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

I am aware that Senator Collins has indicated our position on this, but I would like to take the opportunity to just ask a few clarifying questions around this area, related not necessarily directly to the amendments that the Greens have put but to the broader amendments from the government as well. I know that there are a few people here in the gallery today, and there are a lot of people listening. The mystery of what is going on in the Senate is something that people often express to me when I am out in the general community. So I think what is going on here is really important in terms of the frame for the questions that I want to ask.

I think that Senator Collins, in her remarks earlier, asked the question: why is there such haste for this to happen now? For people who are watching this debate, who are here in the parliament today and listening to it, it is a great question that does not have a good answer as yet. Why are we going to sit, potentially through the night? Why is this happening now? It is because this government has decided that it wants to push this massive change—this very, very significant change in multiple ways—through the parliament in this period of time before we rise. In my resistance to the hours motion yesterday —the motion to change this process of the parliament and have us sit for all these hours—I spoke about the reason the government is doing that. Despite the way that this Senate is often described in the media as a site of great difficulty in getting negotiations through, getting things settled and getting agreement—the fractious Senate—the reality is that, as fractious as this Senate might be and is described, the real problem that the minister and Mr Turnbull have is that, if they do not get this legislation through here now, what is waiting outside the doors of parliament is an absolutely revolutionary force of the united power of the Australian education movement. Whether it is government schools or Catholic schools, there is huge concern about what this government is trying to do, and the reason they are concerned is that their questions were not given the opportunity to be asked, let alone answered.

Some of the questions that I want to ask in my contribution to this broader debate around the SES mechanism and the student weighted average are technical. They are the sorts of things that should have been considered extremely carefully by the department, who could bring in other arms of government—perhaps the Bureau of Statistics or perhaps Treasury—to carefully look at and analyse these things. They would have all the power of government to actually look at what is being proposed by this government, give it great scrutiny and then come here to the parliament with a very well considered piece of legislation.

Really good legislation requires very little amendment. Really bad legislation has been poorly consulted on and has been, in fact, made in the absence of consultation with key sectors of the community—I am talking about the government school sector and the Catholic school sector. When legislation is made badly and without that care, we end up with lots and lots of amendments. What is going on here is amendments to amendments, and we have heard the change to the amendments. If you are a little confused up there, I can tell you that I am also confused, and I have the papers down here some of the time, so I can try to figure out what is going on. We had a change to the Greens amendment that just went through from a discussion from Senator Bernardi that happened here in the chamber last night. It is not necessarily a bad change. I was a teacher, so I understand what outcomes from education are, whether it is in a classroom or whether it is a broader issue for the country. But the fact that it is getting made up on the run here in this chamber now is an absolutely telling indictment of how bad this minister's management of this piece of legislation is.

The problem is that decisions are being made about a funding structure of billions of dollars for all Australian children across this country that has been based on who knows what? As Senator Collins said, we—the whole Senate—have implored the minister. We have used technical means to say to him: 'Bring in the modelling. Tell us what you are using as your basis of evidence for the decisions that you are making and the changes you are making to how schools are going to be funded. Show us the thinking that went on behind this. Show us the numbers that went on behind this. Show us the consultation.' The minister has refused to provide that. It is called an order for the production of documents. We asked for that and the Senate agreed to it but, in some sort of game-playing that sometimes is really prized in this place, a little technique has been used to prevent that very important level of documentation coming into the chamber so that we can have a look at what is going on and critique what the government says are the facts.

We cannot critique the facts because we cannot even see the facts that they are basing it on. In fact, there may be no facts, and that is a bit of a problem. So this is where we are: we have a government that is saying, 'We are doing a great thing for the country; it is a transformation; it is going to be wonderful', and we have this lovely even, almost soporific, tone of the minister's very steady answers to the questions—except it is a veneer, because, underneath, the decision-making instruments are not being made transparent to this parliament. I acknowledge that the Greens and other colleagues here are trying to do the best they can on the run, but that is not how you make good policy for every child in the country. This is policymaking that affects every single family and every single community. It is policymaking that has the potential, if the bill is passed, to lock in 10 years of a funding mechanism that would be devastating, in my view, in terms of leaving parts of the country behind.

This minister, and plenty of his colleagues who backed him up, has been going out and saying, 'It was terrible under that Labor lot. They were so bad. They did 27 special deals across the country. Bad, bad people! They shouldn't have done that!' The reason those deals were done in that way is that Mr Gonski, when he looked across the country, saw that there was no level playing field—that some kids were underwater because they happened to have been born in a state where the funding was inadequate. Others were doing pretty well. In fact, the Western Australian government was doing pretty well in terms of looking after their government schools. So we had all this unevenness across the country. The whole purpose of the Gonski reforms was to do two things—and this is where the government is hiding a lot. The first thing was to get funding up to a point where it was evenly distributed to all children in our schools and young people in our high schools. Then they needed to put extra money on top of that base level, which is the student loadings, and that is the needs based bit.

The special deals were done to start to push the ones that were really underwater back up so that they could get to a breathing space. They were special deals to make sure that every Australian kid who happened to be born anywhere was going to get a fantastic shot at education when they walked through the gate of any school, whether it be Catholic, Anglican, Islamic, government, independent—it did not matter. That is what it means when it says sector blind. It means children being able to walk through the gate of any school and find a place where they can learn, because there is equitable access to learning opportunities across the country. That is what we were supposed to be getting to. That is not where we are now. It is not where we are going to get to be with the government's proposal, because instead of thinking that it would be good to make it equal for all the students, this minister keeps saying, 'Now we are giving the states the same deal.' That is not much chop if your state is not getting enough to give a proper level of education to the kids. So the 27 special deals were special. They were good and they were important.

But what we have seen from this government is a whole different sort of special deal. It has nothing to do with equity for children. They are a whole lot of skin-saving special deals with the crossbench for the government. That is what this is about. We will do a special deal with the Greens. We will do a special deal with One Nation. We will do a special deal, if we can, with Senator Leyonhjelm—I do not know what his position is at this point in time, but he has certainly made some comments about it. That is what has been going on. It is called horsetrading, I think. It is horse trading in here, under pressure, in a pressure cooker of a time right now. That is what is going on here. It is not good legislative practice. We are faced with a bill that has been inadequately prepared and is in great need of serious amendment.

I ask the minister a series of questions—and I still do not have an answer to the question I asked yesterday: what research is there, what modelling has been done, what evidence do you have that says giving 80 per cent of federal funding to non-government schools and 20 per cent funding to government schools is a good thing to do? Where is the evidence? We have not seen anything.

My next question: can the minister please advise what is the total amount of money lost due to the unpicking of the system weighted average for all New South Wales Catholic schools at level 101? Can you advise what proportion of the funding will be covered by the transitional arrangements? Let me just say it again: what is the total amount of money lost due to the unpicking of the system weighted average? I am a senator for New South Wales; I am really interested in New South Wales. I know Senator Collins asked a question similar to this for the other states and territories. What has been lost? Minister, can you confirm that as a result of your primary capacity to continue contribution changes, average non-government school SES 100 loses $438 per student? Could you confirm that? Non-government schools with an SES of 110 lose $800 per student—can you confirm that? What are the proposed arrangements for schools to apply for transitional funding? Have you got a plan? Do individual schools apply, or do systems apply? How will the funds be distributed? Have you got a plan and can we see it? Can you bring it into the light of day? Can you bring it into the parliament so that we can give it some scrutiny before we roll through, in this outrageous manner, into a funding model for 10 years that you want to roll out across this country? Could you give us some evidence and could you provide a little information?

We are talking about the authority. I do have the government's amendments somewhere. I know the Greens will critique this in some way, but the government's amendments just made me laugh when I had a look. Not because it is a laughing matter—it is a very serious matter—but because it is done in a way that only the Liberal Party would conceive of what should be done in an amendment. They have gone on about who should be on it. They 'are appointed by the minister'. It is about how they exercise their power. 'Now that we're in government, the place where we belong, we'll control who we're going to put on and who we're going to take off.' Oh, and it is in the 'opinion of the minister'. The whole of the language in here: 'Reviews to be conducted periodically'. The whole of the language used just on this page does not deal with anything about the purpose of the review board, which is absolutely vital. I concur with many of the comments, including those of Senator Hanson-Young, about the need for the deep scrutiny of what is going on, and certainly around checking the outcomes. But we have not got any of that from the government. We have got a lot about how they will appoint perhaps some friends. It is an appointment process to a board of ambiguous status. It is certainly not independent; it is much more under the thumb of the minister. The reason we do not want to go there is because, under the thumb of this minister, we have had terrible outcomes in how the department has been able to communicate with the whole of the broader population.

I have a few very specific questions there, Minister. Please do not be contemptuous. Please give an answer to these questions that are coming to me from people who want to know the facts.