Cory Bernardi (SA, Australian Conservatives) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I move Amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 8160 together:

Clause 2, page 2 (table item 4), omit "176", substitute "181".

Schedule 1, page 37 (after line 26), at the end of the Schedule, add:

Part 4—Limiting commitments

177 Subsections 67(2) and 69A(1) (note 2)

  Repeal the note.

178 Subsections 112(3) to (5)

  Omit "section 126", substitute "subsection 126(1)".

179 Section 126

  Before "The Consolidated Revenue Fund", insert "(1)".

180 Section 126

  After "for a year", insert "commencing before 1 January 2022".

181 At the end of section 126

  Add:

     (2) Payments of financial assistance under this Act to a State or Territory for a year commencing on or after 1 January 2022 are to be made out of money appropriated by the Parliament by another Act.

Amendments (1) and (2) on sheet 8160 together.

The theme through my contributions to this debate has been the requirement for governments to act responsibly and within their remit. That means that their funding needs to be applied over the course of the forward estimates, where they are accountable and where the impacts that are going to be on the budget bottom line are displayed to the Australian people. They are not fanciful projections, if I can say that. They are not pie-in-the-sky anticipations of glowing revenues and blossoming economies. They are actually put down in black and white.

We know that we cannot rely on the forward projections when it comes to revenue, but we more or less can rely on them when it comes to expenses. If you double the government's estimates you will probably be pretty close to where their expensive programs roll out. However, in this case the government have been sneaky; they have been tricky. This is exactly what they condemned the Labor Party for when Labor were in office: for making an announcement over a decade or more, with expenditure weighted into the latter years so that it did not interrupt or damage their budget bottom line but so they could go out there with spin and say, 'Look at us! We're fiscally responsible!'

Well, they are neither of those things. They are not interested in better educational outcomes—either side, to be frank—because the measuring and the statistics are not there. There is no criteria to peel back the layers and to say, 'I'm terribly sorry, you've failed at your school to educate your children properly so we are going to peel back your funding.' And when the government announced Gonski 2.0, which was a political fix—or an attempt at a political fix; whether it works or not!—it was scheduled to spend $1.9 billion in the forward estimates, or thereabouts, and the remainder of the $18 billion in the never-never. This was on the presumption that they would not be in power.

That is a smoke-and-mirrors trick! It is exactly what they condemned in Labor, but now they have said, 'Well, we're only spending $18 billion.' But in the blink of an eye, at the stroke of a pen and at the demand of a crossbencher, another $4.9 billion magically materialises. That is another $5 million a week in interest payments that the very people who they are purporting to want to change the educational outcomes for are going to have to pay back for decades and decades to come! They are robbing from tomorrow to prop up their political perils today.

There has to be a better way. There has to be a way that we can have confidence, not only in government projections but in government accountability. You should not be able to sow what would be known in corporate takeover parlance as the 'poison pill'. The poison pill is where you lay a landmine so that when someone comes along who does something that you do not really like, or if you think you are going to lose your grip on power, it is going to blow up in their faces.

Putting funding out there on a 10-year projection is a poison pill. It is designed to put off until tomorrow the things you need to deal with today. It is designed to ensure that, should you lose your grip on power because of the wisdom of the Australian people, the other mob are going to have to pick up what has been left behind. Labor were experts at this and, quite frankly, the coalition belled that cat, and they did it properly. They said, 'Gonski 1.0 is not a funding cut because the funds were never there in the first place.' Well, I am telling you that with Gonski 2.0 the funds are not there either. They cannot project revenues into the next year accurately. Every year we hear there is going to be a deficit of $20 billion or whatever it might be, or a surplus. In fact, since 2009 we have been told a surplus is just around the corner, but it is yet to materialise and we are now $500-plus billion in debt. And the minister, through the stroke of a pen, added another one per cent to that yesterday. If anyone here does not think that that is completely bonkers and an abrogation of duty, they should not be here. But this is the problem. On this side of the chamber, for this crossbench, success is measured by how much money it can gouge out of the government so that it can pursue its agenda. I think we cannot afford that anymore. Every intervention from the Nick Xenophon Team costs the Australian taxpayer billions of dollars. It is funnelled into their little target measure. We are seeing the same now from others here.

Let me be frank: I am very happy to say that I want to save the taxpayers' money. You can get better educational outcomes by making sure the existing funding, or even supplementary funding, is commensurate and dependent on children being better educated. You cannot have people coming out of schools who are not literate or numerate to a sufficient standard. You cannot have them going into university studies and graduating in degrees that are never going to get them a job and never have a meaningful financial or beneficial outcome for them. But it is a great financial and beneficial outcome for universities, because they only care about the students coming in. That is what this bill does: this funding is only about the students coming in. 'We do not give a hoot about the outcomes,' is basically what this government is saying—'As long as you get the students into the schools, you can teach them what you like and off we'll go.' I, for one, say that is absolutely wrong. This is a gross dereliction of duty by the legislators in this place and in the other place. They are spending money they do not have on promises they will not uphold on outcomes that will remain unknown.

And so it is time to inject a bit of fiscal sanity into this. The amendments I have proposed here are that the funding will be allocated in accordance with the government's own projections over the forward estimates—in fact, slightly further on than that because we are already into the first year. Basically, they say: 'Yes, the funding is there for the next four years. Then, if you want more funding to pursue it, come back to the parliament and resubmit it again and have the discussion again about the best way forward.' Do not pretend that this is offering certainty or surety for any school in this country, because it is not. At the stroke of a pen, at the change of a government, whoever can negotiate an even bigger, better or worse deal—however you want to describe it—will then be able to change all of this. If you want proof of that, let's remember what Labor did. When the Labor Party were in government, they promised Gonski 1.0 to provide certainty and surety. They guaranteed it would keep going. They did special deals and all of those things. I make no judgement about that. But they promised the schools that there was certainty going forward, and what is happening? We are changing it!

There are only two things that are guaranteed in this place: the first is that we will all get kicked out at one point out or will leave; and the second thing is that the government, of whatever persuasion, is going to tax the Australian people more. It is not death and taxes; it is political death and taxes, in this case. The problem we have is that by appealing to the base instincts of schools or dressing these things up in moral dimensions and saying, 'Unless you do this, our kids will miss out,' we are neglecting the true fundamentals—that is, that money does not solve problems and government intervention does not solve problems. In actual fact, government intervention, more often than not, creates unforeseen and untold numbers of further problems.

So, if we want to confine them and we want to restore the accountability and the credibility, quite frankly, of politics in this country, we can start right now. We can start now by saying: 'Let's accept that the government's got an agenda it wants to pursue. People want to improve it, change it and modify it as they see fit. But let's hold them to account on the forward estimates so that the spending they want to spend now is on their heads. Then, if they are elected for another term, and in four years they want to do it all again and they think, "Yes, exactly what we said four years ago is perfect; let's do that," they can introduce the same bill and extend the spending on the same trajectory.' But I will wager London to a brick that this funding will not remain in place as it is passed in this Senate—and it looks likely to today—for the duration of the 10 years that they are promising. There is no certainty attached to this bill. The only certainty that can be brought in is by holding the government to account for its promises over the forward estimates in order to stop the funding attached to it then or to allow the government to make its case for the reason it needs to continue or change. It needs to be one of the two.

We stand here not because we are against education—in fact, it is quite the opposite—but because we believe that education is the building block of future success. But it has to be measurable and it has to be wise, and we also have to balance it with the prudence that comes with being a fiscal conservative, where you tend not to spend money you do not have. You can invest money in the future, but investment means you have to know what your expected rate of return is. There is no expected rate of return here, except if you are a politician and you are hoping to neutralise a political deathroll by throwing money at a problem in the hope that it goes away. It will not go away. I think the government is more likely to go away than the problem of our education system. This bill does not save it, but what we can do is improve it. We can improve it by putting what is effectively a sunset clause on the funding until the government makes its case in four years time. I know it is not politically popular, and I do not expect too much support, quite frankly, in this place because it would hold too many of them to account.