoly' and the new politics of centrism, and how it's going to liberate us from all of the sins of politics. But the truth is that he said one thing before an election and did another thing after the election, which had a dramatic effect not just on communities, not just on South Australians in Craigmore or South Downs, but all over. Generations of children are going to go to schools which have inadequate funding, because these cuts get locked in and they roll on. The same way higher funding, as was originally implemented in the Gonski package, would have had an upwards effect on kids' education.

We know there's an election, and we know that a new politics is being offered by St Nick of Hartley. But let me tell you something: a vote for SA-BEST, a vote for the Nick Xenophon Team, is a worthless vote, because he'll say one thing before an election—he'll do anything: any media stunt, anything to get his head on TV; he'll say and do anything with any stakeholder—and then after the election he'll do dirty deals with the Liberal Party, because deep down he's a Liberal. He's just got a grudge against the local Liberal Party, who wouldn't let him into Adelaide's student union many moons ago.

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

I want to describe a plan. It's a plan for human beings to travel to Mars and establish a new colony. It's going to cost more than several trillion dollars. It's called the Trekonian plan. But I don't actually have the money to follow this plan. I'll just tell everybody about the plan and hope they're so convinced that if I tell them often enough they'll know it's going to be true. This is exactly the same as the fantasy funding proposed by the Labor Party at the last two elections for their grandiose plan for educational change—which was unfunded, putting it in the same place as my science fiction plan to get humans to Mars. Really, I would think that, by now, this rubbish would be exactly where it belongs—in the shredding bin. There are no cuts to school funding. How can you cut something that never existed?

The Quality Schools package will deliver an extra $25.3 billion in recurrent funding for Australian schools over the next 10 years. I am so tired of the blatant misrepresentation of information. The opposition keep bleating about cuts, cuts, cuts—but it's a cut to nothing. It was never committed. Our total Commonwealth recurrent funding is $249.8 billion over about 10 years. For the first time, real needs based funding will be provided, and it grows from $17.5 billion to $31.1 billion. Nationally, funding per student for all sectors will continue to increase. This is growing. This is an increase. This is more money for our children. By 2027, students with the same needs in the same sector will have the same level of support from the Commonwealth, regardless of the state or the territory where they live, their background or the choice of school their parents make. As a condition of funding, the states and territories have to pull their weight. They have to co-invest in education. When they say, 'Oh, the federal government's putting in money—okay, we'll take ours out,' that is not good enough. We have to fix that.

The new funding is part of a $192 million funding boost for our regions. It's so good that this is actually going to happen. We're delivering a school system that is entirely focused on students and what they need most. This means more resources for one-on-one time with teachers and new or existing initiatives such as specialist teachers or targeted intervention programs, which have been so successful over the last four years, and which Labor and Liberal agreed to fund.

Under our plan, we're delivering, overall, 6.4 per cent average annual growth per student, for each of our children. Our needs based funding plan has been endorsed by everyone, including David Gonski—the name that has been thrown around from one end of parliament to the other. Our needs based education funding for students includes not only those with a disability—which is fairly obvious—but also those living in regional, rural or remote locations. And there's consideration of children in lower socioeconomic communities, and also funding to help close the gap for our Indigenous and Torres Strait Islander kids.

For students with a disability, there'll be an increase of about $22.7 million from this year through to 2027—an 83.5 per cent increase. Increase, increase—it's going up. Students in regional, rural and remote locations will again see an increased investment, from $3.9 billion to $7.2 billion. That's an increase—getting bigger—of 84.8 per cent. More than 750,000 students will be better off with this needs based funding. I mentioned Indigenous students: around 218,000 young students will be benefiting from this far better, targeted, increased investment, from $285.6 million last year to $547.9 million in 2027. That's a 91.9 per cent increase.

Australia is now amongst the highest investors in school education in the OECD. The most important aspect of education is, of course, investment. But the most recent research is that teachers must be part of the formula for better educational outcomes. I know—I was one. The rationalisation and nationalisation of increased funding is critical for our children. That's fact, not fantasy. Making sure the states and territories commit as well—that's critical, and it's fact, not fantasy. Making sure there's money to fund the investment is essential—that's fact, not fantasy.

Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Medicare) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As a result of the Turnbull government's $210 million funding cut to South Australian schools, 38 schools in my electorate are going to lose $16 million over the next couple of years. That includes schools like Modbury High School, which will lose $750,000; Banksia Park International High School, which will lose $765,000; The Heights School, which will lose $1.1 million; Roma Mitchell Secondary College, which will lose $1.2 million; and Golden Grove High School, which will lose $1.2 million. I singled those five schools out of the 38 for this reason: they are all secondary schools and they are all schools that meet and deal with students with high needs. These are the schools that most of our new arrivals who live in the north-eastern suburbs will go to. They are schools that cater for children with a disability, and these are the schools that need all the support they can get, yet their funding has been cut by this government.

I could talk about the other 34 schools, but clearly time will not allow me to do so. These are the schools, like most public schools, where the lower income families send their children. Unfortunately, it's always been the ideological view of this federal government and previous coalition governments that they are not responsible for the funding of public schools in this country. Clearly, that is the attitude of the member for Boothby, the member for Grey, the member for Barker and the member for Sturt, who are not standing up to their government in respect of these cuts, which they know are being perpetrated on the schools in the areas that they represent. Rather than come into this place and say that they oppose the Turnbull government's cuts, they are simply remaining silent. It was interesting to see that they were given approval to be let off the leash to come out and oppose the GST cuts to South Australia, but they're not prepared to come in here and oppose the education funding cuts to South Australia. It's also interesting that the cuts come from a minister who comes from South Australia, and the minister previous to him was also from South Australia, yet both of them have turned their backs on South Australians. As we've heard, it wasn't just them; it was also the Nick Xenophon Team that supported those cuts when they went through this parliament—the team that claims to stand up and support the battlers of South Australia. I can tell all people in this place that the battlers are the ones who predominantly rely on the public schools of our nation.

Despite all of the denials and protestations about the increased funding that we're going to see from the Turnbull government, the reality is that the funding cuts are there. They are real, and South Australia will get $210 million less than they would otherwise have got under the agreement that was previously made between South Australia and the federal government.

It's also true that funding does matter to schools. It's not just the school itself where the funding matters. If schools are denied funding, they in turn have to put up their fees and charges for the families of the students who come to their schools. Again, we're talking about families who come mainly from low-income areas. These are families who have had to deal with living increases, health funding increases, in many cases cuts to their working hours, and stagnant wages, as we heard again in question time today. Yet they will be forced to increase the fees that they pay for their children to go to school.

Because of these funding cuts, the schools will have little choice but to increase their fees, but more insulting is that the education funding cuts that have been made by the Turnbull government are made at a time when the government says, 'We can afford $65 billion in business tax cuts.' Clearly, this is a government that has its priorities wrong, because the return on investing in education is much greater, and will always be much greater, than the return that the government will get by providing tax cuts. I think every smart country knows that, and we're seeing that. The smart countries of the world have always invested first and foremost in their education systems.

Labor will take this issue right through to the next election, because Labor members do care about education, and we oppose the position taken by this government. It's not just in schools. We go to our universities and we see billions of dollars cut there. We go to the TAFEs and we see some $3 billion cut there. Then we go to the education system more broadly and there's $17 billion of cuts there. Enough is enough, and this government's got its priorities wrong. (Time expired)

Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, they're still at it—or, maybe more accurately, they're at it again. The member for Sydney—apparently now fully recovered after a public shaming last year by the ABC Fact Check for her misleading statements on education funding—is back and, it appears, is as undeterred by the facts as ever.

Last year—it was only six months ago, I think—Labor was here trying on these same misleading lines about billions being cut from schools and education funding. Here's exactly what ABC Fact Check had to say regarding those claims:

RMIT ABC Fact Check takes a deep dive into the figures.

The verdict

Ms Plibersek's claim is misleading: the Government is not cutting $22 billion from schools.

Commonwealth budgets set out spending over a four year period.

According to the 2017-18 budget handed down on May 9, Commonwealth schools funding will continue to rise every year.

So the Labor claims here are misleading, according to ABC Fact Check. It really is quite remarkable to hear the member for Sydney—and so many of her South Australian colleagues, for some reason!—coming back here today to repeat those same old discredited lines. Australians are now on high alert, sadly, when it comes to Labor misleading them: 'Mediscare', school cuts, and the list goes on. There's a pattern there of lines which have been found, again and again, to be misleading by ABC Fact Check.

We know that those on the opposite side know nothing about business. Barely any of them have set foot inside anything other than the union movement, and even fewer of them have been into that half of Australia that exists in the small business sector. So it's going to come as news to them—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They're getting quite exercised by this. Apparently it's alarming to hear that half of the world out there is in that small business private sector. It's going to come as big news to them to learn that, if they were engaged in trade or commerce themselves and the Australian Consumer Law applied to them, misleading claims like that would be unlawful. They would be breaking the law if they were a business engaged in trade or commerce and making claims which were found to be misleading. It's really a sign of the times. Labor are now running on empty, it appears. They are so bereft of something new to complain about that they are falling back on those lines they used to fail to deliver here last year, trying to maintain this sense of confected and unending outrage.

I'm going to take just one moment to jump into some of the state figures to prove why this is so misleading. I want to go to the Queensland numbers. I know those opposite want to talk about South Australia, but total funding to the state of Queensland under this government's schools funding increases. It goes up each and every year. For state schools it is $1.6 billion this year. That's a bigger number than last year. And the amount goes up—up, not down—each and every year from now until 2027. By that stage it will have increased by about 50 per cent, to $2.4 billion in total. The exact same logic applies to the independent and the Catholic schools sector in Queensland where the federal government, rather than the state government, is the predominant funder. So it's going up every single year, not down.

The same is true in South Australia. Mr Deputy Speaker Irons, what can you tell me about these numbers—$1.1 billion, $1.2 billion, $1.3 billion? They're going up each year, not down. Those are the funding figures under this government's schools funding for schools in South Australia.

In conclusion, these are the same old, tired lines from Labor—'misleading', as ABC Fact Check says. The only difference now is trying to link some of those lines to minor parties in South Australia. That's the only new bit here. I wonder: is something happening in South Australia soon, perhaps? It possibly suggests how poor Labor polling is in South Australia in the lead-up to the state election. I'm sure everybody noted how many of the Labor speakers here today were indeed from the state of South Australia. Well, sorry, Labor Party. I'm going to let the minor parties defend themselves, but I suspect they'll have some views quite similar to mine. All this episode shows is why the crossbenchers shouldn't trust Labor. It shows why South Australians and Queenslanders shouldn't trust Labor. It shows why teachers, parents and students shouldn't trust Labor. Their credibility on this issue of cuts is at an all-time low, like the boy who cried wolf.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I, too, rise to join my colleagues on this very important matter of public importance. It's interesting to hear the member for Brisbane opposite talk about how this is all a scare tactic and a scare campaign. The real speech he would have loved to have made is: 'Let's privatise every single school. Let's sell them to off to multinationals and let private industry, business and commerce run them.' That's the guts of what those on the other side would really like to see.

On this side of the House, we have a long tradition of supporting education—from the Whitlam era, and even before then—and we continue to do so. We did so in 2012, when we came up with the Gonski report et cetera, and implemented a great system that would have seen fairness in every school and every school's funding based on its needs. I recall very well during the 2013 campaign how those opposite were jumping up and down saying: 'Us too! Us too! We're supporting this. This is exactly what we're going to do as well. Nothing to worry about, Australian public voters, we will be doing the exact same thing as the Labor Party.' They said this about many other things, which they also reneged on once they won the federal election in 2013.

Education is another example of where those opposite say one thing before an election and then do something completely different. In South Australia, state schools will be losing $210 million in the next two years alone—$210 million! We're here to condemn this government for reneging on this and for taking money away from some of the poorest schools in South Australia, including some in my electorate. If you have a look at the sectors nationally and compare the figures provided by the Parliamentary Budget Office—the PBO—and the National Catholic Education Commission, you will see government schools will lose $1.88 billion, Catholic schools will lose $250.6 million and independent schools will lose $53.5 million. It's a total of $2.19 billion. And 86 per cent are cuts to public schools—86 per cent. That is a shame. Some of the schools in South Australia are literally losing more than $1 million in funding. Public schools cop a massive 86 per cent of the cuts nationally.

In my electorate, there are two schools that come to mind: Glenelg Primary School is down $731,000, and Thebarton Senior College is down $863,000. These are schools that do very important work. They take in kids with disabilities; they have special programs to assist children who have learning difficulties. Taking away $731,000 from Glenelg will make a big difference to those students, and it will make a big difference to the way that school operates. As we heard the member for Makin say, the only way these schools can survive is by putting up their fees; therefore, parents who are in some of the most vulnerable areas, in some of the poorest areas, of our suburbs will be paying more for school fees. Maybe I should let that sink in.

There is another school in my electorate, the School for Vision Impaired, which does some magnificent work assisting children with vision impairment. It's getting a cut of $24,000. That lot on the other side may think that $24,000 is not a lot, but for a family and a child trying to deal with vision impairment, this could be the difference between receiving and not receiving the latest Braille books or an iPad to help them learn in already difficult circumstances. That shows how low this government will go.

Henley High School in my electorate is suffering a cut of $1.2 million—the largest cut faced by a school in the electorate of Hindmarsh, and the seventh-largest cut of 511 schools in South Australia. Henley are doing some great work with STEM. They do intense learning in STEM subjects, in science, technology et cetera, and all of that will be affected by these cuts.

Cowandilla Primary School, which I'm very proud to say is my old primary school, will have $403,000 cut from it. It's a great school. We visited there recently with the Leader of the Opposition, Mr Bill Shorten. We looked at their STEM program, and some of the great work they're doing with young students. This is a school that has had, for many years, a great tradition of working with new arrivals—from kids that had come straight off the boat in the sixties, right through to today. This cut will have a massive effect on a school that needs every single cent to help it cope with students that have difficulties with learning and with many other things. (Time expired)

Andrew Gee (Calare, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Well, wherever Nick Xenophon is this afternoon, he must be pretty chuffed and smiling, knowing that he has you people opposite so spooked about what's going on in South Australia that you've had to devote such a large part of the parliamentary day to trying to bash him up. How embarrassing is it that you could come in here and do that in our national parliament! But hypocrisy and those opposite really go hand in hand.

Those opposite have a very poor record of delivering on educational reform. Who could forget the glory days of Building the Education Revolution, for example? Remember that corker? Oh, yes. They were big on talk, but the delivery was absolutely appalling, with school halls that weren't fit for the schools that they were implemented in, overinflated prices, and building work that should have been carried out by local builders that wasn't—it was all done by out-of-town people. So, whilst they all talk a good game, in practice, the delivery always falls apart—and so it was with the Gonski reforms.

Let's have a little bit of a walk through the history pages about Gonski and how it came into being. We've had to clean up another Labor Party mess. We all know that, back in the days of Julia Gillard, when she was trying to get those states signed up, she was writing cheques that she knew she would never have to cash. She was out to save her political skin. And everyone was out there saying, 'Come in, spinner; we'll take your cheques!' But none of it was ever funded, which was very unfortunate. She was so desperate to do deals, she was stitching them up left, right and centre. She did 27 separate deals.

But the worst part of it, to my way of thinking, was that the broken system which the Gillard government implemented wasn't fair. It wasn't fair, because it valued disadvantaged students in different states differently. It didn't treat all Australians the same way. A child in one state who was suffering disadvantage was worth less to the government in terms of spending than a child suffering the same disadvantage in another state. So they, the champions of equity and equality, totally distorted and corrupted the needs based funding system. We in country Australia like it, because country schools are the biggest winners. But none of it was ever funded. It was Monopoly money. It was bouncy, rubbery cheques.

So the coalition government have had to step in, as we always do—we do it every time—to clean up the economic mess that the opposition created, with $23.5 billion in new funding over the next 10 years. It's not pie-in-the-sky stuff; the funding is kicked in straightaway and everyone's a winner, because it's properly funded and you know you're going to get your money. Over the next 10 years, recurrent funding for South Australia will total $16.7 billion and, over the next 10 years, recurrent funding per student for South Australia will grow, on average, by 4.6 per cent each year. That's real money. That's real increases in all of these schools. In my electorate, it's funding increases for every school in our electorate. Needs based funding is important. It's something that we can all get behind, and I support it. But I also support having it fully funded—not just writing cheques that a government knows it will never have to cash.

The great thing about these new reforms is they're backed by David Gonski himself. People call it Gonski 2.0. I call it 'the real Gonski', because it's real money and real funding. And it's going to flow through to all of our students, particularly in country Australia. We've got some of the most disadvantaged schools in the nation in our rural seats. Over the next decade, there's going to be an estimated $58.5 billion in Commonwealth recurrent funding for regional, rural and remote schools. Of this, an estimated $5.8 billion is provided through the location loading over this period. So you're looking at 750,000 country students benefiting from this—and it's real money and it's money that's locked in.

And it's not just rural schools; so many other schools right around Australia are benefiting from these funding reforms. For example, over the next 10 years, Commonwealth recurrent funding per student for New South Wales will grow, on average, by 4.1 per cent every year. The funding increases are real. If you look at some of the schools in my electorate you see, for example, that Canobolas Rural Technology High School is getting a funding increase over the next decade of over 50 per cent—an increase of over 50 per cent for a school that does marvellous work. (Time expired)

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The time allotted for this discussion has now concluded.