Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

I will try to explain to the senator, first of all, the way that the education programs work and have worked for as long as I have been in this parliament, through all the bills that I have been associated with in this parliament, throughout a Labor government, a conservative government and now a Labor government again. The term that is used in all of these bills—and consistently used throughout this bill—is that the minister ‘may make’ determinations. That is the standard form of the draftsman’s work. The proposition that I have advanced to you in response to your question, Senator Macdonald, is that the funding goes to the system. Their funding is maintained. Why we cannot say that individual schools within the systemic system can be able to determine their funding is that the Commonwealth does not allocate the money; the systemic system allocates it.