Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Just briefly, I would like to ally some of the concerns of Senator Milne and, indeed, my good friend Senator Carr. I understand, Senator Milne, your point about a school philosophy. But, in relation to schools offering, for example, the International Baccalaureate or the Cambridge University International Examination, that actually is about curricula. And that is the problem. The interchange between the two is still uncertain. That is why the opposition is so concerned that the details of the national curriculum have not been published.

There are four discipline areas that have been covered—maths, science, history and English—and there are going to be several more, but we do not even know what they will be. As to how prescriptive the curriculum content in these discipline areas will be, we are uncertain. Will it be prescriptive in terms of content and materials or, alternatively, will it be a framework within which schools can determine content? This question still has not been answered.

Given that the national curriculum will not be ready for quite some time yet, why is the government in such a hurry to tie funding to it? What Senator Fielding said before is quite right: you are asking non-government schools right across the country to take this on trust, and it is too important to take on trust. I know the minister is concerned about education—I have always accepted that—and I also understand the principle of tying funding to the national curriculum. I do not have a problem with that either, Minister. My concern is that the national curriculum is still embryonic and you cannot ask non-government schools to sign up to it when it remains embryonic. We will be supporting Family First.