George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Attorney-General) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the Senate. It is not the government's intention to gag this motion, or any motion, but to move a motion for the orderly consideration of business. I can advise honourable senators that I will in due course move that the Senate consider the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 until midnight tonight if the debate has not earlier concluded, and, as well, if the debate continues tomorrow, 22 June, that the Senate adjourn after it has fully considered the bill, so that the Senate will sit either today or tomorrow until such time as debate on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 has been concluded. So this is—let me make this clear—an hours motion, not a gag motion.

Honourable senators know that this is a bill of the greatest significance. We know that the Australian Labor Party, disappointingly, have decided to do everything they can to get in the way of the Senate dealing with this bill. However, it is the government's wish, and we hope it is the wish of the crossbench as well, that this legislation be considered this week, before the Senate rises. Every argument that could possibly be heard or rehearsed in relation to the Australian Education Amendment Bill has been heard or will have plenty of opportunity to be heard so that there should be no reason, no reason whatsoever, why the Senate cannot sensibly make a final decision in relation to the passage of the bill before the end of tomorrow, or, if it be the wish of honourable senators, earlier than that. But it is the government's wish, and we hope it will be the wish of colleagues, that the bill be dealt with earlier than that if possible.

We understand—and I do not want to have to raise the heat of this debate on a procedural motion—that the Australian Labor Party, having failed to implement the Gonski report, resents the fact, as Kathryn Greiner said on Latelinelast night, that it falls to a Liberal government, a coalition government, to implement the Gonski recommendations. That is what Kathryn Greiner, a member of the Gonski panel, observed in her interview last night. It is a point that Mr David Gonski himself has made. The proposal now before the parliament captures the essence of the Gonski report. This is a rare opportunity for this Senate to break what is a decades-long public policy dispute about school funding so that we can for the first time have a transparent system, a needs based system and a nationally consistent system.

I want to use this opportunity to give great credit to my friend and colleague Senator Simon Birmingham, who is on the cusp of achieving what no Australian education minister, coalition or Labor, has ever been able to achieve before: consistency, transparency and fairness in the Commonwealth contribution to schools funding. I want to thank and express the government's appreciation of the members of the Senate crossbench who have been good enough to engage with Senator Birmingham and also with my colleague Senator Cormann, in particular, to hear the government's arguments as to why this is the right way to go to break the deadlock of decades, the anomalies of decades, over the Commonwealth contribution to schools funding. This is an historic debate. The state aid to non-government schools argument has been going in this country for more than 50 years, ever since the Menzies government in 1963 announced that it was going to provide state aid to Catholic schools. With this debate, we are now in the historic position, in the next two days, of concluding that half-century-long dispute.