Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

The Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment (2007 Budget Measures) Bill 2007 is in many ways deceptively simple. We have already confirmed that the government has changed the guidelines with regard to the allocation of moneys, changing the ceiling for the amount of money that is available for non-government schools in this last tranche of money that is available under this program. However, what is of concern to me is not just the mechanism by which these changes are made—despite election commitments—but the uses to which the government has put the statistics. I see that the officials are leaving the chamber—and I have a question in this regard. At the Senate estimates committee an undertaking was given by officers of the department that information would be provided to the estimates committee, during those estimates hearings, on the claims that have been made about the increases in expenditure that the government has made for education purposes. It was revealed that the officers had prepared these statistics, which the minister had used for her claim that expenditure for government schools had increased by 70 per cent during the life of the government; and, as I recall it, the minister claimed that expenditure for the next quadrennium would increase from $33 billion to $42 billion. An undertaking was given to me, on behalf of the committee, that the department would provide a figure for the increase in expenditure for the non-government school sector. I ask the minister: where is this figure?

In doing so, I also take this opportunity to point out that Senator Brandis, who was the minister at the table, and who behaved courteously and appropriately, has made the point to me that he has, since being a minister, followed the practice that he had when he was the chair of a committee. Since his recent appointment to being a minister he has not changed his attitude to the requirement that departments respond to questions appropriately and in a timely manner. So this is not a criticism I make of the minister who was at the table at the time of the estimates committee. I do, however, note the number of estimates questions to which this department has failed to respond on time. I also note the number of occasions on which estimates answers appear to have been so severely edited as to be nonsensical. So I ask a very simple proposition, put forward a very simple proposition: if the government—