Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. It is a pleasure to follow my good friend from the other side of the chamber, the member for Gellibrand. We have a few things in common. We are both public school educated. Unfortunately, he took a wrong turn. He barracks for the Bull Dogs. I have continued my passion for the Sydney Swans after they moved from Victoria. I welcome his contribution. I disagree with a lot of it, but I do welcome his contribution.

This bill will mean record funding for schools in the electorate of Gippsland. It will actually improve the way schools are funded. I would like to commend Senator Simon Birmingham, the minister in the other place, for the way he has approached what has been a very difficult task in coming forward with what I think is an excellent long-term outcome that will provide certainty and security for the education sector moving forward. This will mean that Gippsland schools will be funded in a way that is fair and equal into the future. Not only will there be no cuts to education funding; but this funding is locked into the budget. It is fully accounted for, unlike Labor's unfunded and empty promises. So I come to the dispatch box today with a very simple message: no school in Gippsland will get less funding under the coalition's education reforms, and I would encourage parents who have students at schools in my electorate to listen to both sides of the story before they cast a judgement in relation to the scare campaign which is being run by those opposite.

One of my favourite jobs as a local MP is meeting school children from the electorate. Just this week, I have had the pleasure of catching up with the students of grade 5 and 6 at St Mary's Catholic Primary School in Yarram, who are here on their Canberra camp. Incidentally, their funding goes up by $32,000 between 2017 and 2018. At other times, I go into the classrooms and I meet with the students and talk to them about my role in parliament and their future aspirations. Every one of those students has the chance to achieve their full potential because of the high quality of education they already receive in Gippsland, whether it is in the Catholic, government or independent sector. It does not mean there is no room for improvement. I believe that there are huge opportunities for us to work more collaboratively with our school communities and for parents to be more engaged with children's education. Simply throwing money at problems around literacy and numeracy has not proved to be a solution to the situation. We need to see greater engagement from all levels of community in our children's education.

The reforms that we are debating here today will target the areas that need it most, and I think that is essentially why the legislation is fair. These reforms underpin the intention of the original Gonski needs based changes. So the question is: what do these changes look like on the ground? In my community in Gippsland, it means that principals and teachers will be able to use the funding provided to their school in a way that best allocates the resources and addresses the needs of their students so that they can be responsive to the needs in the local community.

That greater autonomy means they can choose to invest extra funding, if required, into a speech pathologist or a specialist literacy or special needs teacher according to the needs of their school community. As the husband of a wife who works as a teacher's aide, I directly understand the challenges that she faces in helping young people in the primary school sector catch up when they have been left behind. Providing resources to allow that to occur is a fundamental principle of the need-based model which we are delivering through this legislation.

The previous speaker mentioned the jobs of the future. The jobs of the future will require a high level of technological literacy. It is essential to equip our school students with a strong foundation in literacy and numeracy, science and technology, engineering and mathematics—the STEM skills we often talk about in this place. This government has outlined an ambitious reform agenda for Australian schools, in our Quality Schools, Quality Outcomes, in the areas where evidence shows that it makes a difference. Those areas include strengthening teaching and school leadership, developing essential knowledge and skills, improving student participation and parental engagement, and building better evidence and transparency.

I would add one other key criteria, and that is getting our school community to open itself up to the wider business community and local communities and to be part of the community more generally. We have to open the doors our schools to utilise the skills of the business and trade environment that is available locally in many of our regional communities and to seek more opportunities to have older members of our community come back to school as mentors to engage with young students. We have seen that work very successfully in many different parts of Gippsland in the past, and I would love to see that extended into the future.

It is important in this debate that both sides remain transparent. I say that because I note the concerns raised in the media by the National Catholic Education Commission, including an opinion piece in today's Australian. I want to stress that no other Catholic school in Gippsland will get less money in 2018 than I did in 2017. In fact, some Catholic schools in Gippsland stand to get between $22 million and $23 million more in funding between 2018 and 2027.

Personally, I deeply value the role of the Catholic school system—and I understand that some of the smaller parish schools have pretty lean budgets as well—just as I value the role of the independent school system and the public education system. It is the right of a parent to choose where to send their child, and that child has a right to receive a high standard, well-funded education. I know that many parents in the broader Gippsland region would not consider themselves to be well-off. They work hard and often families have two incomes, and they spend whatever they can, when they can earn extra, on school fees to give their children the best start in life. They work hard to send their kids to the schools of their choice, and they rely on the Commonwealth to fairly and adequately provide taxpayer funding for their schools.

Before summing up, I want to refer to the opposition's misleading claims of cuts. There are two aspects to this. Every time Labor claim that there are claims, they are knowingly misleading parents in my electorate. Labor are not only misleading parents but also the students.

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