Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

What don't you understand about that? This bill is about the Schooling Resource Standard and the Commonwealth's contribution. I really do think that opposing for the sake of opposing, opposition for the sake of opposition, is a really bad place to be. I do not want to give you any advice, because I think you are doing a stellar job of being in opposition—and all power to your arm. But I would say this: we are massively increasing funding for schools over the decade, and you know we are increasing funding over the decade, but every Labor speaker who stands at this dispatch box says: 'The government is only increasing it by this much in real terms. We would have increased it by so much more.' If you believe those amounts then you have any think coming. I do not think people in this country do believe that. I think parents, principals and anyone who has taken the time to have a look at their individual school result—and they can go to the app, they can go to the website, they can go to the department—can see the funding increases over the decade. Those parents, citizens committees and principals do see that, as everyone does. For the first time, it is open to complete transparency and scrutiny.

That brings me to another point about this debate. Under Labor's 27 separate agreements which did not give the promise of the Gonski model, or one national model, transparency was absolutely missing from the entire schools funding debate. It was the case that there were complete distortions in the outcomes between states because of the special deals that were signed off by the previous Labor government. I will give you a good example of what happened under the 27 deals. Labor implemented a deal that saw one needy student in one state get up to $1,500 less than if the same student were in the same school, just because of the state they were in. There was no SES factor and no other relevant factor; it was just that that happened to be the deal that the Premier signed with the Prime Minister at the time—a $1,500 disparity between the same student and the same SES standard, just because of the state they came from. Everybody knows that that was unsustainable. Everybody knows that that was not a truly national model.

Everybody knows that the reforms that Minister Birmingham has brought to this parliament, the bill that the government is presenting to the House today and taking through this parliament, is a worthwhile bill. The Labor Party of course have decided to oppose it, purely because they keep positioning to the left on every single issue. They want to go further to the left on this issue and further to the left on education funding, pretending that we do not have an ongoing debt and deficit challenge in Australia, where government has to, in an economically environment, continue to fund vital services.

We are proposing a bill that will ensure that we meet a share of the Gonski recommended Schooling Resource Standard—up for government schools from 17 per cent to 20 per cent. And we are seeing an increasing from 77 per cent for non-government schools to 80 per cent—maintaining the Commonwealth's role as the majority funder of non-government schools but increasing the shares for both sectors and increasing the outcomes for all schools. But the Labor Party are saying, 'We're going to oppose this bill, because that is not good enough,' and they are going to oppose this historic $18 billion increase in schools funding—

Ms Templeman interjecting—

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