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

Senator Fifield will have his opportunity in this debate. It is unfortunate that he did not take his opportunity in the cabinet. That is the problem. That we are now in this farce is the problem.

I was talking about the settlement that had been achieved during the Gonski 1.0 process, which was seriously damaged by the Abbott government's refusal to move beyond the four years of the six-year transition plan—the six-year transition plan that would have got most schools, in partnership with the states and territories, to a common student resourcing standard. Mr Turnbull and Senator Birmingham have come in here with the glossy rhetoric that they are on the same path, and that is simply untrue. What Senator Birmingham has done is take what was a combined funding approach and turn it into a Commonwealth share only approach, which will never achieve the outcome that is needed here. It will never achieve the standard, the resources, for Australian schools that is required.

Senator Birmingham, Senator Brandis and others have verballed various of the players in this debate, but the best example of where we are today, which I saw in this morning's press in an opinion piece in The Australian newspaper, is that by Peter Goss, who basically at one stage says: we have got to accept that the National Education Reform Agreement is dead, but the Senate should seriously fiddle with Gonski 2.0 and add a national education reform agreement. So he is saying on the one hand that we have to get over the fact that this government killed the National Education Reform Agreement—and he tries to make comparisons solely on the act itself and suggests that our only option is the act as it currently stands and this bill—but then says, 'Oh, but we should go back to a national education reform agreement.' Of course we should! And that is where it should have stayed.

This government criticised Labor for funding over the four years of the forward estimates, and it has been new to some senators in this debate to understand that states and territories do not have four-year forward estimates and it is a very difficult process to make states commit to ongoing funding over the forward years. This has been new information to many senators considering this debate. But look at this government's hypocrisy with this plan: 10 years, with only four years funded over the forwards. When you think about the rhetoric that was put on Labor about our four-year forward estimates of our six-year plan, you only need to reflect on this plan to see what hypocrisy that was.

So even if this government brings their plan—as has, again, been canvassed by commentators—down to eight years, or to seven or six years, it will still be four to six years too late; it will still be less funding that should be available; and there will be no commitment from states and territories to make their contributions. Let me remind people who are listening to this debate: for the contribution that was achieved with the states who became participating states and the other states that the government failed to bring into the package—the Abbott government failed to bring states who had agreed into the package—the offer there was two Commonwealth dollars for one state dollar. That is not on the table. How on earth does this government propose that we are going to bring the states into this arrangement? We do not know, and all that they say is, 'Um—we've deferred that till COAG next year.' What a farce!

The other element of this farce is the process farce, of course. The Senate inquiry: now, I accept the will of the Senate. Labor argued that we needed more time to address these matters in detail, and I thank senators for supporting my order for production of documents. To me, that does reflect that senators do now understand that there has not been adequate information and that there has not been proper consideration of the detail.

But, of course, another element of that Senate inquiry was the farce about how it was conducted. Firstly, and back to my point about sectarianism, for me to be accused on Twitter by the chair as running a protection racket for private schools which was eventually, after the hearing, finally withdrawn, is a joke. But add to that joke that the chair thinks that she can walk and chew gum at the same time. To me that is quite unethical chairing.

The other part of the joke, I think, was best represented by Crikey.com—not usually a friend of mine—which suggested that Senator McKenzie and Senator Hanson-Young were operating a tag team against me defending Catholic education. Since when does the Australian National Party form a tag team with the Greens to try to deny the Senate an opportunity to explore the details of a bill before it? This is, Senator Fifield, the sectarianism that I am referring to.

There has been a range of other commentary that it is better not revisited. The point here is that these wars had been settled back in 2013, and should have been left that way. This government is not settling the education wars: it has reignited them! As I said, when we have a clearer picture of what the provisions in this bill are we will deal with those in detail during the committee stage. But until such time as we understand what this bill is going to contain there really is no point in commentating further, other than to ask senators to reflect on their position on these issues in the past.

In closing at this stage, I will ask Senator McKenzie to refer back to a press release she made on 13 March 2013, where she said:

Results show that the Federal Labor Government’s fundng model, which is supposed to address inequity, will result in 25 per cent of the lowest SES Catholic schools losing funding.

Senator McKenzie, that is actually today.

But then, for all these stories about scaremongering, let me remind Senator McKenzie of this one, again, from her press release:

Under the Gonski recommendations, the average fees for Catholic Schools could rise between 200 - 300 per cent.

And yet she and other members of the coalition attack Catholic education for highlighting what the changes in this bill do to assumptions around what level of fees, low-fee—particularly Catholic primary school—parents would need to pay. That is the example of the farce occurring here.

Government senators, other than a few, are being incredibly hypocritical. Senator Fifield and his colleagues should get their act together in cabinet and fix this!