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

Fifty-seven thousand, eight hundred and eighty-five dollars—that's how much it costs in this country, on average, to give a child a public education from prep to year 12. When you take into account not just the materials, equipment and uniforms but also the fees that are now being regularly charged in primary school, you can be spending $3,945 a year to send your child to school. When they grow up, it skyrockets to $5,045. Public schools are being forced to charge parents many hundreds of dollars a year to bridge funding gaps because they are radically underfunded in this country.

The coalition has cut billions from school funding and passed hundreds, millions and billions in tax cuts for millionaires. The result is that parents are forced to pay for what should be a publicly funded essential service—the education of their children. Recently, my office participated in a grants program offered by the federal government for schools in my electorate. The funding was for capital grants but also for education initiatives. Ideally, the federal government would fund schools properly instead of doling out ad hoc amounts for projects. I expressed these views to the schools but wanted to ensure that they could capitalise on the grant opportunity.

Unfortunately, it was not possible to fund every worthwhile project that we received—and we received many. But what will stick in my mind are the four applications I received requesting funding from the grants program for air conditioning. A school in Australia should not have to apply to a competitive fund in order for their kids and staff to be comfortable. All schools should be designed in a way that keeps people comfortable. Although my views differ from those of the government on many things, including the amount of funding the Commonwealth should provide to schools, I would have thought that we could agree that every school in this country should let students and staff learn and teach in relative comfort.

This just drives home the point that the consequences of underfunding schools are not just higher school fees but also a lack of investment in critical public infrastructure. If we don't make a big investment in public education just 13 per cent of public schools will have the funding to meet their minimum needs by 2023, while 65 per cent of non-government schools will be overfunded. Not only do parents have to pay thousands of dollars to bridge the funding gap in public schools but so do teachers. Ninety-three per cent of public schoolteachers dip into their own pockets to buy stationery and classroom equipment to make up for the lack of government funding.

So when the Greens talk about ending unfair tax breaks for the very wealthy, about getting big corporations to pay their fair share of tax, closing loopholes and reversing huge personal income tax cuts for millionaires, it's not just an abstract call. And it's not a small gap. We took a policy to the last election to invest $24 billion in public schools over the next decade, because that's what we think they're going to need to lift every public school to 100 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2023. That's why we need a Green New Deal—a government-led plan of investment and action to build a clean economy and a caring society.