Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I cannot let the minister's verballing continue in the way it has. I remind senators and others listening to this debate that the Gonski review panel involved two other members, and the minister has made no reference to their concerns with respect to this legislation. But the verballing of Mr David Gonski continues. Rather than stress the ways in which this minister has done that, I will segue into a press release from this evening, on which I will make another point in a moment. If we take it from the Nick Xenophon Team:

This is the REAL Gonski and we have three members of the original Gonski panel, including David Gonski himself, saying unambiguously it would be a disaster for Australian education if this package didn't pass.

David Gonski has never said that. David Gonski has said, with relief, that this government has accepted a principle of needs based funding, but Mr David Gonski has never endorsed the 80-20 approach or the Commonwealth-only approach to needs based funding, and to suggest otherwise is a blatant lie.

There are two other matters that I would like to deal with in this general discussion. The first of those, which I have raised I think now twice today, is the Senate's order for production of documents. The minister said to me after question time that he had submitted a letter in response to that order. Unfortunately, because the government has changed the arrangement for hours today, the tabling of that letter did not occur. Worse than that, the normal courtesy that would apply in a matter such as this—that the minister would furnish a copy of that material or correspondence to the senator who had originated that request—has not occurred. For this minister to come in here and claim that the opposition is being obstinate is just outrageous. He has not even followed basic courtesies of the Senate in relation to an order of the Senate for production of documents. This is not just the opposition; the whole Senate insisted that this minister provide that material by the end of yesterday, and he has not done so.

I can only second-guess at this stage what that letter might say. It might say, as some other colleagues have suggested to me, that there are no such documents. If that is the case, that raises very serious questions about the quality of the discussions that have occurred with the crossbenchers here. If the crossbenchers have not even seen modelling about moving forward from a ten-year transition and what that might really mean, that highlights what a farce has been occurring.

The other option, of course, is for the minister to argue that it is not in the public interest for that information to be made available. Maybe he has done that. We do not know that yet. We do not know what his answer to the Senate order has been, and, until such time as we do, it is not being obstinate to suggest that the minister should be answering reasonable questions and providing information to the Senate before we proceed into a detailed consideration of the amendments that we are indeed still digesting.

Beyond the order for production, though, I have to reflect again on this press release and its sheer audacity. It seems that by press release from the Nick Xenophon Team we can understand more about this package than the minister is telling us here and now. So let me inform the Senate what the Nick Xenophon Team tells us is 'the real Gonski win for Aussie schools'. Remember: they are anticipating a vote that has not even occurred yet. According to the Nick Xenophon Team, 'the real Gonski win for Aussie schools' is that the Nick Xenophon Team successfully advocated for:

Australian schools to receive $23.5 billion over the next 10 years ($4.9 billion above the Government's original plan)

So where is the modelling about what that will actually do? I hope the Nick Xenophon Team has actually seen it, because I would like to understand what that additional funding is going to do and what the impact of it will be. If the impact of it will be that schools like Kings get even more then we have got big problems. But let's wait and see. This debate might shed some further light on some of these issues.

The second dot point in this press release is:

Under-funded schools to reach funding targets in six years instead of 10.

Is that all of them? Is that some of them? What are the differences across states? Which ones? Hopefully, maybe, the Nick Xenophon Team can come in and tell us some of this, because the minister is not answering these questions.

The next dot point is:

National Schools Resourcing Board to be set up to review and improve the school funding methodology.

Hear, hear to that. I think that the Senate is united on that one, and the reason that the Senate is united on that one once we see the detail of what is being proposed here—hopefully, I can digest the detail in the government's amendments soon—is that we will know if it will save us from the school funding estimator debacle. We will not have a department politicised by you putting out material that is blatantly false. If we have an independent school resources board that can be responsible for the quality of the data that is circulated as it is on My School, for instance, and there is some independence in that process, given the way this minister has conducted himself, that will be a good thing. I have never seen as outrageous an exercise as the minister pretending to Australian parents that there will not be pressure on their school fees, because he has diddled his figures. He has diddled the figures for 2017. He has adjusted them to pretend that his new formula applies when it will never apply to 2017 to fool parents into believing that they get increases between 2017 and 2018 and to cover up the pressure for parents to pay school fees that he is introducing in this bill and as far as I can see still remain in this bill.

Worse than that: he then went out and said Catholic education were basically rent-seekers, that they had a special case and they were only squawking because they were potentially going to lose their special deal. That is what this minister did, and he is still doing it if those capacity-to-contribute arrangements still exist in this bill.

But let's move on to the next point the Nick Xenophon Team tells us about:

There will be benchmarks for state and territory governments so that they pay their share of education funding.

Benchmarks for state government. Senator Back, in your valedictory speech you made a particular comment that I noted. I cannot remember the exact phrase but it was basically that a carrot is better than a stick. Gonski 1 involved a carrot for state governments. The carrot for state governments was that they would get an additional two Commonwealth dollars for each additional one state dollar to get all schools to a common Student Resource Standard. Now, this potential stick method will be debated for an awful long time in here because we are a long way from being satisfied that you have any reasonable capacity to deliver benchmarks for state and territory governments, so that they pay their share of education funding. You have already deferred these issues to COAG mid next year, so how you might have managed to hoodwink some relatively new members and senators into thinking you have got a better capacity will be very interesting to hear.

We already have the Nick Xenophon Team anticipating the vote and claiming they have a real Gonski win for Aussie schools. In reading this press release we can see that they are simply swallowing your verballing of a number of people in this debate. The verballing of David Gonski himself, I think, is the most outrageous. Now that that disease has spread from yourselves to the Nick Xenophon Team, it really does need to be called out.

I could go on through the two pages of this win that the Nick Xenophon Team is anticipating, but let me go to the more critical issue here, because there is one dot point they do not have, which is in an article written by Paul Osborne in The Australian this afternoon—I think it is online. It refers to a $50 million transition fund. Does that mean that we have four transition funds now. During the inquiry into the legislation we were told that there were three transition funds, but now, at least in the press but not in the Nick Xenophon Team win, we hear about this $50 million transition fund and it is described as being 'for Catholic and independent schools over 12 months'. So, is there a new $50 million transition fund? If so, where is it provided for? Is it in the amendments or is it provided for in some other way that we need to source? If there is such a fund, what are the terms of access to that fund? What is this $50 million meant to cover? Is it the 'partial-monty moratorium'; it is certainly not the 'full-monty moratorium'.

We have already read in the press today that Catholic Education, for instance, and probably the independent sector as well, have no confidence in this minister. So why would they have confidence about this $50 million transition fund, if it indeed exists? We should not really be having to ask these questions. The minister should have presented the full details of what is involved here. But if there is this fund, what are the terms for access to it?

I would like to use the opportunity of this committee-stage consideration to be very clear about this. We know from the legislation inquiry that there is already contention about independent schools and Catholic schools accessing the Students First Fund. We understand that, originally, the minister naively committed to independent schools that that would continue as it has been. Subsequently he told them, 'No, actually. We are going to go to a proportional break-up for access to that fund, because we are taking the system weighted average benefits away from systemic schools. So, no, you will not have the preferred arrangement that might previously have existed.' The independent sector, before the legislation inquiry, argued a very different story. They said that that fund was meant to help them deal with the fact that they do not have the benefits of operating as a system and that they should be able to preserve their existing arrangements for accessing it, which is roughly, I think, 60-40. Which is it, Minister?

This really is a moving feast. It is a dog's breakfast. We will wait to hear from you whether there is a $50 million transition fund. Is access to that fund going to be proportionate? Is it really only with respect to systems, is there some broader purpose for it or have you just rebadged the existing transition funds? What is the detail of what transition funds are going to be available? Surely you understand, coming in here today, Minister, that you need to add to what was covered in the legislation inquiry about the existing transition funds—the general one, the one for the ACT and the one for the Northern Territory—and tell us what this other transition fund for Catholic or independent schools might be and what it is meant to cover. I can see that the minister is not even listening to this very important question, which is very sad because it means that he thinks he has a done deal. (Time expired)