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

by leave—I move Greens amendments (2) to (4) on sheet 5654 together:

(2)    Clause 3, page 2 (line 9), omit “2012”, substitute “2010”.

(3)    Clause 4, page 8 (line 11) (definition of program year), omit “, 2010, 2011 or 2012”, substitute “or 2010”.

(4)    Clause 71, page 62 (table items 3 and 4), omit the table items.

These are very important amendments, and they are basically to look at the funding period. The issue here is that the funding bill before us is for a four-year period and it locks in the SES model and the funding-maintained-and-funding-guaranteed model for four years. When Labor came to power, they said that they were going to bring in an education revolution. The minister had said on many occasions that the SES system was flawed, and even the Howard government’s internal review of the legislation acknowledged that it was flawed and that there was a substantial overpayment to non-government schools. That was acknowledged, as I said, in that internal review, which was leaked to one of the newspapers, and it was subsequently acknowledged that that was the case. It was very clear that, had the SES model been applied in the manner in which it was meant to be applied, there would have been $2.7 billion less for non-government schools and that almost half of non-government schools would have been in this category of overpayment. So this came as quite a shock to people around Australia, the Labor Party—particularly the minister—having in opposition been so critical of the SES model. Minister Gillard in 2000 and 2001 was very outspoken in her opposition to the SES model. She at that time said that it was unjust and so on and so forth. Now we are seeing the Labor Party move for this model for four years.

The thing about four years is that it takes us beyond the 2010 election. In the meantime, the Labor government is going to have a review of non-government school funding, but that review will not start until 2009 and will not be completed until 2011, in time for the next quadrennium, starting in 2013. The Labor government is locking in for four years a system which it knows to be unfair and unjust in terms of equitable distribution of funding to non-government schools. In my view, it is cowardice to do this in a way that means that at the 2010 election the Australian community will not have the ability to vote on what might be the outcome of a review of non-government school funding. I think everybody, regardless of which side of the debate they are on, would like to think that that internal review would occur in 2009 and 2010 and at least the recommendations would be available so that parties could go to the 2010 federal election with a position on what is going to be the funding model for non-government schools thereafter.

The second point I make is that the global financial downturn is going to mean that state governments will have less revenue in the next three or four years than they otherwise would have had. We have seen that already in the resource based states, particularly in Western Australia, but we are also going to see reduced GST payments to the states as a result of the downturn. That means that, whilst the Commonwealth is now guaranteeing non-government school funding at this rate for four years, state governments are not going to be guaranteeing anything to public education in the next four years and they will determine it year by year, according to what the allocations under state budgets are.

I know that people here will say, ‘We’re just dealing with non-government schools and Commonwealth funding for non-government schools and it is not relevant what the states might do,’ but it is highly relevant because the reason that the funding of non-government and government schools has become such an issue in recent years is equity—the gap in funding has become wider and wider. There is a strong argument to say that, whereas the Commonwealth over the last decade did increase funding to schools, the states allowed the funding to fall backwards, which meant that the gap between government schools and non-government schools widened.

What I indicated before with regard to Indigenous students is pretty much the same with regard to all students—their parents are not really fussed about the argument of whether it is state governments or federal governments that give the funding. What they want is an equitable arrangement so that education is adequately and equitably funded across the board. My concern here is that we are locking in an incredibly generous funding model for four years to non-government education, in which we acknowledge that there is an overpayment in that period of $2.7 billion under the SES model, and at the same time we are not giving any guarantee to the states whatsoever as to what public school students might expect. I do not think it is fair to give a funding guarantee to non-government schools for four years when there is no guarantee of equity in terms of state government funding of education over that period.

I looked at what happened at COAG over the weekend, and I have been briefed to some extent by the department in relation to this, and I do acknowledge that the government has indexed the funding to government schools and there will be an increase of about $1 billion to government schools—which is an indexation increase, so it is not going to make that much difference in that sense. I do acknowledge there is another bucket of money for special-purpose payments, but again that is contestable and it will be divided between government and non-government schools.

It is my view that it would be irresponsible to lock in funding for non-government schools when there is no equivalent provision of locking in funding for government schools, especially because we know the way the economy is going. I know the government of Western Australia is not going to have the money in the next four years it had in the last four years, and neither are the governments of Queensland, Tasmania and so on. Whilst the Commonwealth is saying these special-purpose grants that were made at the COAG meeting are dependent on the schools meeting certain educational outcomes before they get the ongoing funding and so on, frankly I have not seen state governments behave very responsibly in terms of public education funding for a very long time, and I am not persuaded that they are going to start now. When the pressure comes on from their electorates as they face state elections, I am not persuaded that they are going to put money into public education.

So what we are setting up here is actually a process for making the gap between non-government and government schools wider. Whilst some people might say, ‘That’s not our worry,’ it is our worry because, as was very clear in the committee hearings in relation to this matter, the wider the gap, the more inequitable the arrangements, the higher the tension in the community, the higher the conflict that arises and the less the ability to get cooperative arrangements in education delivery in communities in clusters between government and non-government schools. It is in everybody’s interests, in terms of community harmony, justice and fairness, to reduce the gap in funding between public and non-government education.

My argument is that government schools around Australia only ever get one year’s certainty and they get it each year in the state budget. They might talk about triennial funding, but in reality they are subject to the vagaries of state governments, redundancies and whatever else happens—closure of schools and so on. With the current financial situation in a global context and the state governments’ financing arrangements, it would be unfair to lock in four years guaranteed funding to one part of the system when there is only a year-by-year arrangement for government schools.

I come back to my other point, and this is critical. The community is not going to thank us for delaying, until after the 2010 federal election, the recommendations of the review that Minister Gillard is going to conduct. People want to know beforehand and they will feel once bitten, twice shy because the Labor Party went to the election promising an education revolution. Promising to lock in the SES funding for another four years was a huge disappointment to people who were looking for a genuine education revolution which would have seen a huge bucketload of money going into public education. So I think there is a very strong reason for it.

There are other arguments that pertain to some of the issues that were mentioned here earlier. Some of the non-government schools are very concerned about what the curriculum provisions and the accountability provisions might mean. I happen to think that it is perfectly reasonable to require the accountability provisions that are being talked about, including for all sources of funding in specific terms that go to non-government schools. I think that is reasonable. If non-government schools do not want to disclose that, fine: they are not eligible for government funding. It does not mean to say they cannot operate; they just have to find all the funding themselves.

But the issue is that they are concerned about what those provisions might mean and about the national curriculum. The national curriculum will not be applied in the next two years because in that two-year period there will be discussion et cetera about what the national curriculum will be. It will be there in principle, but a consultative process is going to go on. If we guarantee the funding for two years, it means that the non-government schools get their funding and we all know what they are doing for the next two years and coming into the 2010 election. Then we go to the 2010 election with an ability to see where everyone is going to go on this funding formula. We go into it with a clearer understanding of what the national curriculum and the accountability provisions for private or non-government schools might mean and a much clearer view about what the states have done in response to the Commonwealth’s education partnerships and to the Commonwealth’s requirements of the states to deliver under some of those educational outcomes in improved literacy, numeracy, teacher training and so on. I think it makes a great deal of sense to limit this to two years, for a range of reasons, and I think the community would see that as a reasonable compromise.