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

Just to be clear for people who thought they did not have to worry about the funding of their schools and education for their children, for people who have taken the government at its word and certainly accepted the fanfare on the day of the announcement—'the school funding estimator is going to tell you how great life is for your child'—the reality is that it is a nominal allocation. That means it is not an accurate number, it is nominal; it is something like it, but it is not the accurate number.

Minister, if your school is part of the Catholic school system, which is 25 per cent of the schools across the country—and all of the government schools as part of government systems—because parents of those school systems are looking up materials, there is not only a nominal allocation; the other variable is that the other numbers there do not actually reflect what is happening with the system through which the money is coming. Basically, they are very, very inaccurate numbers. Is that correct, Minister? They are not to be relied on?