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

by leave—I move opposition amendments (16) and (18) on sheet 8155 together:

(16) Schedule 1 , item 46 , page 16 (lines 8 to 21) , omit the item, substitute:

46 After paragraph 3(1) (c)

Insert:

(ca) to ensure that, as the Commonwealth increases its school funding, the States and Territories also increase their school funding so that each Australian school receives, from the Commonwealth and the State or Territory in which the school is located, recurrent funding equal to at least 95% of the total of the base amount for the school for the year and the school' s total loading for the year, for each year commencing on or after:

(i) if the school is located in Victoria—1 January 2022; or

(ii) if the school is located in another State or Territory—1 January 2019;

46A Subsections 3(2) and (8) (note)

Repeal the note.

(18) Schedule 1 , item 48 , page 18 (line 10) , omit paragraph ( c ).

We also oppose schedule 1 in the following terms:

(15) Schedule 1 , item 45 , page 15 (line 3) to page 16 (line 7) , to be opposed .

Can I say, in relation to this set of amendments about retaining the current preamble objects and reform objectives that are in the act, that Labor has always been up-front about our values in relation to school education. We believe in the transformative power of education and that high-quality school education should be available to all Australian children. Our schools should not entrench disadvantage; they should do the reverse. Every student in Australia should receive their fair funding level, the level they need for a high-quality education.

Let's be clear about the contrast between our values in education and those of those opposite. You can look at the government's proposed bill and try to understand those values, but it is not just what is in their bill that matters; sometimes what is not in their bill tells you a whole lot more. Labor's Australian Education Act, the current legislation, enshrines our values up-front. We set objectives and targets: that all students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education and that the quality of a student's education should not be limited by where they live, the income of their family or the school that they attend. The first object of our act was to ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high-quality and highly equitable education for all students. You cannot find those objects if this bill succeeds, because they are not there.

What is in the bill also reflects what you believe you can achieve. The government's bill has cut a lot of our national targets. It no longer aims for Australia to be one of the top five highest performing countries in reading, maths and science by 2025; for our schooling system to be considered high-quality and highly equitable by international standards by 2025; or to halve the gap between the outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students by 2020.

After all the talk about the need to reverse Australia's declining education performance and, indeed, the talk in here about transparency, there is no point unless we have benchmarks or objectives to measure that by. Having the Schools Resourcing Board has a range of the advantages that we have discussed, but we should be establishing the standards we hope to achieve under that transition, whether it is six or 10 years. In six years time, we should be able to revisit this issue and say we have not met the objectives that we set or, indeed, that we have. We need to be able to review what has been achieved by these changes and understand what further changes need to occur.

After the talk about the need to reverse Australia's declining education performance, the government does not back itself to achieve the targets but, indeed, has progressed the cuts. That is because this bill removes the reform objectives contained in the act. It removes reform directions around the quality of teaching, the quality of learning, empowering school leadership, providing transparency and accountability, and meeting student need—many of the issues that were previously incorporated in the plans and the National Education Reform Agreement that this government let languish. Finally, Labor fundamentally believes that all schools across the country should move to their fair funding level, 95 per cent of the schooling resource standard, and today I move these amendments to include this object clearly in the legislation.

The government's radical alternative plan is to take this combined approach with states and territories—in fact, I think Senator Bernardi referred to competitive federalism before. This new approach is a 'one size fits all', Commonwealth-only share approach. I understand that the Senate chamber seems to be determined to allow that radical shift in approach, but let's at least hold the government accountable for it. Let's include in the act the object of what should be achieved. Let's hold them to account in the future about how this poorly-informed shift in approach has not worked.

The schooling resource standard is, as many of us understand, the amount of funding needed, based on evidence informed by the Gonski review, to give a child a high-quality education. Every student in Australia should be entitled to their fair funding level. Any funding system that does not include this objective will just entrench inequality and disadvantage in our schools. By removing these things, this bill abandons the objective that all schools should reach their fair funding level of 95 per cent of the schooling resource standard.

Instead, the government's arbitrary decision to prescribe sector-specific targets of just 20 per cent for the SRS for public schools and 80 per cent of the SRS for non-government schools will mean that 85 per cent of public schools will be funded below their SRS target in 2027. Labor does not believe that we should have a school funding system that does not keep the objective of a quality education at its heart. We are calling on the Senate with this batch of amendments to retain the current preamble, objects and reform objectives in the act to enshrine the objective of schools reaching their fair funding share of 95 per cent of the schooling resource standard.