Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2014. I like the member for Canberra and I think she is a good person, but can we all, please, stop talking about Gonski as though the Labor Party implemented what Gonski said. Labor implemented what they thought they could get away with. They did not implement Gonski—Gonski cost way more money than that—that was just their version. It is like the NDIS. They do not deliver what is recommended. The education funding that we agreed to was not Gonski; it was what Labor took to the last election. They can backhand it as much as they want and I will come back to those points later.

The Australian Education Act 2013 is the principal legislation by which the Australian government provides financial assistance to approved authorities for government and non-government schools. This bill amends the Australian Education Act 2013 to allow payment of additional funds in 2014 to schools with large numbers of Indigenous boarding students from remote areas. The Indigenous Boarding Initiative was announced as part of the 2014-15 budget and it provides approximately $6.8 million of additional funding to eligible schools. This bill will prevent funding cuts that would have occurred on 1 January 2015 to students with disabilities and other students in some independent schools and special assistance schools. These changes will result in an additional $2.4 million being paid to these schools in this financial year.

The bill also addresses other errors and omissions that occurred during the preparation of the act. One of those amendments will ensure the correct calculation of Commonwealth funding entitlements for all Australian schools. I will detail some of these later on in the speech.

The amendments put in place by the previous government mean that some independent schools and special assistance schools will have their funding reduced from 1 January 2015. This cannot be a good thing. We must provide certainty for these schools, their students and the families who send their children away to get a first-class education. The Australian government funding for schools is provided to state and territory governments, and the funds are then distributed to the schools in line with the act.

In 2014, around $14 billion will be paid to government and non-government schools. The bill's regulations will contain the type of information that the minister must have regard to in exercising the new terms of eligibility and calculation of the funding, and be subject to review and disallowance by the parliament. We must enable payment of the Australian government's Indigenous Boarding Initiative. The initiative will provide interim support for non-government schools with more than 50 Indigenous boarding students from remote or very remote areas or where 50 per cent or more of their boarding students are Indigenous and from remote or very remote areas. This additional funding will assist non-government boarding schools to provide students with high-quality education for Indigenous students. This bill will also ensure that certain schools or special assistance schools will not have their funding reduced in 2015.

The current safety net that is in place will disappear and that would mean that funding for these schools would be immediately reduced from 1 January 2015. This is because the current work with the states and territories to develop national data has not been completed. This amending legislation will not only protect funding for these schools but also ensure that these schools transition to the schooling resource standard in a manner consistent with other schools until the revised student-with-disability loadings are available.

There are many people across the sector, from state and territory governments to the non-government school sector, who believe that the Commonwealth has overreached its role into the daily running of schools. If we are to have a quality outcome, all stakeholders must be on the same page—as much as we can all be on the same page when it comes to education between state and territory and federal governments. We will continue to consult so that we can provide certainty for schools. We need a proper command-and-control requirement structure under the act so that any changes are handled well.

The amending legislation will also allow the minister to take action, if required, under this act where a school has failed to comply with requirements under the former Schools Assistance Act 2008. This will provide greater flexibility by allowing the noncompliance to be managed by delaying future payments as opposed to requiring a debt to be raised under the former legislation. If this is to work properly we need to be expeditious on all sides to get the best possible outcome. We are not talking about a building infringement here; we are talking about the lives of students.

This bill also corrects errors in the formula that is used to determine funding entitlements by the Schooling Resource Standard. This will mean that the Commonwealth will pay only its share of the funding entitlement, whereas previously the federal government could pay the entire Commonwealth and state share of the entitlements.

On 26 February 2014 in this place I made my contribution in response to the Prime Minister's statement on Closing the Gap. I said:

There is a belief in my community that there is enough money in the system for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health, that there is enough money in the system to house them and that there is enough money for the education of their children but it is just that it does not get through to the people who need it the most.

I stand by those words. If this country is going to move from a hand-out to a hand-up then it must start early, at a time when our Indigenous population is at school. The Prime Minister stated that education is the key. In his speech he said, 'We need full participation in education in modern Australia.' There would never have been a truer word spoken in this place.

I want to also add a little bit about Minister Pyne's direct instruction funding, as I do feel that it fits with this bill like a hand into a glove. The $40 million he announced in Townsville for remote education is a great start. What he has recognised is that people learn differently. People from remote areas start their formal learning experiences at different ages, meaning that, problematically, you can have multiple problems in achieving the square peg in the square hole objective of our primary schools and that is a serious challenge. Direct instruction does not recognise the age of the student nor the grade in which they are supposed to be. It only looks at how we can get the student to learn at their level and improve. We need to get that straight from the start.

At present, we seem to entice children of all ethnicities to school with the prospect of an engaged learning experience. We promise sport, music, art and drama. But when we get them there, even in prep, we tie them to a desk and suck the life out of them. Music and art are fantastic ways to engage students and get them to understand learning. Indigenous students born in remote Australia stagger their entry into our schools system. We have to understand that they do not do things the same way that we, non-Indigenous, city based Australians, do, and have different expectations and experiences. That is why we need to understand that it takes more money to get many of our Indigenous students to a level where they can understand the need for education and the joy of learning. I do not speak down to anyone, but there is a gap in education and that leads to poorer life outcomes. If we are truly to close the gap, we just have to get this right.

When I was first a candidate in 2010, I struggled with what was more important—health or education. It quickly dawned on me that, when dealing with disadvantage and poverty, education is the key to better opportunities, better options, better life choices, better diet, better health and more self-respect. I truly believe that there are a large number of Aboriginal and Islander young people out there yearning for this. The message must be delivered by them. It is pointless for someone like me going out to tell them that their diet is wrong. It must be delivered by the men and women who have made their choices and stuck to the path.

I often speak about Matthew Bowen, the mercurial fullback for the North Queensland Cowboys. His is from Hope Vale in the north of our state. His parents knew that if they wanted an outcome for him he had to go to school. He is what we need to show kids what is possible no matter where you live. He boarded at Abergowrie College outside Ingham. He joined the Cowboys, and on his first away trip he was handed a beer after his debut. He took a swallow and he said, 'I do not know how you drink that stuff.' His life choices centred on his wellbeing. He had a family which reinforced those values. My wife is a preschool teacher and I often speak to her about the benefits of using Matthew Bowen as the role model for Indigenous children. My wife says the real role model is Matthew's mum. While Matthew could go out and play with the kids and tell them about his journey and what it is like playing for the Cowboys, Queensland and Australia, and what he had to eat, his discipline and what he had to do, his mum should be sitting down and speaking to all of the other mums about how she did it for Matthew, because that is the real role model.

Similarly, with education we have to understand that we cannot fix everything by just funding boarding schools—or having a footballer tell kids about how they did it. We have to be engaged with not only the successful people who come through the system but also their network who gave them the opportunity, who set their values and instilled their work ethic. Those people, many of whom would not have had the opportunity to get a great educational opportunity afforded their children, are the major part of the puzzle that we need to harness. For me and my family, education is a natural right. My three children have been bought up in a house which values educational opportunity. Not only that, we fully understand and we expect that it is our right to demand such a thing. We have to make that a right—an expectation—for all Australians.

The coalition is committed to supporting the delivery of quality education and quality schooling, and providing funding and regulatory certainty for all Australian schools. I am certain every person in this place wants exactly that. Minister Pyne said:

This Government is committed to making sure every Australian child has the opportunity to reach their potential through a great education, that’s why we’re investing a record $64.5 billion in schools over the next four years.

He also recognised that people learn differently, and he is funding those programs. This government is also committed to ensuring that the country's Indigenous students living in remote locations across this country get the support they need to face the challenges of obtaining a quality education. Every dollar we put into improving Indigenous education is a dollar well spent and will be returned to our economy in the long term if it is used correctly. I will warn, however, that investment in funds must be matched with investment in activity and investment in the drive for better outcomes. That is what this government wants. It is pointless to brag about the quantum of funding if we do not drive the outcomes of the students with as much passion. The key to this is that this place, and everyone in it, wants better outcomes for every student. We must drive the results, as the Prime Minister says, by demanding full participation in education in modern Australia. We must be driving the outcomes just as hard as we are driving participation. To do that, we have to get our starting point—our foundations—right. Nothing is more important than that, and that must be the motivation for all in the sector.

While I have time, I want to address some of the things that some speakers opposite have been talking about. They have been saying that they had funded the Gonski model past the forward estimates. There is a big difference between making an announcement and paying for it. Anyone can make an announcement, but it is the funding of it that you have to deliver. That is the key. Anyone can make an announcement. We could just stand there and say, 'Sixty-eight billion dollars,' or, 'Another hundred thousand trillion dollars.' But if you do not back it up with how you are actually going to fund it, then it is not worth the paper it is written on. The last government was just so terrible at following through with this. What they delivered was not Gonski; what they delivered was not the NDIS; what they delivered was their version of it—the thing they thought they could get away with. They did not deliver it. They did not fund it and they back-ended it so that it was outside the forward estimates, so they did not have to be accountable for it. Going into the last election, we said that we would commit to funding for the next four years—that we would commit to Labor's plan for next four years. In fact, when we came in we actually put back in the $1.2 billion that Labor pulled out in the PYEFO. My state of Queensland is the major beneficiary of that to the tune of $958 million. So, please, I know it looks good on everyone's things to put out to your electorates, and to send it around and to be good and all of that sort of stuff , saying, 'This is what we are sticking to; this is why the Liberal government is no good and why the coalition is bad.' But you have to back it up with something; you have to have a plan.

We had some school kids up in the gallery before. They are at school now but they will be paying for this when they start work. It is the same as the schoolkids bonus. You funded it out of the minerals resource tax—the mining super profits tax. It did not raise any money, but you committed the funds. And you do not have to spend it on education; you just give to someone the cash. If they want to spend it at the local pub or if they want to go to the bottle-o, they can do that. What we used to do, and what there used to be by everyone on both sides of parliament, was we had to produce receipts that said it went to education. When you did that you got your money back on your tax. What we do now is just a splash for cash, because the only constituency Labor has left are those people willing to take cash for no other reason. I am really disappointed with some of the words coming from those opposite because I would have thought that education was a bit more important than that. I stand by this amendment; I stand by making the thing work. I thank the House.

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