Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

Let me make it very clear for the senator. Catholic education authorities across Australia will receive $6.3 billion this year. That will grow, under our reforms, each and every one of the next 10 years to $9.7 billion. That is growth, on average, of 3½ per cent per student. It cannot possibly be any clearer to the senator that there is $3.4 billion in funding growth available for Catholic education and that that is delivered to them in a manner where those eight system authorities retain their autonomy to be able to distribute it according to their needs based formulas as they see fit, but it is a growing pot of money.

I realise those opposite want to pretend that there is some magical pot of money out there that extra funds could be poured into, because that is what they have always done when it comes to the budget. But that is not the reality. The reality is that there is more funding for Catholic education, as there is for independent education, as there is for public education, under— (Time expired)