Ms Catherine King (Ballarat, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Health) Share this | Hansard source

The very fact that we are here debating the Australian Education Amendment Bill is evidence of this government's absolute deception when it comes to funding for primary and secondary schooling in this country. The government was elected on a promise of no cuts to education and a claim that its policies on school education funding were absolutely identical to Labor's. This bill is evidence that that is simply not true. Here we are today debating a bill which has in fact been made necessary by the Abbott government's broken promises when it comes to our primary and secondary schools. Far from 'honouring' the Gonski agreements, the Abbott government and the education minister have abandoned families, students and teachers across the country, just as they have abandoned patients and public hospitals.

The Prime Minister solemnly promised the Australian people that he would not be cutting school education, just as he promised them there would be no cuts to health and no new taxes. Instead, we have seen in this government's first budget a $80 billion cut from schools and hospitals over the next decade, a new tax on visits to the doctors and massive hikes in the cost of getting a university degree. They have abolished all additional funding for the fifth and sixth years of the Gonski reforms. Everybody knows that they were the years of the greatest expansion in funding for primary and secondary schooling. This government are leaving our children and their children's future education behind and, just as it seeks to do with health care, are trying to introduce a more user-pays model, where a decent education depends not on ability or need but on ability to pay.

The facts are that if the government had kept its promise to deliver the full disability loading in 2015, we would not need to consider amendments to fund independent special schools. Here we are debating this bill which is requiring the funding for independent special schools, something which I support, but we would not need to do this if the government had kept its promise of introducing the full disability loading by 2015. There is no guarantee in this bill that we will ever see the disability loading that was part of the Gonski reforms introduced into primary and secondary schools in this country.

Labor will not stand in the way of the measures within this bill that ensure that funding will flow to independent special schools next year. This is an important guarantee to make for those schools. But, again, this change is only necessary because the government have not finalised the loading for students with disability nor provided the funding they promised from 2015. And they have form on not sticking to commitments to students with disabilities, having also failed to extend the $100 million per year in additional support for students with disability transition funding that was in this year's budget—very important funding that was providing the opportunity for many schools for the first time to actually work more systematically about how they provide support for students with disability in their schools and how they can actually increase the capacity of their schools to work with children with autism spectrum disorder and other forms of disability right the way through their school system.

The Australian Education Amendment Bill also provides support for Indigenous students in boarding. This is consistent with our policies when we were in government to construct new boarding schools and to help students from remote communities access boarding school education.

I also note that this bill changes the funding transition rules for independent special schools so their funding is indexed by at least three per cent a year.

So Labor are not opposing this bill because we understand the importance of ensuring that funds reach Indigenous students in boarding schools and that funds reach independent special schools. But much of this bill would not be necessary were it not for the ripping up of the Gonski reforms and the broken promises, which are the hallmark of this government's education policies.

Let's go to the heart of what the Gonski reforms were trying to do. Basically, they were looking at loadings for schools not based on post code, which is the current system the government uses and which is very flawed, and has seen a real discrepancy in the amounts that schools actually get;

they were looking at a base unit per student and then looking at loadings. In fact what you would see under the Gonski reforms for schools with higher numbers of Indigenous students, higher numbers of students with disability and higher numbers of kids from economically disadvantaged areas is resources to those schools increasing, regardless of whether they are public schools, independent schools or Catholic schools, or some other form of private school, and funding would depend on the types of students. This is a really fundamental change in the way in which funding goes to our primary and secondary schools.

The disability loading in particular is critical. I am very concerned that the measures signalled by this bill in essence show that the government has abandoned its attempts to look at disability loading in schools. I know a number of schools have been working hard to measure just what that will mean in their schools, but there are some very serious implications in the way the government has put this bill together, so that they are not going to honour all of the disability loading in all of the years through the Gonski reforms.

There is nothing more important than the education of our children and there is nothing more important than how we provide good resources for kids in our schools with disability, particularly in primary schools where kids in their early years of education—they are six years of age when they enter primary school—have a huge opportunity to really learn, to be provided with a supportive structure to enable them to get the best they possibly can before they start to experience some of the really awful things that happen to many kids with disabilities. As they fall further and further behind in their schooling, they suffer self-esteem problems, disengagement with school and bullying. A real opportunity is provided if you put money into the early primary years for kids with disabilities, really supporting them with speech pathologists, with social learning and with other aids and equipment. If you do that really early in a kid's schooling, you provide a great opportunity for that young person to not necessarily fall behind but to achieve their full potential.

We know that students from disadvantage backgrounds are still slipping further behind and we know that the gap between students will continue to grow if we do not act now to improve our schools. Earlier this year, a report by the Program for International Student Assessment was released which showed that Australia is continuing to go backward, with one of the largest declines in maths among OECD countries since 2000. There are 3.6 million schoolchildren in Australia. Like their parents and their teachers, they expect the government to keep their election promises, but all we have seen from this government is an attempt to pretend—and I have heard many of the speakers on the other side—that they are in lock step with the Labor Party's Gonski reforms. We know that is simply not true.

The arrogance of the education minister to blame Australian voters for breaking his promise on schools, the arrogance of the education minister and the Prime Minister to wash their hands of responsibility from the Commonwealth for funding schools and improving school education is, frankly, a disgrace. During the election campaign last year, on 29 August, the member for Sturt said:

You can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school—

to the dollar. The opposition play this tricky little game: because two states had yet to sign up to agreements that somehow or other the money was not provided is simply a lie. This continued myth that the government is trying to go on with is all spin. Parents know absolutely that millions and millions of dollars are being cut out of every primary school and every single secondary school in this country by this government. Go to any primary school in any electorate in this country and stare them in the face and say, 'You are getting extra, exactly the amount Labor promised you.' If any member of the government says that, it will simply not be true. We know that the promise the member for Sturt made during the election campaign was absolute nonsense and given the haste with which they tore up that promise, it was in fact a deliberate deception. Schools have been abandoned and schools' interests are not being held in the highest regard by this government.

The Gonski reforms would have made a real and practical difference to schools in regional and rural areas like my electorate of Ballarat. It is the out years, the fifth and sixth years of funding that are of critical importance and that is the funding this government has cut. Last year Elise Whetter, who is a school council president in my electorate, wrote a letter to Victorian Premier Denise Napthine calling on him to sign up to the Gonski reforms:

At my son's primary school, we have seen real improvements in literacy, numeracy and wellbeing from our existing National Partnership agreement That said, we should look beyond simply meeting basic literacy and numeracy standards, and expect that every child enjoys the opportunity to not only meet their potential, but excel. There should be absolutely no difference in our expectations for the kind of education our children receive, regardless of whether they attend a State or independent school.

She went on to say:

It will be the majority of students in State Schools who will be further disadvantaged, many of whom have already been impacted upon by the significant cuts to education made by your government—

the Victorian government—

By failing to sign, you will be telling State School children that their education and outlook for the future is of lesser value than their peers at independent schools. This would be an appalling position for a State Government to take.

Why then are this Prime Minister and the education minister abandoning the Gonski reforms? No amount of spin about which money was where, on which budget line item and how that all works can deny the fact that the government has cut the funding where the increases in the Gonski reforms were. That it has not committed more funding for disability loading in the transition. This bill is absolutely evident of it. Why is the government not listening to the families, to the teachers and to the students when it comes to the funding of our schools?

Students across all schools, whether they are state, Catholic or independent, all deserve a world-class education system. Teachers deserve to be able to access the resources that they need to teach to the various abilities of the kids they have before them whether they are starting from behind the eight ball because of the geographic location where they are born, entrenched disadvantage in Indigenous communities or disability.

Teachers should have the resources they need to be able to teach kids of varying abilities, and that is what Gonski was all about. It is a damning indictment on this government that they have not only abandoned Gonski but then tried to pretend somehow that they have kept their election commitments on this matter.

Children do not choose what socioeconomic background they come from. These cuts hurt students, they hurt parents, they hurt the teachers and they hurt communities right across Australia. We can ease the struggle for many families, students and teachers by providing them with the tools to excel, develop and lift them out of poverty. We do not do that by cutting school funding.

We certainly do not do that by cutting and not making guarantees to commit to the disability loading in Gonski. We do not do that by cutting $128 million from youth education and employment programs, leaving future generations of students without the critical resources of the national Job Guide to assist with selecting subjects for years 10, 11, and 12 to develop a path to employment. We do not it by cutting funding to TAFE and cutting funding to universities.

We are sent to this place to ensure that future generations inherit a more prosperous, safer and healthier Australia. How can we leave them an education system where the gap between the rich and poor gets even bigger? As a nation we cannot afford to leave our children behind and we are doing that by cutting funding to schools. What this government is saying to students and to our children is that they do not value their education. They are saying that they do not care whether the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged schools gets bigger. They do not care whether the gap between Indigenous and non-Indigenous students, students with a disability or students from a low socioeconomic background continues to get bigger: 'We are not going to resource your school to help teach those students.'

We have a once-in-a-generation chance to make sure our students, classrooms and teachers are resourced properly for the future, but this government is choosing a path that leaves students more disadvantaged and without the proper support they need. They are abandoning the students of Australia and they will be condemned for it.

See this speech in context