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

Given the hour, I am going to moderate my response to the rather extraordinary contribution that we just heard there. It is not indisputable that the distribution arrangements that have been applied by Catholic education systems have been doing as Senator Hanson-Young suggests. The material that she put before the Senate committee can be challenged in a range of ways that I do not intend to go through in detail tonight. Of course, the first was the Kathryn Greiner 2015 draft, which we have already dealt with. The other report that Senator Hanson-Young provided to the committee and the other document that she tabled equally can be challenged in a range of ways that I do not intend to occupy this chamber's time with tonight. The report, once understood in context, does not at all do what Senator Hanson-Young suggested that it does.

The point here, and the point of what occurred in Gonski 1, is that you do not need to rob Peter to pay Paul here. Many involved in the school funding debate back at the stage of Gonski 1 reached a consensus because we accepted that we have a unique education system here in Australia that involves, if you compare it to other countries in the world, a reasonably large low-fee non-government education sector. I know some senators, and indeed some education advocates—it is a very small group nowadays, but there are still some—would argue that public funding should be only for public schools. Certainly that is a smaller and smaller group as the years go by. In my case, I was the beneficiary of funding that was ultimately provided to schools that fit the category of being low-fee non-government schools. I can understand Senator Hanson-Young's concerns about the high-fee independent school sector, and particularly those that this government has described as overfunded, according to their 80 per cent model. I can understand the concerns around those. But the school funding wars have raged here in Australia for so long until that settlement that we had during the Gonski 1 period. Eventually, a large number of public school advocates came to understand that basic principle: you did not need to rob Peter to pay Paul. That is what this $4.6 billion figure, once it finally surfaced with the assistance of the PBO and Senator Leyonhjelm, explained. The reason why the Labor Party has been highlighting the issues around Catholics schools is that that is where there is the big hit in this bill. That is where the impact is, cleverly hidden by minister Birmingham. That is where the big hit is.

We have said consistently to the government, 'You think the political climate is right now to act in relation to the—to use their expression—overfunded schools. We're up for that.' We are up for that. We tried it out, as the minister knows, under Mark Latham's leadership. We know what the coalition did at that time. The Labor Party learnt that political lesson pretty well.

So, Senator Hanson-Young, no, the Labor Party is not talking out of both sides of its mouth here. The government is, because it was this government who ran the campaign about the schools hit list under Mark Latham's leadership, and now they have a hit list of their own. But they are using that hit list as a shield. The shield that they are using that hit list for is—there are not significant financial gains from their hit list here. The 24 schools that were the original set of schools that were regarded as 'overfunded' did not yield significant budgetary gains. The real budgetary gains here come from the changes that the government has made so far as they impact on low-fee, systemic non-government schools.

Senator Hanson-Young, you know it is not just about Catholics. We have been over that several times. This digression into sectarianism again from the Greens is quite concerning. I know that in Victoria, for instance, the Australian Greens learnt that lesson in the past, when the impact of the Victorian Greens' policy in relation to low-fee non-government schools was highlighted. When that electoral impact was felt, they changed their policy in relation to non-government schools. I do not really understand why the Australian Greens do not seem to have understood that this track did not work for you. It did not work in Victoria, and you changed your policy position in Victoria. I can explain to you why you changed your policy position in Victoria. I can tell you the story from my own local parish and my fellow parishioners who live in my street, who have Australian Greens signs on their front lawns. They are the people who have been inclined to vote for the Greens because of your policies relating to social justice issues, but I do not think they will stomach this sectarianism. I do not think they will stomach that at all.

Senator Hanson-Young, I would have preferred not to go down this path—

The CHAIR: Senator Collins, I remind you to address your comments to the chair and not directly to the Senator.

Certainly. I would have preferred that this debate not go down this path, because I do not think it was very fruitful. In the committee stage consideration, for example, fortunately at the end of the day both senators withdrew allegations around protection rackets and the like, but it is back again in this debate. This debate is almost concluded. I think it would best facilitate the debate if I do not go any further into those issues. Hopefully, following Senator Birmingham, we just simply move on.