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

Minister, there are a number of questions that have already been raised by my colleagues on this side of the chamber with regard to the special deals that you said you were not going to make that you are going to make, and the deals that you said were not happening that are happening. We still do not have any clear answer from you in response to the first set of questions that were asked by Senator Collins. They went to the heart of matters of great concern in the community, which is to do with the system weighted average. Minister, I am sure that you have had significant lobbying from genuinely concerned parents across the country in every single sector. In fact, one thing I would count as an achievement is that you have managed to upset everybody in the government school system, everybody in the Catholic school system and a whole lot of people in the independent school system as well. One of the things that you have failed to answer is anything of detail that will give people any confidence at all that you might be telling them something approaching the truth.

The questions that Senator Collins asked earlier I will reiterate in perhaps a less eloquent way. I have to emphasise the importance of the need for you to answer these questions in this general debate before we can possibly move to a more detailed discussion of the very important papers that have landed here in the Senate this evening but have not landed until the twelfth hour, so much is your disdain for making yourself available for the proper scrutiny of this Senate. I think you are even more concerned about getting out of here with this bill under your belt, because you do not want the scrutiny of the community at all, particularly those who are educated.

Minister, I draw your attention to Senator Collin's questions for very clear explanations about the nature of the so-called moratorium that is some part of a stitched up deal that I do not think is anywhere in writing because nobody has been to be able provide it. There have been plenty of requests being sent around the country—all over the place: what is going on? What is the moratorium? What does it look like? People are asking these questions around the country this afternoon and tonight, and this is our chance to get a decent answer from you. Minister, if you have a bit of information on a bit of paper, that would be lovely. We are happy to receive pieces of paper at the last minute, clearly, or we would not be dealing with this process in this way. Just give us the bit of paper that explains your supposed deal that is the moratorium. What we want to know is, in this moratorium, what are you actually doing with the system weighted average that is going to impact on every single school in a system? What is the status of your response to the concerns about the capacity to contribute? When and in what way are you going to implement this moratorium around those two critical factors? Does the moratorium remove the capacity to contribute the dilemma that absolutely exists? It has been very well articulated by the Catholic system.

We could have avoided getting to this place, if, before you had made your big announcement with the fanfare on that Monday, you had actually taken phone calls from peak representative groups that wanted to discuss these details with you. They approached in good faith. I do not know what would make them think that that was a reasonable thing to do, but they did approach you in good faith, seeking the opportunity to share their deep, rich and long understanding of their system, to share their deep commitment to the education of children in systems. They wanted to have you understand that, and they were ready to talk to you. But you completely ignored that, Minister. Now there is this hasty retreat of some sort that is as yet unknown to us and that is being attempted to be stitched up perhaps as we speak.

I am going to give Senator Back some congratulations on his efforts to stand up for the Catholic system. Because I did not make a contribution during the valedictory speeches yesterday, I want to acknowledge now that the time I spent on the education committee in the last parliament with Senator Back was a time when I absolutely could understand his commitment to education. He was in defence mode for the Abbott government, which said that there should be absolutely no money going to schools. So he had a difficult job to do. But when we went to Western Australia and to Perth for a day of hearings, I could tell the integrity that he had in his dealings with people in that state. People who came to put their concerns about that version of the legislation said that Senator Back had served particularly Catholic education in Western Australia very, very well and that he had a deep and rich understanding of that sector. So my hopes and the hopes of 25 per cent of the children who attend schools around this country in the Catholic education system—25 per cent in the nation—all hang on whether or not Senator Back has in his departure from the Senate been able to save the country from the worst excesses of a deal that has been described as the worst in 50 years.

So what has Senator Back actually got out of this greedy government—this government that acts with such disdain—for the expertise of education authorities around this country? What did he get out in terms of the funds and the impact on the SRS? What has actually been achieved with regard to that?

I am delighted that I get to ask one particular question, and I genuinely hope for an answer. Instead of accepting Gonski's recommendations that the sectarian wars that have led to so much inequity across our schools should end, that both state and federal governments should in partnership take responsibility for the excellent education of all students in all systems, instead of looking towards that vision of a fair sharing of resources between state and federal governments to make sure all Australians get their opportunity to learn, this government has gone in a direction that takes us away from unity, it has gone in a direction that takes us away from shared responsibility and it has taken us away from a focus on ensuring equal opportunity for children who are born into different states and into families who are choosing different systems. So why, Minister, instead of accepting that shared responsibility, which was so much a part of the report delivered by David Gonski, have you moved to an arbitrary decision to give SRS support of 80 per cent to Catholic and independent schools and only 20 per cent to children in government schools?

One thing that I absolutely know and I think is completely indisputable is that children do not choose their parents. They arrive, and they do not have any choice about where their parents are going to send them to school. I do not think it is unreasonable to believe that every child born in Australia today should be able in six years time to walk through the gate of any school in the country, whether it is Catholic, independent or government, or city regional, rural or remote—anywhere in the country. We have had the opportunity to deliver funding that would have allowed equitable experience of education, but instead, Minister, you have chosen this 80-20 model.

Where is the research? Where is the background documentation that says that that is the way to go forward? It is certainly nowhere in the recommendations of the Gonski panel. We can call it Gonski 1.0, 2.0, 3.0, 4.0 or 5.0, and with greater numeracy education I suppose we can go on to infinity; we can call it whatever number we like—but it is not truthful, it is not fair and it is not responsible for delivering equitable education access for every Australian. For people who are listening to this debate and going. 'Oh, my God, it is just so confusing', it is confusing, as Senator Collins says—it is very confusing. It is actually so confusing that I think Stephen Elder, from the Catholic Education Commission in Victoria, has had members of the coalition ring him up asking him to explain to them what is going on.

This government have made an absolute mishmash of this. Gonski 2.0 is not what they are trying to make it out to be. It is a tool for delivering sector-entrenching discriminatory education experiences for Australian children. I am a senator for New South Wales and I am very concerned about my state—and I will have some questions about that—but Minister tell me I am wrong, prove to me I am wrong, when I say that students in the Northern Territory in government schools who are already behind are going to stay behind. They going to stay behind because you are not addressing the reality that that government school system needs an awful lot more than the 20 per cent of the SRS that you are going to offer to give those children a chance. Minister, explain to me and all the teachers of this country, explain to me and all the parents of children in this country, how it is fair to give the same proportion to states and overlook the fact that there are incredibly differentiating needs amongst those children in the states.

Australians who elected those opposite in 2013 were sold a message that there would be a funding match dollar for dollar. They were misled then. And the lie that was on those blue-and-white-striped posters that everybody saw as they walked in was so disingenuous that it did not even have a little asterisk at the bottom that said, 'But we won't be giving you years 5 and 6.' It did not even say that. So at this juncture, four years down the track, why should the Australian people trust you now, when you failed so badly then? Why should senators on this side, who absolutely believe in equitable access to funding for all children in all systems, believe that the legislation that you are pushing through this house with unseemly haste is actually going to address any of those inequities that were in fact the driver of the research that was undertaken by Mr David Gonski and his team?

Prove it to me, Minister. Show me the figures. Help me understand. Answer the questions. Where did 80-20 come from? What is the deal that you have done—hopefully, well negotiated by Senator Back but still unseen by anybody in the sector that I have been in touch with? Show us the paper. Show us the money! Show the 25 per cent of Australian students in Catholic schools that they are not going to get done over in the next 12 months by this little deal that you have stitched up in the last day.

The reason we ended up with the report that we got from Mr Gonski, and the recommendation that he and his team put together—which was fair funding for every child in every single school, with additional loadings on top of that SRS evening out for disability, for indigeneity, for small and country schools, for low SES and non-English-speaking backgrounds—is that their experience of seeing Australian schools across this country was eye opening. I remember reading reports saying they could not believe that they had gone to schools where the resourcing was so totally inadequate that they were surprised that any learning at all could happen.

At the heart of all of this, it is not a game of politics. It is about the capacity to create an environment in which the young people of our country, whom I consider to be our greatest asset, can learn—where teachers do not have to ask the P&F to fundraise to be able to buy $10,000 worth of school readers so that children in kindergarten and first class can have a book that is not dog-eared and falling apart, and actually learn to read. That is the kind of resourcing that I want for schools. I do not want primary school teachers to have to choose two, out of six kids who need Reading Recovery, because that is all they can afford, damning the other four to lost opportunities for learning.

Explain to me, Minister, what you are doing and how it is going to work, because, frankly, I do not have any confidence in the numbers that you speak about, and neither the Catholic sector nor the government sector has any. Indeed, no-one who has interacted with you in this process actually believes you. Prove to it me, Minister. I would love to have some answers to my questions.