Penny Allman-Payne (Queensland, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the National Vocational Education and Training Regulator Amendment (Strengthening Quality and Integrity in Vocational Education and Training No. 1) Bill 2024. This bill aims to strengthen quality and integrity in the VET sector. As my colleague Senator Faruqi has set out strongly, the Greens stand here today as a proud party of fully funded public education. Public education is a bedrock of a strong democracy, and students, no matter which stage of education they are in, deserve to have access to high-quality, fee-free education. Teachers from across the sector should expect well-paid, secure jobs.

After years of failed regulation, this bill is a welcome first step to try and deter dodgy providers in the sector. But although it is welcome, the rot in our education system extends far beyond what this bill sets out to remedy. As Senator Faruqi has said, the government must prioritise a truly free, quality education sector. This is particularly important after seeing years of cuts to the TAFE system.

TAFE serves a critical role in the education system. TAFE and VET are essential for providing an excellent pathway for young people who know that what will work for them is a trade. It respects and acknowledges that the pathway for every person is different. What works for some won't work for others. It's about trusting young people to make the right decision for themselves. Everyone in Australia should have the opportunity to access the skills and knowledge training that they need to succeed. Free education is transformative. But instead of treating education as such, it's been turned into a warped moneymaker for companies and corporations. What we really need to be addressing is the cash cow that swells around our education system while classrooms—including those in TAFE—schools, teachers and students miss out.

There are many who view public education as big business. In 2016, McKinsey & Company called public education a cash cow. In reality, we have an education industrial complex that sucks money from public schools and the TAFE sector for private interests. We must not allow public education to be bought and sold by these private companies, consultants and some philanthropists who swirl around the system. Instead of focusing on investment in public education for the sake of education, we have seen the rot of neoliberalism embed itself into the institutions. Public schools and TAFEs remain underfunded while the government pours money into the operators who tie themselves to the system. We have entities who make money off the lesson plans, off the training programs, off the testing equipment and off the test administration. At every step of the process, money is pulled from the hands of students, teachers, schools and TAFEs and given over to private operators.

We have government entities being driven by the interests of random philanthropists rather than academics. When people with money can simply buy the direction of education in this country, it begs the question of what the endpoint of this process is going to be. Are we headed towards a wholly hollowed-out education system given over to whichever Joe Blow billionaire decides they have a bone to pick with the way maths or English or a trade is being taught? Education must not be linked to profit-making ventures or product placement for whatever lesson plan someone is trying to hawk. It's time for a serious national conversation about the interest backed companies, philanthropists and not-for-profits that are benefiting from the underfunding of public schools and TAFEs. As public schools and TAFEs remain woefully underfunded, it's students, teachers and those institutions that are bearing the brunt. Schooling and TAFE education—education—is a public good. With the cost of education continuing to rise, it is critical for this bleed to stop.

This debate doesn't even touch the sides of the exodus of kids from the public system to the private schooling and training sector. Only 1.3 per cent of public schools in Australia receive their bare minimum of funding. Meanwhile, 98 per cent of private schools are overfunded by government, and they continue to charge ever-growing private fees, compounding the inequity. Under Labor and the coalition, elite private schools have for decades been subsidised with billions of dollars of government largesse, while the public system, which is responsible for educating more than 80 per cent of our most disadvantaged kids, has languished. Labor's own review into this school system called out this shocking disparity.

Australian parents have sent a clear message to Labor to end school funding inequality, with survey data showing that 70 per cent believe government funding should be stripped from private schools while the public system remains underfunded. Three in five parents, including 48 per cent of private-school parents, believe the Australian school system is designed to benefit wealthier families. And 69 per cent of parents believe that private schools have too much money. It might be worth telling that to some of the overpaid private-school headmasters who seem to display what could only be called a grossly inflated sense of entitlement and self-importance. When you have a private school sucking $82 billion of taxpayer money to prop up their archaic institution, it's worth asking: who is really playing the victim?

All of this is taking place after we have seen a decade of decay and rot set into the public school system as well as TAFE. We have seen a decade of decay and rot set into our public schools. We have seen story after story of what this rot has done to education. Buildings are falling apart and are riddled with mould. In both TAFE and our schools, teachers are working incredibly long days and digging into their own pockets to pay for basics. There are unprecedented levels of workload intensification and stress. And, in relation to schools, first-year teachers are questioning their career choice.

On Saturday I spoke to a teacher on prepoll in the Brisbane City Council elections, and she told me that she has a first-year team-teaching with her. We're only in March and already that young teacher has said to her that they don't actually think they're going to see out the year. This is being repeated in classroom after classroom after classroom across the country. Highly experienced teachers are also retiring early or transitioning to other careers. I spoke to a union organiser last week, who said that every principal in the Central Queensland region over the age of 50 has an exit plan and that plan does not include retiring as a principal. Kids are prevented from attending field trips and excursions because neither parents nor the schools can afford to send them. We heard that loud and clear in our cost-of-living hearing into education.

We are at a critical juncture. Do we continue down this pathway, continuing to watch our public schools and our TAFEs limp along, with millions of young people left behind? Public education is the bedrock of a healthy and vibrant democracy. Quality education is a launching pad for so many terrific and wonderful things. It opens doors, it envelopes kids and young people in a community and it allows them to experiment with their interests. For this reason, every single young person in this wealthy country should be afforded access to a free and high-quality education, be that in early childhood, school, TAFE or university. Yet time and time again we've seen Labor and the coalition fail to show up for our young people.

Parents and carers don't have a choice anymore. Either they have to accept that their public school is underfunded and pay between $1,500 and $2,000 to make up the shortfall themselves—in the case of TAFE, we still have young people who have to pay fees—or, in relation to schools, they have to fork out of their pockets to attend private schools or private providers that are fully resourced. In the school sector, we're talking about fees which have gone up by 50 to 80 per cent—so much for funding private schools to make the choice cheaper! Another parent at the inquiry said, 'Why do I have to budget for my kid to be in a public school?' We are in a cost-of-living crisis, and parents need our help. In relation to schools, we can't wait until 2025 and we most certainly can't wait until 2028 and 2029. Our public schools are in crisis. Teachers are leaving in droves. It's time to fully fund our public schools and do it now. Ninety-eight per cent of public schools in the country are underfunded. They have waited over a decade since Gonski. Asking them to wait until 2029 is asking them to wait half that time again. There will be no public school teachers left by then.

Every year, public school kids are robbed of $6.6 billion. That means that schools don't have the money to pay for the bare minimum level of staffing and educational resources that they need. Under existing funding arrangements, the federal government meets its 20 per cent commitment, but most states and territories are not paying their 80 per cent share. On current trajectory they still never will, including in WA and the NT, while we keep those accounting tricks in those agreements. We have an absurd situation where the federal government, with vastly more revenue than the states and territories, is chiefly responsible for subsidising the sector that is overfunded.

Labor is in power federally and in every mainland state and territory. This is an historically rare opportunity to end a decade of broken pledges and false dawns and deliver on the promise of Gonski once and for all. The Labor government know that they must act on the funding of public schools or join the long list of failed school reformers who came before them. We need to fund our public schools and our TAFEs. In the case of our schools, we can't wait until 2029 for agreements to roll out. We need that money now, at the start of the next National School Reform Agreement—not phased in but now. And you must get rid of the four per cent loophole that is allowing states to continue to underfund their schools by millions of dollars by writing off things like capital depreciation and buses that have absolutely nothing to do with what goes on in a classroom.

I know that the government is sick of hearing me bang on about this, but I was one of those teachers who has been waiting for over a decade to see things change. If you don't fully understand the level of crisis that our schools are in, I strongly encourage you to go out there and talk to those teachers and talk to those parents. I'm not sure that, if we have to wait five years for the full funding to roll out, we will have public schools left to fund.