Christine Milne (Tasmania, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I just need some clarity on this as well. I actually thought I was clear on it and now the minister has confused me again. I would like to go through my understanding of it and see if that correlates with what we have got before us. My understanding is that, previously, an Indigenous student from a remote community who travelled to a boarding school in an area like Townsville or some other city like that, would be funded at a higher rate than an Indigenous student who lived in Townsville and attended the school as a day scholar. That is my understanding.

That is why the concern of the Catholic system was that, with the changes that the were proposed, they would receive less funding. The point they have made quite clearly is that Indigenous students from remote communities frequently need greater levels of support in order to achieve the levels at which they can then engage and go on to further achievements in the system. They also need to have support facilities so family can come and visit them and there are a whole range of other associated costs to do with supporting them in being able to achieve at school.

My understanding of the new system and what has come out of COAG this weekend is that the payment differential between what a remote student in a boarding school in Townsville would get before under the SES model and what they would get now under the new model means that there would actually be a reduction in the amount of money per student but that the cap would be removed and, with a collapse of a whole range of different funding allocations, there is a more generous amount. It is also my understanding that, whilst every Indigenous student—whether they attend as a day scholar locally or whether they come from a remote community—will be funded the same, the level of funding will be higher than it is now; that, averaged out across the system, there will be more money in the system for Indigenous students per capita than there was before; and that, because systemic schools do average and spread it on a needs basis across the system, those systemic Catholic schools will actually be better off than they were before because of the removal of the cap and the collapse of the number of payments into a more simplified arrangement.

The point that Senator Macdonald is making is not in relation to the systemic schools but in relation to those non-government schools which are one-offs, which are not part of a system-wide capacity to average out the funding across the system. What I would like to know from the minister is how many of those schools we are talking about. I do not know how many non-government boarding schools there are that are not in a systemic arrangement. It seems to me that under the new arrangement those schools which are non-government schools but not part of a systemic system might well be better off. I would like to understand how many of those schools there are and, at the moment, what the approximate number of students attending those schools is. I would like some confirmation from the minister that I have actually got this straight and that that is the issue that we are now talking about.