Stephen Parry (Tasmania, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The President has received the following letter from Senator Moore:

Pursuant to standing order 75, I give notice that today I propose to move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

Given the pre-election promises made by the Coalition to support the Better Schools Program and its public statements committing to a "unity ticket" on the Better Schools Program, the need for the Government to honour its pre-election promises to avoid the dire consequences for equity, improvement of achievement and opportunity in Australia if the Government does not keep those promises.

Is the proposal supported?

More than the number of senators required by the standing orders having risen in their places—

I understand that informal arrangements have been made to allocate specific times to each of the speakers in today's debate. With the concurrence of the Senate, I shall ask the clerks to set the clock accordingly.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

At the request of Senator Moore, I move:

That, in the opinion of the Senate, the following is a matter of urgency:

Given the pre-election promises made by the Coalition to support the Better Schools Program and its public statements committing to a "unity ticket" on the Better Schools Program, the need for the Government to honour its pre-election promises to avoid the dire consequences for equity, improvement of achievement and opportunity in Australia if the Government does not keep those promises.

The question is that the Senate take note of the actions of the government in regard to schools funding, and I think the Senate should be aware of just how deep the hypocrisy runs within this government concerning school funding. Frankly, it is breathtaking. Today we have seen the third policy announced by this government inside a week. The double backflip we have seen in the last two days is nothing short of extraordinary. The Prime Minister has backtracked, displaying extraordinary levels of duplicity. The deviousness which the government has presented is amazing. In doing so, what the government has done is break yet another election promise, because on 5 September the government said there would be no cuts to health, education or pensions.

What we hear announced today is that the government says it will come up with 'perfectly sensible' savings—'perfectly sensible' is the new code word for a broken promise—of an extra $1.2 billion to fund the school funding commitments that have been made to Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory. We ask the simple question: where are these so-called sensible savings going to come from? They are going to come from the education budget, breaking a promise that the Prime Minister said they would not break.

We know that the coalition's election promise on school funding could not have been clearer. The Minister for Education—the opposition spokesman, as he was at the time—said during the election campaign:

Every single school in Australia will receive, dollar for dollar, the same federal funding over the next four years whether there is a Liberal or Labor Government after September 7.

But today what do we hear from Senator Abetz? That there is 'no need' for schools to be worse off. That is the extent of it.

We know, of course, that the government has changed its position. It has moved away from Labor's Better Schools plan, which would have delivered an extra $9.4 billion. That is the level of commitment the government has to match if it is to maintain its election promise: $9.4 billion over six years. This is funding that is designed to improve the outcomes for students and to ensure that money goes to those students who most need it, because the fact is that in this country the levels of inequality are truly extraordinary. We know that 80 per cent of students from working-class backgrounds go to government schools, that 85 per cent of Indigenous students go to government schools and that 78 per cent of students with a disability go to government schools. But who is it that this government is targeting for its funding redistribution and reprioritisation? Government schools.

What authority do I have for saying that? I have the education minister in New South Wales, a Liberal minister, saying that is the intent of the government's policy position. We have the new minister saying that they want to return to the SES model. I know it is dressed up in so many different ways and under so many different guises, but he essentially says a good starting point is the Howard government policies. He also says that equity is not an issue in schools in this country. That is an incredible proposition to advance given that we have such high levels of inequality in this country. It is incredible that he wants to rely on the completely dysfunctional and discredited funding model that was presented under the Howard government, which saw the wealthiest private schools in this country increase their funding by between 50 and 90 per cent; which saw 1,075 schools maintain their funding despite the fact that their circumstances had fundamentally changed, because that was a commitment made by Mr Howard early in the piece; and which saw 60 per cent of schools in the Catholic education system outside the funding model. It is a funding model which, in the most comprehensive review of schools funding we have seen in the better part of about 40 years, was described as being totally inadequate and totally opaque. It is a funding model that showed that there was considerable duplication across the system.

So what we have is a model that was accepted by conservative governments in Victoria and in New South Wales, supported by Labor governments in South Australia and in Tasmania—a majority of school students covered by the system—but of course rejected by the governments in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland for blatantly political reasons. They were told—and they made these public comments—they would get a better deal under Mr Abbott. The situation in Western Australia is that the Labor government offered $920 million. So what is the better deal that Mr Abbott is offering, given that the total amount that he is suggesting today is $1.2 billion across Queensland, the Northern Territory and Western Australia? How can it possibly be that there is a better deal? Well, there is not. What we find is that the government of Western Australia has been duped as well. Why shouldn't they be? Everyone else in the country has been.

We have a circumstance now where this government totally lacks credibility and authority when it comes to schools funding. In fact, it is outright treachery that they should go to an election trying to neutralise their political position, because they knew that the Labor Party's position was miles ahead and they wanted to ensure that their whole political position in terms of the election was neutralised while they made commitments such as that every single school in Australia would receive, dollar-for-dollar, the same federal funding over the next four years, whether there was a Liberal or a Labor government after 7 September. That is a commitment that has been repudiated and not reinstated by today's announcements. In fact, what we see is the Victorian Premier, for instance, saying, 'We will fight tooth and nail to have the deal delivered in full. We will fight for the agreement that will be implemented and signed with the legitimate government of the day,' namely the Labor government. The Victorian education minister made clear, along with Victorian schools and the schools community: 'We expect the Commonwealth to honour this funding which was agreed on 4 August.' Why should they feel it necessary to say that? Because the Commonwealth government has repudiated those agreements. We see similar statements being made in New South Wales. The Premier of New South Wales feels it necessary to say to the new Prime Minister, 'Start acting as a government. Stop pretending you're still in opposition. Start actually running the country on the basis of the needs of all the people in this country. Stop pretending that you can play these partisan political games with the welfare of students of this country.'

What we know now is this: the Liberal Party attacks school funding as a political issue that has to be neutralised before the election. Of course, their real position is exposed after the election. When the minister puts his foot in it repeatedly, the Prime Minister has to try and sort it out, but in so doing he makes further breaches of promise and provides no way near the commitment that he made before the election. On 3 August he said:

As far as school funding is concerned, Kevin Rudd and I are on a unity ticket.

There is the nonsense that it is just about the money. Of course, it is not just about the money; it is how it is distributed; it is about who gets what, when and why. These are the fundamental principles of politics: who gets what, when and why. This government is saying that the people in government schools ought to get less. This government is saying that the people of Western Australia should get less than they were offered.

According to the Leader of the Government in the Senate today, there is no need for people to be worse off. What a firm commitment. What rock-solid guarantee is there? We know that this government treats everything as a political exercise. There is no commitment to the fundamental principles of equity. There is no commitment to the fundamental principles of ensuring prosperity for all the people of this country. It is about developing the partisan politics that we have seen in the past—the sectarian politics of the past. A government that did no work in opposition is now relying upon the failed and discredited policies of the Howard government. It is a government that has no commitment to the future of Australia but is all about trying to get past the next opinion poll, and on the basis of what? On the basis of some shoddy arrangements it made prior to the election. (Time expired)

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am a man of sympathy, and that performance was just embarrassing for Senator Carr. With his hyperbole, his series of complaints, his confected outrage, Senator Carr is attempting to hide the fact that he has no pull within his own party. I have sat in here and, whilst Senator Carr was industry minister, watched the Labor Party rip hundreds of millions of dollars out of Senator Carr's beloved car plants. We sat here during Senator Carr's months in the wilderness between leadership challenges and we saw hundreds of millions of dollars stripped out of higher education only months after it was promised to be the centre of this great new world order to allegedly fund Labor's so-called Better Schools Plan. Then, in the dying moments of the election campaign, after the last parliament had been dissolved, we saw Labor's true form being exposed by the sunlight of the election. Labor's true form saw $1.2 billion stripped out of education in this country, just as they did to higher education less than six months earlier. Let not their confected outrage hide the fact that the current Leader of the Opposition, Bill Shorten, the member for Maribyrnong, the then minister for education, was party to stripping $1.2 billion out of schools education in this country. He was party, as were senators on that side, to saying to students in Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland, 'You will not be funded on the basis of your need. You will not be funded as we think our more preferred jurisdictions are going to be funded.' The Leader of the Opposition was party to the greatest attempt at a swiftie in education this parliament has seen, and it was only due to the Charter of Budget Honesty that that attempt was exposed to the sunlight of the election campaign. We will not let the Labor Party run away from its past. It is a past of funding cuts to education, even in this calendar year, that have never been undertaken by this parliament before, and they happened on the Labor Party's watch. They happened when the Labor Party was in office with the support of their Green cousins in the other place. So let us not hear their confected outrage, because under the Labor Party there was no national funding model.

The first basis of a fair-funding model is the fact that it is national. The first basis of fairness should be that a student in Victoria or in the Northern Territory, having their needs taken into account, is not treated differently purely by the jurisdiction they live in or by the lines on a map that the centralists opposite so often claim to be concerned about. Yet, under the Labor Party, that is exactly what happened. They ripped $1.2 billion out and they treated students differently. That is not a record that they will be proud of and it is not a record that all the confected outrage and hyperbole is going to hide from the Australian people. What is the truth? The shadow Treasurer and member for McMahon belled the cat last week when he admitted that $1.2 billion had been taken out, a fact that the former Minister for Education did everything he could to avoid admitting publicly in his confected outrage on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. I was impressed by how helpful the member for McMahon was being to the Leader of the Opposition in that case, making sure that he outlined the facts of his short period of administration in that portfolio.

What we saw under the Labor Party and what we see today is a continuation of complete untrustworthiness in office. I noticed in moving to take note of answers today that Senator Carr asked: why did other states not sign up? There was a reason some states did not sign up. It was because they knew they could not trust this mob. If you were in the higher education sector in February, you had budgeted for future years and then come March or April Labor ripped the guts out of funding for higher education programs. If you keep doing the same thing over and over again and keep trusting the Labor Party opposite and they keep breaking their promises, more fool you. So the fact that jurisdictions did not sign up, the fact that jurisdictions knew that the Labor Party was not to be trusted is not to condemn them. It is a condemnation of the Labor Party.

What we know is that only two states and one territory had fully signed up to this program. The shadow Treasurer, the member for McMahon, outlined that as well. The Labor opposition seeks to divert attention from this fact because the other claimed signatories had not signed up to detailed funding agreements. I attended my first ministerial council meeting of Commonwealth, state and territory education ministers with the Minister for Education, Mr Pyne. I would say: do not believe everything you read in the press. What has happened today is that the coalition government has fulfilled and delivered on its promise of ensuring that the funding that was going to be made available for Australian schools, government and non-government, is being delivered to Australian families, students and to the people that administer the schools: the states, the territories and the nongovernment sector through various organisations.

Labor attempts to try and avoid discussion of the $1.2 billion they stripped out by referring to years 5 and 6 of these so-called agreements—they were never committed to by the former opposition. Let me explain why. Since 1974, when I was but the age of one, every funding agreement has been in a four-year cycle. They have always been quadrennial funding agreements, yet because the Labor Party was not willing or could not bring the Gonski package to any meaningful conclusion in years of negotiation—it could not get the states and territories and nongovernment sector to sign up to detailed funding plans—the Labor Party attempted to divert attention from this by promising huge sums of money in the out years.

Again, let us go back to the higher education sector, which has a similar portfolio, similar department—although it was hard to keep up under Labor's changes of minister and Prime Minister. The promises they made a year ago were ripped out of the system in under 12 months. So why on earth would anyone trust the Labor Party to make, for the first time ever, more than a four-year funding agreement? Let us put this in context. They were trying to negotiate funding agreements that were three elections away, if we assume a three-year election cycle. So it was going to be beyond the 2013 election, beyond the 2016 election and the last year was beyond the 2019 election. You cannot trust that mob for one election. Why on earth would you trust them for three?

The coalition always made clear we are going to stand with the historic arrangements for funding, which have been in four-year cycles, to give certainty to schools. The certainty the Prime Minister and the minister have delivered today is the certainty we promised before the election. Nothing those opposite say can be trusted in this space. While they were printing up stickers to distribute to and mislead voters in September, the pre-election economic and fiscal outlook belled the cat and outlined how they actually cut funding to education—money that we have put back today with this announcement. So the only party in this Senate that has cut funding to schools is the Labor Party. It is those opposite and their gall to bring this motion here today and have Senator Carr's confected outrage about our announcement to guarantee that our funding ensures that no school needs to be worse off. Labor will try and play word games in order to avoid accountability for their own poor performance.

Labor has also complained about some other aspects of our agenda. We do want to remove the command-and-control aspects of the Australian Education Act. We do not think that we in this place or bureaucrats in this city, or indeed the regional city centres of the Department of Education, have a place in telling people how to run schools. Labor is trying to hide behind that veil in order to avoid the fact that—we know and Australian families know—it does not like parental control; it does not like local autonomy. It does not trust communities and parents to run their own schools. Senator Carr earlier, when he complained about aspects of the SES formula, betrayed what the real agenda has always been for the Labor Party.

In 1964 the Menzies government started funding science labs. It started guaranteeing parents and families in Australia choice in education for their children. It is a core role of the Commonwealth parliament to guarantee that choice. It is something that those opposite have not been comfortable with. To hear complaints about how much the Catholic school system is getting takes me back to the days of Joan Kirner, takes me back to the days of Gough Whitlam—but that is Labor's agenda. It is about envy. It is about not liking choice. Today the Commonwealth government, Prime Minister Abbott and Minister Pyne, have guaranteed that the money that was promised to Australian students and families is going to be delivered, despite Labor's best attempts to take it off them.

Penny Wright (SA, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support this motion, because the state of school funding in Australia is in a crisis. This is blindingly apparent to voters right across the political spectrum. It is not only a matter now of basic decency—of basic social justice, that in one of the wealthiest nations in the world every single child, no matter where they live, should have the opportunity of having high-quality education, as has been our proud tradition since the century before last—this is also about investing in Australia's future and investing in Australia's human capital, because we cannot afford to squander the human potential that lies within those kids that at the moment are not getting access to a decent education because of their background.

Despite all the talking and even all of the activity by the Minister for Education—and there has been some frenzied activity in the last few weeks—he has not even acknowledged this crisis, let alone committed to the solution to the crisis, which has been so clearly identified by an expert panel, the Gonski review and many commentators across Australia. We need needs-based funding reform to begin to resolve the crisis.

Just last week, again, we had Minister Pyne saying:

I don't believe there is an equity problem in Australia.

Despite all the evidence, despite what the commentators, almost with one voice are saying, he does not believe it. Unfortunately, it is very clear that neither does Prime Minister Abbott. The coalition itself does not believe it. Yet I know there must be members of the coalition government who absolutely know that there is a crisis in the way we are doing business in school funding in Australia today.

I ask myself: what about those politicians? What about those National Party politicians who live in country areas? The evidence is really clear that small schools and remote schools are not getting their fair share; they are not getting the access to high-quality education that kids in other, wealthier, more privileged areas of Australia are getting. How do those politicians talk to their constituents about that? How do they reconcile that inequality?

The Minister for Education, in lurching from position to reworded, nuanced, tweaked and massaged position on this issue, has been selling the furphy that it is not a dollar figure which will fix declining educational performance; it is things like teacher quality. Of course, teachers matter. Of course, teacher quality matters. But that is not to suggest that we do not have a fine workforce in Australia. There may be some changes that can be made in terms of the training, assistance and support that teachers come out with. Many teachers are extremely idealistic and end up leaving the profession far too soon, because they are not supported. They are faced with conditions like casualisation, lack of support and lack of mentoring. So there are certainly some things we can do there.

Of course the curriculum matters, because we need to provide modern Australian kids this century with a rich, diverse curriculum that stimulates thinking and creativity. As any coalition member of parliament knows, of course money matters too, especially in education. It is what pays for teachers. It is what pays for infrastructure. It is what pays for the buildings that the kids sit in when they learn. It is what pays for materials. It is what pays for technology. Education is about human relationships, if it is not about anything else. Human relationships are labour intensive and they are costly. Of course it matters.

When a school cannot afford enough paper for the year and parents are asked to put their hands in their pockets to bail out the school—parents without a lot of disposable income—let alone paying for new textbooks, of course money matters. Money matters when kids huddle under blankets because the school heating system has failed. How can they learn when they are cold? Of course money matters.

Of course money matters when computers stop working, as was the case at a school I visited recently, and for a period of time they are offline; they cannot do the work because they have not got the means to get those computers fixed quickly. When struggling, disadvantaged kids who need the most attention cannot get that because the school cannot afford more teachers or more student support officers, then, before we even have the debate on the quality of the teachers, we know of course that money matters. Let's ask ourselves seriously: if money did not matter, if money is not the answer to these things or part of the answer, why is it that some of the most wealthy schools in Australia are fighting so hard to make sure they will not lose a single dollar under a transformed model?

Let's look at the numbers. Yes, the numbers are there to demonstrate that we have spent more overall on school funding over the last decade. Yes, educational standards have declined, and there is plenty of empirical research to show this. We know that our lowest-performing students in Australia are as many as eight years behind our highest-performing students, and that is absolutely shameful. But in fact it is not a paradox that we have spent more on education and we have less, because it is where we have spent that money and how we have spent that money that matters. We have spent more inequitably and we have, therefore, not surprisingly, ended up with more inequitable outcomes.

Australia is the third-lowest funder of public education in the OECD. The figures also show that under the Gonski reforms predecessor—including the infamous SES funding model, to which Minister Pyne harks back with some nostalgia; even last week he refused to rule out that we would return to that system—wealthy private schools in Australia received millions and millions more dollars in funding each year. The most affluent private schools have received the biggest boost in funding in the 10 years the Howard government administered the SES model.

The Department of Education in New South Wales figures show that funding for the wealthiest private primary schools in New South Wales—already wealthy—grew by more than 80 per cent between 2000 and 2010, and funding for elite private high schools rose by 50 per cent. By contrast, funding for the most disadvantaged high schools that are struggling to educate the most disadvantaged kids in Australia rose by a measly 12 per cent and for primary schools by only 25 per cent.

The reforms set out in the Australian Education Act, while far from being a perfect implementation of the Gonski review—and we discussed that a lot before we ended up agreeing to pass the bill—went a long way towards establishing a sustainable, needs based funding model which would correct the years of inequity and get us back on the path to universal high-quality education. Minister Pyne, in his role as shadow education minister in the election campaign, committed to maintaining the reformed school funding model from 1 January 2014 for four years with the same funding envelope. It was pretty unequivocal, and the Australian public understood that that is what he was signing up to. Now he is the minister he has flagged walking away from this commitment to needs based funding. He has never acknowledged there is an equity problem in Australia's education system. Failing to provide funding for the schools that most need it, where the most disadvantaged kids are, is walking away from that needs based model.

It is not just that the minister needs to uphold his pre-election commitment to needs-based funding; he must also commit to overall dollar figures for school funding.    He also needs to sign up and care about this issue. He needs to acknowledge the evidence that so many other people in Australia have acknowledged for so long—that there is a genuine inequality in our schooling system and it is not serving our nation well. It compounds disadvantage, it squanders human potential and it has the capacity to create greater gulfs, differences and social dislocation in our country. It is a cost to society in terms of lost productivity alone, which is too great to pay.

The Australian Greens are calling on the government to match what the previous government committed to, because we have to ensure that we invest in our students and all students in Australia so that no child's performance at school is dependent on wealth, power, income or possessions. We have to have a system in Australia so that every single kid can achieve their potential no matter where they live and whatever their background.

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to contribute to this urgency debate. The motion that we have before us is to call on the government to ensure that it avoids the dire consequences for equity, improvement, achievement and opportunity in Australia of not keeping its promise to support the Better Schools program.

We have all witnessed today what was an extraordinary backflip by the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education. However, we know what this really was: this was a political stunt that has come about as a result of the extraordinary backlash in response to Minister Pyne's announcement last week. The anger and distress of education ministers last week after that conference was palpable, and it did not take very long for parent groups, educators and Australians generally to go to the issue—that is, that this minister has never, ever, ever been committed to the reforms that were proposed by the Gonski review, led by someone who had a genuine interest in improving our education system. It was supported by the hundreds of people who made submissions, trying to improve our education system by bringing it into the 21st century and focusing on the learning needs of our students rather than the funding and infrastructure needs of government and the commitments of government.

When we think about the issues in those terms, what more could Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott have done but to come out today before question time and scrambled the egg once again, do another backflip, saying: 'Yes, we've now agreed. We've signed up. It's all going to be fine'? The devil is always in the detail, isn't it? In the statement the Prime Minister said they had identified $1.2 billion in cuts, which will fund this agreement that they have now entered into with the states and territories that had not signed up, which will be reviewed sometime in the future

We heard in question time that there will be no strings attached, so what we did not hear was that there was going to be a commitment from our state and territory governments not to withdraw funding. We have seen that that has already happened, and so these three states and territories that have now signed up are going to have carte blanche to continue their own cuts in their state education budgets. That is hardly a support of the status quo.

We have no idea of the details. When is an agreement an agreement? Mr Pyne last Friday said that those states and territories that did not have a signed intergovernmental agreement did not have an agreement, but today we have an agreement in principle by those three authorities cobbled together and stitched up just in time for question time. So what is the actual content of that agreement? What are the in-principle facts? What is the no-disadvantage test that was alluded to in that statement? We are yet to see what that is all about.

I was quite taken with Senator Wright's contribution, because she really got to the nub of the issue of the problem that we have had with the SES funding model which Minister Pyne on Friday was quite wedded to—he has perhaps been a product of that system more generally and is most familiar with it—but it is not the view of his colleagues. Particularly, I want to congratulate the Minister for Education in New South Wales, Adrian Piccoli, who really got to the nub of the issue when he said: 'We've got to invest in our children's education. We've got to invest in our education system. We've got to invest in bringing on new teachers. We have a retirement age cohort of teachers. We're going to be left with a significant gap, and the Gonski reforms, which were systemic reforms, are the ones that are going to deliver the issue.' I think we all want a guarantee that, regardless of this dodgy deal that was announced before question time, there will be equity, access and affordability in our education system in the future.

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the urgency motion before us. It is hard to stand here listening to the rhetoric of those opposite as they outline the need to stick to promises of needs based funding models, of funding models with integrity, of ensuring that signatures are on the bottom line of any contracts—applying the Catherine King model, if you like, of contractual arrangements that was so commonplace in the past government's approach to their dealings with states and local governments: promises made, funding promised but not allocated, signatures not attained, and then we are in the mess that we were left with.

I am a great believer in the strength of education and, indeed, public education as a birthright for every single Australian. The coalition recognises the need to reform the education system. We have 10,000 schools and millions of students—over a million located outside of capital cities, I might say, and 660,000 of those are in state schools—so getting it right is important to those of us who are interested in the future. But there is one key factor in this debate that we do need to consider, and I would just like to quote Ken Boston, who was a member of the Gonski review panel. He said:

Public expenditure on education has never been higher. It has been wasted because it has not been distributed strategically according to need and has not been spent on the things that really matter.

I think we could go through a litany of funding proposals in education by the former government which show the unstrategic allocation of funds in terms of educational outcomes—maybe in political outcomes it was very strategic to allocate their school funding where they chose to. But the reality is that there is one bucket of money and we need to make sure it is spent in a way that has educational outcomes. I think we are committed to doing that.

One of the issues that the opposition fails to recognise time and time again—and the Greens completely reject the notion that we live in a federation—is that the states are responsible for education funding. It is not the Commonwealth's role to ensure that state governments, no matter which colour they are, remain unaccountable for how their state school systems are functioning. When we looked at the critique from the states when we were doing the Senate inquiry into the Australian Education Bill, there was a significant amount of concern from states around the lack of autonomy that they would experience under the model as it was proposed. That is something that, in government, we on this side understand. We understand that we live in a federation and that we need to work collaboratively with our state governments, no matter who they are, to ensure that every child in our nation receives an education which is their birthright.

I just want to attack one of the assumptions that have so often been made in this debate and that really gets to the heart of the matter, and that is that more money equals better education. That is simply not the case. The Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee headed to China last year to look at a range of success measures that the Chinese education system has had internationally and to work out what was done. I can tell you: the student resource standard that they were getting per student in Chengdu, Shanghai or Beijing was a lot lower per student than our students get—

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We want Chinese standards now? I am pleased to hear it!

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, Senator Carr. More money does not equal better educational outcomes, and we know that.

Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Tell them about Geelong Grammar!

Ursula Stephens (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, Senator Carr!

Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am so glad you have re-entered the chamber, Senator Carr, so I just want to reiterate this about the argument you are making. Why wouldn't Premier Barnett sign up when you were offering $920 million more than the government is? The reality is that it was because he was not prepared to trade away his state's sovereignty. He was not prepared to accept the fact that—

Senator Kim Carr interjecting—

the former government, despite offering more money, was not actually going to deliver better educational outcomes to WA's students. Additionally, one of the issues that created the whole malaise that we find ourselves in is that strategic appropriation of money towards educational funding occurred when promises were made that the system would be reformed—even though the chair, David Gonski, was walking away from the mess that that model became under the politicisation of the former government, racing towards an election that they were never going to win—and that nobody would lose. No state would lose, no school would lose and no student would lose—and it was absolute fallacy. If you are going to construct a model based on need, then those with the greater need should get the greater money—hence, somebody has to lose. By making that promise, we set up a public discourse in which we saw state pitted against state, school system pitted against school system and student pitted against student. One thing that has come out of this debate is that we do absolutely need greater transparency in understanding what went wrong, what was actually agreed to and where we need to go from here. I think Dr Ben Jensen articulates that beautifully in some comments around how we can ensure that the funding model we come up with is one that actually delivers on what we all want.

In terms of the coalition's promises, we do want a system where we will put more money—$230 million—back in for states in 2014. I have been fascinated by the public debate on this. I was listening to, I think, Radio National a couple of days ago and there were principals talking on, I think, the Breakfast show, complaining about the uncertainty of funding for 2015 and what a travesty this was going to be. I have sat in Senate inquiries about this, when principal after principal, from sector after sector, had to start employing their new teachers within 2½ terms and had no idea what their funding envelope was going to be. This was under the previous government. And here we are, over 18 months away from a similar point, and principals are out complaining, concerned about the uncertainty under the government's proposal, when there was no such noise from the AEU and from principals associations under the previous iteration.

We want a needs based model, we want it to be truly national and we want it to be fair. As a National Party senator, I understand that geography does matter. Lines on a map, Senator Carr, do matter, and under your government our youth suffered too much— (Time expired)

Sue Lines (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to support Senator Moore's urgency motion relating to the Better Schools program. I want to start by putting some facts into the Hansard and making some opening statements. If you have listened to the government today and over the last week, as I have, you will know there have been an incredible number of backflips. There really have. This government is completely out of control, and Minister Pyne, the Minister for Education, has shown himself to be completely unfit for the job before him. He has no idea what he is doing.

It is as if Gonski has gone and has been forgotten. According to the government, it is as if Gonski never, ever existed, because now the government is saying it has to go out and develop a fair and equitable model, when that is what Gonski did. Let us just remind ourselves for a few minutes of what Gonski actually did. Gonski undertook the most comprehensive review of education that our country has seen over the last 40 years, and the review was based on ensuring real equity of opportunity for all our children. That was at the core of the review. It received overwhelming support from principals, teachers and parents. If you listened to the government today, you would think that somehow Labor is on its own in this debate. Labor is not on its own. It has the support, overwhelmingly, of Australian parents, of Australian teachers, of Australian principals. It has support in the Catholic and the independent sectors and it has support in the public schools sector. So let us not kid ourselves that the Labor opposition is some kind of ogre. We are on the side of right here and we are with the majority of Australians in supporting a fair and equitable public and private school system in this country, one that we currently do not have.

Gonski found that we were investing far too little in our schools—I am sorry, Government; money does matter—that too many students are missing out and that the current system is not efficient. I think we agree on that. It is certainly not fair and it is not effective. Why isn't it effective? Gonski confirmed for us that there are growing gaps in student achievement, that Australia's overall performance has fallen in the last 10 years, that postcodes—yes, lines on maps do matter—are defining economic outcomes and that students in disadvantaged areas are up to three years behind students who live in wealthy areas. One in seven 15-year-old students does not have basic reading skills. Yet we hear from Minister Pyne that somehow, between now and the next school year, they have to go out and, in secret, over a couple of months, develop a new funding system—when we have got a comprehensive, well-supported review. It is called Gonski and it has certainly not gone. It has not gone from Labor senators and members of parliament, it has not gone from school principals and it has not gone from teachers and parents. It still has overwhelming support.

Under Labor's reforms following the Gonski expert panel's review, we agreed that we needed $14.65 billion in our schools over six years, with a Commonwealth contribution of $9.4 billion. Let us be clear about what Labor's model would do. We have heard a lot today about Western Australia—and I would like to correct the ACT senator; it is a shame he is not in the chamber—but as a Western Australian senator I can tell you what is going on in Western Australia. Labor's model would put an end to education budget cuts by requiring states to grow their funding alongside that of the Commonwealth, not allowing—as we have seen in Western Australia—disgraceful cuts to education but actually requiring and demanding that states grow their budgets. That is the reason Colin Barnett did not want to sign up to Gonski: nudge, nudge, wink, wink; he took a bet; he thought maybe his mates Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne would get into government and meanwhile he could slash and burn the education budget in Western Australia, which he has done, and then, regardless of any inaction of his he would get the money anyway. That is exactly what is happening. The Abbott and Pyne government is intending to reward bad behaviour. You are rewarding a Western Australia Premier who has ripped significant funds out of schools.

Before we got to where we are now, there was so much public pressure on the coalition—not just from Labor but from parents, school principals and teachers across the nation—that Mr Pyne and Mr Abbott were at pains to assure the voting public that we had a unity ticket. I bet Tony Abbott now rues the day that those words came out of his mouth, but that is what he said at a press conference on 4 August:

… an absolute unity ticket when it comes to school funding.

On 2 August—he was getting a bit desperate by then—he had said:

There is no difference between Kevin Rudd and myself when it comes to school funding.

Christopher Pyne said on 29 August:

You will get exactly the same amount of funding for your school whether you vote Liberal or Labor.

What a dishonest statement that was. Unfortunately Australian voters, who want to trust their politicians, took Mr Pyne on faith. Mr Abbott at a press conference on 2 August guaranteed that no school would be worse off. But there must have been some small print there somewhere because Colin Barnett, the Premier of Western Australia, is on the public record as saying, 'Actually in WA some schools will be worse off.' So perhaps the caveat around that was that in terms of federal government funding Mr Abbott meant no school would be worse off, because we have got Mr Abbott being directly contradicted by the Premier in Western Australia, who said that some schools will be worse off.

So where do we get to? We have now seen three different models over the last week, as Senator Carr pointed out to us. Despite the Gonski panel finding that the old school funding model, the Howard model, was broken, that it was inefficient and an unfair model, that money was flowing to schools that were well resourced but not to students with high needs, just last week Minister Pyne announced—I did not need to read this quote or to have it researched because I heard it myself—that the government would scrap the Gonski model from 2015 and replace it with a new system that was similar to the one we have got now. Mr Pyne just last week did not see too much wrong with that model. I think someone had a word in his ear since then, but last week I heard him say that there is nothing much wrong with the current model. Mr Pyne went on to say that Labor's model, supported overwhelmingly by parents, by public and private schools, by the Catholic system, by principals, was somehow unworkable. So just last week Mr Pyne was liking this model but when Julie Bishop was education minister that model was criticised.

Perhaps the biggest criticism of this government comes from one of their own. I was at a meeting earlier this year with Adrian Piccoli where he proudly said to an audience of parents and students and others interested in public education, 'I've got three words to say: I got Gonski.' That is what he said in the Town Hall in Sydney in about March of this year. I heard him too decry this government as acting immorally. So carp at us all you like, but the critics of the government on what it is doing to the school system are not just Labor, it is the community, it is your own people, it is the education minister in New South Wales, Adrian Piccoli, who was proud to sign up to Gonski, who knew it would deliver well. He is your biggest critic.

Anne Ruston (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I too rise to speak on the urgency motion before us. Firstly, can I say how extraordinarily astounded I am that we are even debating such a motion. I am absolutely astounded that we are even having this discussion having listened to the debate that we have had in the house today, the debate that has been around over the last week in relation to this matter. During question time today I probably heard the Minister representing the Minister for Education, Senator Payne, and the Minister representing the Prime Minister, Senator Abetz, say on many, many occasions that the funding was not going to be cut for any schools in any state or territory of Australia. So can I repeat the words of the Prime Minister a minute ago when he said, 'We are committed to a fairer funding model which will ensure no school will be worse off because of anything that the Commonwealth does.' I am not quite sure what we are actually debating here today if we are ensuring that every school, every state and every territory will not be worse off by the actions of the Commonwealth. I may be wrong here, but it seems to me that we are debating the semantics of the details of nomenclature instead of actually debating the issues of education.

What I think would be a really terrific outcome here would be if we took this time now and started to address the real issue that is before us, and that is the delivery of good education in Australia. I really believe there is a tremendously good outcome for education when we do have a country that, despite all the problems we have seen in our education system over the years, has a reasonably good education system, but nobody is even remotely suggesting that we cannot do a better job of it. What we have seen today announced I think is one of the most important steps towards that better education system, and that is that we have a national agreement. Let us not hide behind the fact that we came into this parliament with an agreement in relation to education that excluded three significant jurisdictions. Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory had not signed up to the national funding model, so it really does make a bit of a farce of calling something a national funding agreement when you have got three significant jurisdictions which have not agreed to it. Firstly, we have to acknowledge that we now have, albeit only in principle, agreement from the other three jurisdictions so that we actually have a national funding agreement.

That leads on to the obvious issue that has been of great debate over recent days, and that is the funding. We noticed in the chamber today that there was some suggestion that we had not increased the amount of money that is being applied to this model. But we have to realise that prior to the election $1.2 billion had been allocated to the jurisdictions that were excluded from the agreement that had been achieved by the previous government and that $1.2 billion had been taken out of the budget. By reinstating that $1.2 billion, by getting the three jurisdictions to commit to this national agreement, I think we have to acknowledge that there has been a significant and substantial progression and benefit to the development of a national education program for better schools in our country. I think the substantial change with this new national agreement is not just the equity but, more importantly, that while the financial arrangements are going to remain largely the same, albeit with the addition of these extra jurisdictions, the control is proposed to be removed.

I am a great believer that we have a system of federation in this country, and we have to recognise the fact that we actually elect our state governments to do a job. I think we have to stop taking away from state governments and thinking that we here in Canberra know best about everything—we don't. If you have a look at the model that was previously proposed, it was basically setting up a command and control style operation in relation to education. It was going to give the federal education minister the ability to direct the states and territories as to how they fund or operate their schools. That is just completely and utterly against everything that we believe in, in the sense of people out there on the ground. The teachers in the schools, the principals in the schools, the parents of the children are all in far better positions to understand the nuances and the details of the things that are most important to their particular schools, their particular communities. For us to think that we know better sitting here in Canberra is an arrogance that we can well do without.

Labor's model was going to create a new bureaucracy that was going to collect even more data from schools, from states and from territories, so we would have ended up with a situation where we spent more of our time collecting data than we would actually worrying about what the children need and the teaching of our children. It also required that federal school inspectors could enter schools and examine all the schools' records and monitor improvements against federal criteria. Where did Big Brother come into this whole exercise? He seems to have been alive and well.

In closing, what we are seeing here, with the changes that are being proposed by the coalition, is nothing more than a recognition that education is a very, very important issue. It is something that we place a huge amount of importance on; however, we do not believe that the people who sit here in Canberra are in a better position to dictate what happens. We believe it is appropriate that the state jurisdictions have the ability to deal at a grassroots level with the issues that affect individual schools and individual states. The idea of just adding money is certainly not the answer. I believe that the previous government failed to get a national agreement, and we have achieved that in less than three months. We have kept our promise to maintain school funding to this program. In fact, if you put back in the $1.2 billion that was slashed from the budget prior to the election, you could actually say that we have increased the amount of funding that is available for these programs for the states that had not signed up. We continue to recognise the important role that the states and individual schools should play in the management of their schools.

Question agreed to.