Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a privilege to rise to speak once again on that most important matter for the Australian population: the education of our nation and the investment in the education of our nation. In particular, I am speaking to the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2014. The reality is that, if the government had just kept its promise to the Australian people to honour the Gonski arrangements, we would not have to be here giving this bill its consideration today.

I want to do a potted history of how we have arrived at this point. If we go to 6 September, that fateful day, the day before the last federal election, there was a profound commitment made by the man who would be the Australian Prime Minister, Mr Abbott, who said there would be 'no cuts to education'. Let me say it again. There was a commitment to the Australian people on national television on 6 September, the day before the federal election: 'no cuts to education'. On 7 September there was a vote, and people were entitled, in good faith, to believe that the now Prime Minister actually meant what he said. But, sadly, it was not very long afterwards that things changed.

People might remember that after the election in September there was quite a period of quiet while the government went away and prepared themselves to come to this place and to the other place, and that was as late as November. It is hard to imagine that, between September and November, the whole nature of Australian education changed to a point that it required the Prime Minister to make a statement—an announcement, in fact—as early as 25 November, announcing that they could not go ahead with the Gonski funding arrangements.

If we look at some of the language that was used to lull the Australian people into a sense that the Gonski funding—which they increasingly understood—meant that funding was going to go to every school and to those children who needed additional funding and support to overcome disadvantage, learn and become the best learners that they could be, we can forgive the Australian people for thinking that they were going to get that policy. As he entered polling booths on election day, the now minister, Minister Pyne, said that Liberals 'will match' Labor's school funding 'dollar for dollar'. On 6 September, the now Prime Minister said that there would be 'no cuts to education'. On 7 September, with bald-faced shamelessness, the member for Sturt was going into booths saying that Liberals would match Labor's school funding dollar for dollar. He said on 30 August:

We are committed to the student resource standard. Of course we are. We're committed to this new school funding model …

On 29 August, he said:

We have agreed to the government's school funding model …

And I think perhaps the most disgraceful of all—because, clearly, to make a change as early as November he must have had some plan in his head—is that, when the words came out of the member for Sturt's mouth, he said:

… you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school …

He could not have been more wrong, more deceptive, if he had tried. There is a long, long distance between the journey that Labor took in that last election, the last parliament, to deliver needs based funding, to develop and negotiate a model where funding for education needs was going to those who most need it—sector-blind funding.

The reason we are in here today debating this amendment to the Australian Education Amendment Bill is the announcement on 25 November that, despite all that rhetoric, all those promises, all those deceptions as they appear now, this government said on 25 November they could not go ahead with the Gonski funding arrangements.

Not so very long after becoming a senator for New South Wales I came to this parliament on 13 November, and at that stage I did still have some small element of hope that the commitment to the Gonski funding was so public, so clear and so often repeated that the government might just feel it had to honour its word to children, to young teenagers, to every parent and every teacher who believed them. But I did have my fears; and, in the space between 13 November, when I took my place here, and 4 December, when I gave my speech, indicated in that speech my grave concern about what might happen.

I want to return if I can to the issues that are before us right now with this amendment. In the period between the election and now, with this incredible backflip and the removal of $30 billion for education funding by this government, we have seen a whole lot of programs, a whole lot of funding that is required to make the system function and to get the education out to our young people, under threat. Let's be clear, because I understand there has been some attempt by those opposite at, dare I say, more confusion: the government requires this piece of legislation now to be passed because we need to facilitate a payment of around $6.8 million to support boarding schools in the next year, 2014-15. Labor is happy to support these 50 Indigenous boarders from remote communities or where more than 50 per cent of boarders are Indigenous and come from remove communities. Of course that is not going to solve all the problems of disadvantage that we see evidence in the results that we have around our Indigenous students, but Labor is happy to support this amendment which will allow money to flow to give those students some certainty about the educational future that they have a right to believe will continue, some certainty about an educational future that they and their parents and teachers believed might be improved and met by a government that committed on 6 September and on multiple occasions prior to that and even for a short period afterwards to adequate funding.

Despairing as I am of the wholesale destruction of the needs based funding that this government is undertaking, I am delighted to stand to support the certainty for these students who require it. The Australian Labor Party will be supporting this amendment.

But there is a big difference in what we believe about education and what those opposite believe about education. We have senators from this place constantly saying it is not about the money and we just have to get better teachers in there. I have heard it repeated over and over. Not only is it an insult to the amazing teachers out there who do wonderful work; but parents know they are there and when they get a quality teacher. They constantly say it is not about the money and that the Australian education sector can actually survive with less money than it currently has, that the Australian education sector can manage without the Gonski reforms. That is really what they believe. That is what they say they believe. I have already, hopefully, made the case pretty clearly that what they say should never be believed, because there is a massive gap between what they tell you before you vote and what they do after you give them that opportunity. I think it is very telling that, while those opposite bleat and whine about investing in Australia's young people through school funding and education, nearly every single one of them is paying an awful lot of money or paid an awful lot of money for their own children to get a good education. Sadly, that is the reality that has been forced upon many parents in this country, because they do know that money invested in education bears great fruit.

The great shame is that individuals in this country have to invest so much in their own children because our public education system is in such a state of decay and underfunding that it needed a wholesale reform. That is what the Gonski review was doing.

Having gone around the country and found out what was happening in our schools, the tales of the Gonski review panellists going into our public schools and seeing for the first time firsthand the degraded situation in which many students were learning, seeing the situation where children were coming to school and the resources they need were not available for them, the Gonski panellists were touched in their hearts to see that Australia's whole education system needed massive change. It needed the money to go with it to make that change possible.

They found where the greatest disadvantage was. They saw it in six places where we need to put the money where the needs are. Those six areas that Gonski alerted us to, documented for us and proved in his documentation include small schools, where there is a different need from your average school in the main street of a city suburb. Small schools need a higher level of resourcing to give the kids there a chance. Remote schools need a higher level of resourcing to give the kids there a chance. Schools with large numbers of Indigenous students need more resources to give the kids there a chance. Schools with students with low English capacity need more resources to give those kids a chance. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds need more resources to give them a chance. Students with disabilities need more resources to give them a chance.

Labor believes that each of those groups, born into this country, have the right to go to school and get an education where they are adequately resourced to do the learning that will allow them to be the best Australian they can be. Gonski once and for all proved to us as a nation that we need to change funding. We need to make sure we have a needs based program where money goes to those who need it most.

The government understood that this appealed to Australians' sense of egalitarianism. We believe that, if a child is Indigenous and is born in the country and goes to a small school, they as an Australian have equal rights to those who are born into privilege. We believe that. That is why the Australian people decided that they would support the Gonski reforms. That is why, in the most disingenuous, sneaky, tricky and exploitative way, Minister Pyne tried to create the impression that the government were going to honour the Gonski reforms.