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

Certainly I will. Thank you. It is what the minister does not say that is the issue here. Senator Back, I refer you to page 11 of the bill. Page 11 of the bill sets out the changes to the capacity-to-contribute arrangements under the SES. This is the area that the government amendments do not address. This is the area where the minister is deliberately refusing to pause, and the reason that the minister is deliberately refusing to pause—and we have heard different arguments about that, and I am sure we will get to the detail of those, because he convinced with very weak arguments all sorts of people that the justification for the existing capacity-to-contribute arrangement was tenuous. But it is connected to the SES arrangements and for him to suggest that he is pausing the arrangements under this model for systemic schools, and then not address these provisions in the bill, is simply disingenuous. Let me explain the reason, Senator Back: it is because the two factors work together.

I recall the decisions that were made under the Gillard government around how to follow the Gonski recommendations, and I want to take the Senate very carefully through that. I have done this a couple of times, but hopefully now that we are very focused on the issue I can do it again. I think you mentioned that Dr Tannock referred to page 177 of the Gonski review. I am now going to refer to a related part, which is on page 178. On that page the panel recommended that government should apply careful attention to the 'the shape of the anticipated private contribution' between two points in the model as to what level of contribution should be expected of parents. Under the Gillard government we did that. We modelled it. We looked at the sort of modelling that the minister is refusing to provide at the moment under our order for the production of documents. Under that modelling, at the time we were convinced—and we have had more recent data now from the ABS that highlights this point—that parents who have children at primary school level have a different capacity to contribute than, in general terms, parents who have children at secondary school level. The more recent ABS data reinforces that point. It is well-known that families with younger children are more likely to have one full-time income earner and then maybe only a part-time income earner, or not a second income earner, within their households. That is reflected in the ABS family income figures provided to me by the Australian Bureau of Statistics. That is why we, under the Gillard government, framed the curve as it currently is in the act for primary school students.

We are also mindful of the fact that the highest proportion of students in non-government schools are in local parish Catholic primary schools. Unlike the independent sector, there is usually a smaller proportion of students at primary level and a much higher proportion of students at secondary level, and they can balance out that distribution more effectively. In Catholic schools they are commonly local parish Catholic primary schools—the ones you would be familiar with. Their argument was that not only does the SES model not measure very well the nature of our student population and their families but also their capacity to contribute is different when you have primary school aged students as opposed to secondary school aged students.

On that basis and on the basis of advice we received at the time, we structured the curve in a way that reflected that and took on board the Gonski review recommendation that we needed to do this in a fashion that would not compromise the delivery of the different types of non-government schools. One of those different types of non-government schools is the low-fee systemic Catholic primary school. I do not focus just on Catholics here, because that is why the Anglicans are in systems and the Lutherans are in systems. They run some very similar low-fee accessible schools. What the minister has yet to circulate—I would like to be wrong here but I have not yet been able to find this—is an amendment that withdraws the changes that I directed you to in the current bill, or at least provides a 12-month moratorium on those provisions. If they do not do that they are not providing the full-monty moratorium. Let me highlight why that is definitely the case, now that the minister has provided us with the anticipated figures. Because, Senator Back, the anticipated figures he has provided for this next financial year are nowhere near the anticipated figures we addressed in government. It is five-odd years since 2013, but my recollection is that the system weighted average factor at that point in time was worth roughly $60 million. So there is only one way the minister could be presenting the figure that he gave us today—the $46.5 million figure—and that is if he has done it on the basis of his changes to the parental capacity to contribute. That is the only way he could come up with that estimate.

So there are two issues, Senator Back, that relate to assurances that you may have been given. The first of those is that it is not a full pause unless the government removes the changes to the capacity-to-contribute arrangements for non-government primary schools. If they do not remove the provisions that I have directed you to on page 11 of the bill—and we have amendments designed to do that—they are just simply not being genuine. It is a very difficult element to explain, but what people need to understand is the system weighted average factor works in partnership with the capacity-to-contribute measure. The two work together. So if the minister is only responding to one element of it, that is why you are getting figures that are well below the figures we addressed when we were in government.

But what is more concerning is that the minister is being disingenuous in how he is addressing this. These are issues that have been taken to the minister time and time again, so for him to be here now deliberately skimming over that factor is disrespectful. It is disrespectful to you. I am more than happy for him to be disrespectful to me, and almost everybody in this debate has been. I have pretty thick skin; it does not bother me in the slightest. But, Senator Back, for you, for the minister to not cover that issue is disrespectful.

A genuine pause would involve at least a pause on the operation of the provisions on page 11 of the bill. Find me the amendment that the government is moving that does that—prove me wrong, please, but I cannot find it, and my advisers have not been able to find it in the limited time that we have had—or the minister can make an assurance that he will put it in. But if he does not then I suggest to you, Senator Back, and to other senators who are concerned about these issues, to support our amendment that does, because any suggestion that there is a moratorium on these issues, without dealing with the unilateral changes to capacity to contribute that this minister has put into this bill, is not adequate.

The complexity of all of this is what has allowed this minister to maintain the charade. Had this minister had his way we would have trotted in here this evening and we would have started systematically moving through his amendments, and he might have conned the Senate as a whole as well. But fortunately our parliamentary processes ensure—and you, Senator Back, know full well why—he cannot just do that. I think, Senator Back, the question you should be asking the minister is: what is he going to do about these capacity-to-contribute changes that he has unilaterally introduced into the bill?

As I have said to you, I have seen submissions from independent schools, and they were the only ones that you could glean any policy rationale from in relation to these changes. When we challenged people like Christians Schools to please tell us, 'Where has this come from? Why has the curve been adjusted this way? Do you really understand the impact?' the answers we got were quite alarming. Catholic Education has been accused of scaremongering. The truth is Catholic Education is really probably the only organisation that has the organisational capacity to use the funding estimator tool and understand fairly easily and fairly quickly what the implications are. When they spoke to the Lutherans, they put in a submission to the legislation committee inquiry, and said, 'No, we don't like this—don't do this to us.' Then we had the Anglicans, and it was much the same. Indeed, you will note that Senator Birmingham has not responded to my question about the Anglican system that sought to be recognised as a system almost 12 months ago, that he failed to act upon. Will they, at least, get some access to this partial Monty? Or will they get nothing? That is the problem here.

So it is going to be a long night, because the assurances that Senator Birmingham might be giving you now will be challenged to time and time again. But unless he stalls his capacity to contribute changes, there is no more moratorium. The figures are as represented, for instance, in my local parish school. I was a bit reluctant to talk about it until I received a letter from one of my fellow parishioners. It is probably about the first time as a senator that I have ever been able to respond almost immediately and say, 'Actually, there are a few other people you should be lobbying rather than me.' Consider the impact on that school, unless this capacity to contribute payment or, as described in the Gonski review report, the anticipated private contribution, because that is what this minister is unilaterally changing—the anticipated private contribution.

He has said wonderful things about Catholic Education here tonight, but reflect on what he has said at other times. Catholic Education was supposedly scaremongering, yet his colleagues, like Senator Bridget McKenzie—if you look at her press release from 2013, she was way more out there in terms of suggesting that there would be fee rises within Catholic schools. No—Catholic Education has looked at these changes to the anticipated private contribution—page 11 in the bill—and they have been able to tell us quite clearly what will be anticipated from parents in Catholic schools from 2018, with no transition. There is no six or 10 years working these changes through the system—this cliff happens in 2018. Unless this is removed from the bill, there is no moratorium.