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

I was in a good mood this morning, and I was going to be very generous to the Minister representing the Minister for Education and to the government. I nearly changed my mind, but I am always too generous by nature. I wish to thank the government for its cooperation on the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 thus far. We have had a history of productive compromise on this bill. That is why we have moved the debate forward. It is a much better bill today than it was on Tuesday.

The compromises thus far—with respect to an audit when it is to be qualified for reasons not relating to financial viability and the minister’s refusal to authorise the payment of a non-government body now being disallowable by the Senate—throw the minister’s discretion to legislative review. That is a good thing for the bill, a good thing for the act and a good thing for this parliament. That is an improvement to the act. I want to thank you, Minister Carr, for your cooperation on that.

The second improvement is the disclosure clause, clause 24. Again, I thank the minister for specifically excluding the identification of individuals who make a bequest to schools. The idea of identifying individuals who make bequests to schools or for educational purposes was bad public policy. This is an improvement to the bill as well. As my friend Senator Macdonald so eloquently placed on the record on Tuesday night, amendments relating to the capacity of the minister to provide for remote Indigenous students also greatly enhance this bill. I think those were three significant improvements to the bill. It is a much better bill now than it was on Tuesday night. But I thought we could make the bill better still.

On points of philosophy—you have been discussing points of educational philosophy for the last 20 minutes—I remind the minister and the government that the national curriculum was initiated by the Howard government. It was initiated by us because we accept that world-class educational systems are very important. I accept that education is critical to the future of this country. I think you and I, Minister, agree on that. I do not think we have ever had a debate about that. It is a fact. More importantly, over the last few weeks all of my colleagues in the coalition have agreed with the broad spirit of your and Ms Gillard’s public announcements about transparency, about accountability, about teacher training and about educational outcomes. We all agree there should be more significant outcomes, greater transparency and greater accountability. None of us at all disagree with that. It was never our intention to hold up the distribution of $28 billion; rather, the amendment put this morning, sponsored by Senator Fielding and co-sponsored by the opposition, was all about seeking reassurance for alternative educational philosophies such as Steiner and Montessori and different curricula such as the International Baccalaureate and the University of Cambridge international examinations.

We were concerned that they would be prejudiced by this bill. You may not have been concerned about it, Minister; we were. It affects thousands of students in this country—and their parents. We did not do this for some reason of high principle per se; it was a practical reassurance that we were after. Minister, I congratulate you for this morning coming into the Senate and providing that practical reassurance. You have said that the bill will not mandate teaching methods or philosophies, and I thank you for making that clear. It is very important to us in the opposition and to all those students studying in those different curricula or educational philosophies. Upon reflection, I do wish that the assurance had been given right at the beginning of this debate. Then, perhaps, we would not have had to have this back-and-forth between here and the other place, all the tension, all the press releases, all the news conferences about this issue. If we had just been given the reassurance—perhaps weeks ago—we would have been much better off.

It was never, ever the intention of the opposition to hold back funding. We agree with the government that this funding must be given to schools by the end of this year. We agree that the national curriculum is a very good idea. We do not, in fact, at all object to the idea of funding being tied to the national curriculum. That is not the issue. We were simply concerned that some schools would be prejudiced by it. I thank the minister very much for clarifying that. The opposition will be withdrawing its amendment and will be supporting the bill.