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

Federal and state governments are due to negotiate a new funding agreement for our schools, and it's a critical time in those negotiations. It comes at a time when private schools are receiving more and more funding which they increasingly do not need, while the public sector is being run into the ground. Because of sweetheart deals struck by previous governments, both Labor and Liberal, private schools increasingly have the cash to outcompete the public sector, and that is the core of the problem. Governments have allowed our education system to crumble to the point that public schools are in danger of being a poorly funded social safety net, while private education becomes the default option.

It is no exaggeration to say that public education as we know it may cease to exist unless radical funding reallocations are made. Minister Clare knows this, and he has said that the educational divide between rich and poor, city and country, 'ricochets through generations'. But his words are not being met by action. The government continues the longstanding bipartisan policy of privatisation. As Gonski panel member Ken Boston says, the Gonski reforms have been 'politicised, bastardised and cherrypicked'.

No other country in the developed world pumps as much money into private schooling as Australia does. We are an outlier. With every stitched-up budget, with every hamstrung bilateral agreement, with every extra cent for private schools, our kids' futures get darker and the inequality gap gets wider. This is the last chance for public schooling in Australia. If we don't start pumping money into the public sector and taking it away from the overfunded private sector, we are giving up on equity in Australian education.