Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007. While any increase in funding for our schools is, of course, to be welcomed, I would like to share with the Senate the concerns my colleagues and I have about some parts of this bill and this Minister for Education, Science and Training, the member for Curtin. I should also like to mention that Labor acknowledges the infrastructure shortfall our schools face and supports the injection of additional funds into the Investing in Our Schools Program.

But as my Western Australian colleague the member for Perth, Stephen Smith, noted in the other place, the Howard government and Minister Julie Bishop have been quite cynical in the way they changed the guidelines for the Investing in Our Schools Program midstream, reducing the amount of funding government schools can apply for from $150,000 to $100,000. Besides altering guidelines for government schools, which means the ability of all schools to get funding has been cut, the Howard government has not committed to continuing this program beyond the current funding round. This is quite a blow for public schools, and I could not help noting the remarks by a writer in the Age on Tuesday, 13 March this year. In the article with the headline ‘Julie Bishop gets an F for fairness’, the reporter, a Ms Julie Szego—and I apologise to the reporter if I have mispronounced her name—suggested:

That’s the problem with the Howard Government—you can’t always take the portfolios at face value ... Maybe it ought ... to drop the pretence with Bishop’s portfolio and preface ‘education’ with ‘private’, to avoid any further confusion.

The reporter makes the point, and it is a good point, that Minister Bishop bashes public schools and then does not give them the funding to improve performance.

But it has not been a good couple of weeks for the minister. A couple of weeks ago the minister pulled a stunt in the other place. In a bizarre display she tried to scold the Leader of the Opposition for allegedly stealing her policy. As if we need to! Given the fine work being done by the member for Perth, and the very positive reception given to Labor’s recent policy announcements on funding for schools, we have no need to steal anyone else’s policies, let alone a Howard government one.

Labor is adopting an innovative approach, while the Minister for Education, Science and Training continues to bash public schools and indulge in scare campaigns. It is little wonder that public opinion is turning against the tired, worn-out Howard government. The minister described the Leader of the Opposition as a ‘naughty boy’; it is the minister herself who has been sent to the naughty corner by none other than the federal Treasurer. After extolling the alleged virtues of performance pay for teachers for so long, it was the minister who copped a scolding, or should I say caning, from the Treasurer over the issue.

In a news item in the Australian on 21 March this year, under the headline ‘Costello junks Bishop pay plan’, reporter Samantha Maiden said,

Peter Costello has ruled out a large-scale federally funded program to deliver performance pay for the nation’s teachers, despite Education Minister Julie Bishop’s championing the issue.

So, who has been a naughty girl then? Who has been caught speaking out of turn? One would love to have been a fly on the wall in the cabinet room when the Treasurer gave the education, science and training minister a thorough dressing-down over the issue. I can imagine the Treasurer saying, ‘You naughty girl, you.’ Who has been sent to the naughty corner in the cabinet room for a bit of time-out? Can you imagine the tantrum put on by the minister when the Treasurer took one of her favourite rag dolls—her championing of performance pay—away from her? It would not have been a pretty sight!

What Minister Bishop needs to do, like so many naughty children and ministers, is get a taste of reality. The minister should get out to schools like the Forrestfield Senior High School in Perth, a sports college of which I have the privilege to be the patron, and see the fantastic job being done by teachers there and meet the great students. The teachers do not need performance pay to make them some of the finest people I have had the pleasure of meeting. They are doing a fantastic job in a great public school system in Western Australia. The minister should get out and talk to those teachers and hear them say, as they have said to me, that it is all right for the minister from Canberra to bag them because they are an easy target. I say it is not all right. She should hear these teachers say, as they say to me, that by bashing the public school system and promoting ideas like performance based pay she is insinuating that they are lazy or useless.

It is obvious to them, as it is to me and my colleagues, that Minister Bishop is attacking the very people we should put on a pedestal—the pedestal they once were on. These teachers should be held in the highest esteem as some of the most important members of our community. They are charged with one of the community’s most important tasks: the education and care of our children.

So the minister gets a caning from the Treasurer. She is told to pull her head in on the issue of performance pay. So what does she do? She denies ever supporting the concept of federal funding for performance pay in the first place. She says that she and the Treasurer have always seen eye to eye on the issue. I tell the Senate this: the minister must have copped quite a time-out in the naughty corner to have changed her tune so quickly and so thoroughly. The minister has been thoroughly humiliated by the man she has supported for so long—all tip and no iceberg indeed!

In a report yesterday by Samantha Maiden in the Australian newspaper, the Treasurer is quoted as saying:

We can’t change the terms and conditions of teachers’ pay because we don’t pay any of them …

He went on to say in the same report:

I have said I will continue to put pressure on them—

that is, the states—

to change those conditions … to incorporate an element of performance pay … How they do that is up to discussion.

“(But) the commonwealth has the ability ... to make it a condition of funding.

I will return to the questions raised by those remarks in a moment, but those opposite, especially ministers from Western Australia, might like to reflect on the concept of performance pay and think about how Minister Julie Bishop might be earning hers.