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

Thank you very much, Mr Acting Deputy President. I know it must have been painful for you to say that; I appreciate your generous ruling!

I will just continue to state that that we as a Labor Party are in this chamber today supporting an amendment to a piece of legislation to make sure that some of the money—they have ripped $30 billion out—that is necessary for Indigenous students in remote settings to be able to access education goes to those students and the schools that are going to look after them.

The other element of what we are doing here today is that we are attempting to support students who have a disability in independent special schools. If we do not support this amendment, the money that they need will not get to them. The reason it will not go to them is that as soon as this government got into power they turned their backs on the commitment to the Gonski funding mechanism. In their budget, they showed us exactly why they did that. It was because they could see a saving of $30 billion. That is what they pulled out of education.

Today we are here cleaning up some of the mess of the Gonski walkaway by this government. But there is so much more that needs to be done. This is a government that committed to the first four years of Gonski. But it is in years five and six when we see the real commitment and change and the increase in funding that is necessary to transform Australian education funding into a genuine needs based funding structure.

A baby that is born today cannot choose its parents. It cannot choose what postcode it has. In the Australia I was born into and grew up in, I experienced the opportunity to get a great education. I think it is the right of every child that is born. It is not their responsibility to choose a good postcode. It is not their responsibility to choose the right school. It is their responsibility to go to school and do the best they can but in a context where they are provided with the right tools for their learning.

In my opening speech to this Senate I made some comments about the funding models. I want to revisit parts of those. I said then that money is part of the answer. So many of the contributions from those opposite would lead us to believe that money is not an essential ingredient in the provision of good schooling. Money is part of the answer. We must all get that here. Everyone else gets it. Every parent, every teacher and every business person knows that money is always part of the answer. Why? You cannot pay for more, better qualified and equipped teachers if you do not have the money. You cannot offer a level of professional salary for teachers if you do not provide adequate money as a reward for them. You cannot pay for professional development to keep teachers up to date or for learning resources. It is terrible to be in a school and see a wonderful professional teacher—a teacher who can teach reading to a brilliant group of young first graders and, without NAPLAN, determine who needs funding—find out that they cannot get funding for a reading recovery program. They might have five kids and only be able to help two of them.

That is why we are in the mess that we are in in terms of our current status in international testing. The PISA report, released on the very day that I gave this speech, indicated that, in the areas that are measured in international tests, Asian countries—like China, Singapore, Korea and Japan—are pulling ahead of Australian students in maths and reading. Our students' performances as learners in these national tests are in decline, especially our girls, our Indigenous kids and young people who have been born into a family with a low socioeconomic status. Australian students from wealthy backgrounds show a difference of about two and a half to three years of school, compared to students from the lower socioeconomic group.

Today, while we fix up a mess of this very bad government's making, we are only doing a tiny bit of the work that needs to be done in implementing the Gonski funding model. We need to watch this government very closely, because in this area of policy education they have revealed every single day since their walk away on 25 November that they have no commitment to equity, excellence and education.