Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last evening, I had the benefit of having dinner with school principals and school P&C presidents from Gladstone, Cairns and Loganlea. They stressed to me the importance of the full Gonski funding—Labor's commitment to restore the $22.3 billion. I promised to Suzanne Zahner—

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The minister will be quiet.

Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Also, I appreciate the support and the information given to me by Principal Belinda Tregea. This is what Loganlea State High School has done with the Gonski funding—and I promised that I would read this out in parliament today:

In more recent years, the ''Gonski Funding'' in the form of the I4S (Investing for Success) program … has enabled us to build on our many successes from the NP program. As a school community we chose to invest the additional funds in ''people and programs''. Our goal was to improve attendance (we jumped from 79% to 86% in two years), improve students' Literacy and Numeracy and to improve Senior Schooling outcomes. We want to ensure our students complete Year 12 and ensure they are well positioned for a successful pathway beyond secondary schooling. We employed an engagement officer to improve attendance, a Transition officer to improve retention and post-secondary pathways, and additional Guidance Officer to assist with social/emotional challenges, a Literacy Coach to improve reading outcomes, a Numeracy Coach and a Head of Indigenous Education to support our students to effectively access classroom learning.

All of this is at risk with the coalition government's failure to fund the full Gonski funding.

How do we know that they are cutting $22.3 billion? We know because their own document says so. The document that they produced and put around the Press Gallery is called, 'Key funding figures and qualifiers - 30 April agreed costs'. It says here—this is the total recurrent funding:

So if the minister at the table here cares to have a look at his own document, it might be a good thing. There are savings, or costs, to the education system in this country—they are actually not delivering $22.3 billion. This is not produced by the national secretariat of the Labor Party; it is a government document which says they are cutting funding for students around the country in primary and secondary schools.

We should never forget that the Gonski reforms were introduced by the former Labor government. It came about as a result of the 2011 Review of funding for schooling reports, chaired by David Gonski. The reports identified serious flaws in the way resources were allocated across the Australian education system. It made clear that Australia's education standards were slipping, putting at risk our status as one of the world's top performing nations in that respect. There is a definite and incontestable link found between students' circumstances and their academic performance, with those from disadvantaged and low-social-economic backgrounds, from regional locations and from Indigenous and or Torres Strait Islander heritage not receiving the support to perform to their potential.

There was a clear need to coordinate funding arrangements between the federal and state governments to make sure that the arrangements were coherent and effective at achieving outcomes for students. This is really, really important. At the same time, we saw 45 per cent of school principals report their schools were under-resourced and underfunded. Put simply, there was not enough money going to the right places, and students were suffering academically and were not achieving their potential. So the then Labor government heard the message loud and clear. We committed $37.3 billion in funding to implement the Gonski reforms in full, on time—not years down the track.

Who can ever forget, as I said last night, those banners, the bunting and the corflutes from the coalition in the September 2013 election campaign saying that if elected the member for Warringah and his colleagues, the Liberal and National parties—would match the Labor government's commitment dollar for dollar. It did not happen; they broke their commitment in the 2014 May budget, and today coalition MPs, as you will hear in speech after speech—we have heard this already—are coming in and saying, 'It is great, we are putting a bit of money back; fantastic, we are getting some more money.' But they are starting from the baseline of having committed the sin of cutting $30 billion out of the education funding of the country. They talk about 27 deals around the country—of course there are different arrangements and different systems. It may shock those opposite to hear this, but we actually have a federation with different states and different state education systems. There is the Catholic system and there is the independent system. The Catholic system is up in arms on this issue.

The government have ripped away $22 billion from education—the equivalent of $2.4 million from each of the 70 schools in my electorate of Blair in South-East Queensland, and equating to 22,000 people losing their job across the country. I mentioned Loganlea State High School—people's jobs are at risk there as well. They ripped up the agreements that were achieved by the Labor government which saw real and concrete funding being delivered over the next two years to bring under resourced schools up to fair levels of funding. That funding will fall off a cliff as a result of this government's proposal—95 per cent of the funding will not begin to flow for 10 years. In Queensland, in my home state, schools will not even receive this funding until at least 2027, meaning that a whole generation of students will miss out on any tangible increase in support. Schools in Queensland cannot wait 10 years to get their fair share of funding—they need it now, whether it is big schools in my electorate, like Bremer State High School with nearly 2,000 students or a little school with a couple of dozen students like Linville State Primary School in the upper Brisbane Valley.

The government's model will see less than 50 per cent of extra funding going to public schools, or state schools as we call them in Queensland. It is simply unfair. This is in contrast to the Labor Party's plan, which would provide 80 per cent of additional funds for state or public schools. I know that seven out of 10 children with disability go to a state school; I know that seven out of 10 children for whom English is a second language go to state schools. I know that eight out of 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students are in public schools. One of the most egregious aspects of the government's proposal in this legislation is that many schools in the Northern Territory, which has so many remote and regional areas, with kids in small country towns like Maningrida, Mutitjulu near Uluru and places like that, will suffer. The Northern Territory gets left out terribly as a result of this; the same with Tasmania. There are tens of billions of dollars not flowing to Tasmania. It is outrageous that the schools in the areas where the need is so great are going to lose out. It is simply unacceptable that the government will keep these people disadvantaged in the sense that their school is under resourced. I remember being in a school up in Mutitjulu with Warren Snowdon, the member for Lingiari, when I was the shadow minister for Indigenous affairs in the last parliament. We were talking with the school principal and looking at the challenges that particular school faced. Schools in those remote areas deserve as much help as we can possibly give them.

The impact is certainly being felt in the Catholic sector. In my electorate, we have some fantastic schools in the Catholic system—schools like St Peter Claver College, St Mary's Primary School and St Mary's girls high school, at St Mary's College in Ipswich, and St Edmund's boys college. They are fantastic Catholic schools with great reputations. There are also the little Catholic schools like St Joey's, the nickname for St Joseph's Catholic Primary School in North Ipswich. They are fantastic schools. About one in five Australians send their kids to a Catholic or parish school. We want kids to have the opportunity to go to an excellent school, whether it is a state school or a private school. Parents should have that choice. Hitting them with real funding losses is not the way to go. Those opposite really threaten the good work being done with those schools, whether it is literacy and numeracy training or professional development.

I make it a point after every election—I was first elected in 2007—to visit as many schools in my electorate as possible. I have about 70 schools, from way up at Mount Kilcoy, north of the Sunshine Coast, down to the urban parts in the eastern suburbs of Ipswich around the growing suburbs of Springfield. I visit as many schools as I possibly can after every election. That is my task for the first few weeks after every election.

When visiting school principals I talk to them about what the Gonski money is doing for their schools. They invariably tell me that it is going towards literacy and numeracy training, professional development education, guidance officers and teachers aides. All of that is at risk from a government that does not understand or appreciate the need for kids in these remote and regional areas, and for kids in lower socioeconomic urban areas like Ipswich, to get the help they need. They need funding certainty, to be able to commit funds for schools in the next few years—not the decades ahead.

With this particular piece of legislation, the Prime Minister is trying to send us back decades: robbing schools of a clear and transparent funding model. The Minister for Education confirmed as much in his Press Club speech, where he made clear that the government would not be obligated to work with the states on this funding model. The states, ministers and premiers across the country, both Labor and coalition, have not wasted a moment in criticising the government's plan. I commend the New South Wales coalition government for the fact that they have been standing up for kids in remote and regional areas in New South Wales and in Sydney, in the Illawarra and in Newcastle. They have been standing up to their colleagues and comrades here in Canberra, telling them that they are not actually delivering what they promised to kids in New South Wales.

The consequences of this $22 billion cut are clear: fewer teachers in classrooms, bigger class sizes and inadequate support for those students who need it most. I commend the campaign of the Queensland Teachers' Union. I think they have done a terrific job in what they have done to stand up for kids—not just for teachers but for kids and parents, particularly those in state schools around my electorate and across the state of Queensland.

Fewer teachers means not just lower class sizes but more industrial action, potentially, and less individual attention to those kids. There is a link between class size and student outcomes that is indisputable. I commend the education unions for the campaign. Small class sizes are important for all students, regardless, but particularly for those who are from disadvantaged backgrounds. I support the amendment and I ask the government to revisit this whole issue and to do the proper and full Gonski funding.

Steve Irons (Swan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is always great to see the ministers in the chamber, debating these bills, and having an input because they are so passionate about it. I rise today in support of the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, but not in support of the amendment moved by Ms Plibersek, the member for Sydney.

The bill greatly improves the Australian Education Act 2013 and it finally ends the school-funding wars that have been waged for as long as I can recall. The proposed amendments reflect the core concepts recommended by the Gonski review whilst removing the inequities and special deals created by the previous Labor governments—special deals which included at least 27 vastly different agreements, haphazardly put together. They saw money thrown every which way except the way of the students.

As a parent, I know that our children's education is paramount. Parents all strive to provide their children with a strong education that will hold them in good stead in whatever path in life they choose to take. A good education provides our children with the building blocks to life. It sparks their curiosity, nurtures their strengths and encourages them to be the best that they can be. A good education develops our children into productive citizens who go on to use their talents, their skills and their drives to better our society.

As the member for Swan for almost 10 years, it has been a pleasure to go to countless graduation ceremonies and to watch our young adults take on their next exciting chapter—confident and trusting that their education has prepared them for whatever lies ahead. That is why this government is guaranteeing the essentials to increase opportunity and fairness for Australian students. We are focused on aspiration in education—the aspiration for quality education everywhere, delivered as fairly and efficiently as possible.

By way of background, I would like to provide a brief overview of the bill before expanding on what it means for schools across Australia and in my electorate, and, in turn, what it means for families. The bill implements the commitment made on 2 May for an extra $18.6 billion in recurrent schools funding, on top of already record and growing funding for Australian schools over the next 10 calendar years. This will bring this government's total 10-year investment to a record $242.3 billion from 2018 to 2027. The amendments to the act will implement the government's commitment to support parental choice, deliver real needs-based funding and long-term certainty for parents and schools, and tie funding to reforms that evidence shows improve student outcomes.

The bill will amend the act to set Commonwealth schools funding for the next 10 years and beyond, apply new indexation arrangements to Commonwealth schools funding, and transition schools to a common Commonwealth share of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2027. It will also enable regulation to allow the Commonwealth to withhold, reduce or recoup funding paid to jurisdictions which do not meet the Commonwealth's requirement to at least maintain their per-student funding levels to both government and non-government schools, to prevent cost-shifting. In addition to this, it actively improves accountability and transparency of school funding arrangements through ministerial reporting requirements, whilst removing the requirements in the current act for schools to have onerous and prescriptive implementation plans and making technical amendments, including to improve the efficient operation of the act.

This government is delivering fairness and quality to our education system. At last we will be able to see all Australian students treated equitably, after the complex and inconsistent arrangements put in place by Labor. Under Labor, some schools would not have attracted their theoretical needs-based funding entitlement for more than 100 years—100 years; a little late, I would suggest, and I am sure you would agree, Mr Deputy Speaker. Labor's election promises were all about money. Labor has continued to throw out false promises on education, with funding black holes they cannot explain.

What we, on this side of the House, understand is that how much funding we provide is important, but what we do with it is actually what counts. While our funding has been growing results have been declining, and that is why this government has made it a priority that this funding is tied to improvements in student outcomes as part of an evidence based reform package. Our funding model will see funding for schools grow faster than broader economic growth, with total Commonwealth funding growing by approximately 75 per cent over the next 10 years and funding per student growing at an average of 4.1 per cent per year.

The government will transition all schools to consistent Commonwealth shares of the Schooling Resource Standard by increasing funding, (1) from an average of 17 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard for government schools in 2017 to 20 per cent in 2027, reflecting the Commonwealth's role as a minority public funder of this sector; and (2) from an average of 76.8 per cent in 2017 for non-government schools to 80 per cent in 2027, reflecting the Commonwealth's role as a primary public funder of this sector. At the national level, funding per student for all sectors will continue to increase in real terms, seeing an annual per-student funding increase over 10 years of 5.1 per cent for the government sector, 3.5 per cent for the Catholic sector and 4.1 per cent for the independent sector.

In true Labor form, they have started a scare campaign against these reforms, similar to countless scare tactics we have seen before. I have had number of parents in my electorate contact me after hearing the lies that Labor have been spouting. To each of these constituents I have responded with the results of the funding calculator relevant to their children's school, and they have been pleasantly surprised that their children's school will in fact receive an increase in funding.

In Swan, our needs based funding model for schools will see a total increase in federal government funding for the schools in Swan of $312 million over the next 10 years, going to the 55 primary and secondary schools which educate nearly 21,000 children in my electorate. I am very proud to be a part of a government that is delivering a better education for the 21,000 children of today in my electorate who will go on to be the adults, the inventors, the teachers and the leaders of tomorrow.

The Labor Party has abandoned needs based funding and the principles of the Gonski review that they lauded—until it was no longer going to score them any more cheap political points. When the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education announced the $18.6 billion reform plan, David Gonski himself said:

… I'm very pleased to hear that the Turnbull Government has accepted the fundamental recommendations of our 2011 report, and particularly regarding a needs-based situation.

… I'm very pleased that there is substantial additional money, even over indexation and in the foreseeable future.

…   …   …

… when we did the 2011 review, our whole concept was that there would be a school's resource standard which would be nominated and we nominated one, and I'm very pleased that the Turnbull Government has taken that …

This was praise from the very man behind the landmark educational reforms—the very reforms that the Gillard government accepted, adopted, and then decimated until Mr Gonski's reforms were unrecognisable.

I still do not understand how the Labor Party, who initially adopted the reforms, can stand opposite and argue against our government's plan to deliver funding to schools. I support the Minister for Education and Training in calling on Labor to explain a few things. Why do those opposite, after using his name for years, now insist on going against David Gonski's endorsement of the coalition's plan? Or is it that Labor prefers different funding methodologies that advantage some non-government schools over others? And why will Labor vote for schools of identical need to receive different levels of federal funding for the Schooling Resource Standard just because they are in different states? Finally, perhaps the biggest question of all: why do those opposite continue to use educational reforms merely as a pawn in their game, denying Australian children the right to a strong education through needs based funding?

I must admit I could not believe it when the Leader of the Opposition, the member for Maribyrnong, went to not one but two Catholic schools to hold a doorstop interview to sprout about our reforms and threaten major funding cuts to these schools. The first was the Holy Family School in Mount Waverley, which over the next 10 years will receive an additional $4.3 million. Next year alone, the school will receive $73,000 in additional resources. Just a day later, the Leader of the Opposition trotted on over to Our Lady Help in East Brunswick, again threatening cuts. But, had he done his research, he would know that this school was going to receive $3.5 million extra over the next 10 years. Time and time again, Labor have misrepresented this funding package. They misrepresented and lied about Medicare during the horrific 'Mediscare' campaign, and now they are doing it again with education.

I would like to take the opportunity to congratulate the minister for education and his office for the work they put into these amendments. They have been developed to ensure all our children receive a good education. The work put into these amendments will last for decades to come, as record Commonwealth funding has grown exponentially under the coalition and will continue to grow. I know sometimes you have to keep your ear to the ground to drown out Labor's misrepresentations and negativity, but the support by third parties for these changes has been resounding. The support is not only from certain sectors but across the board.

On Monday I received a letter from the Rehoboth Christian College which supported this government's changes. It reads:

Dear Mr Irons,

Rehoboth Christian College has been operating for over 50 years, and we have been very thankful for the funding that Federal and State governments have provided over that time. Approximately 42% of our operating budget for 2017 is received from Federal funding and 19% from State, with the remaining 38% derived from tuition fees paid by over 150 dedicated families. Rehoboth has grown from just 23 students and 2 staff in 1966 to over 717 students and almost 100 staff across two campuses in 2017. This growth is a testament to the support extended by the Federal and State governments to non-government schools such as Rehoboth. However, the lack of predictability with the funding model often causes us concern, and I am writing to convey our support of the Gonski 2.0 proposals.

Over the past four years, we have encouraged the government to embrace the Gonski principles. We believe they offer stability and a long-term funding model that is needs-based and sector-blind, thus giving non-government schools a 'fair go.'

Now, with the Gonski 2.0 proposals, we encourage you once again to seriously consider lending your support to them as basis for a policy framework that has a good chance of legislative success, and as a means of dealing with the inconsistencies and unpredictability of the existing funding model.

The reforms proposed provide a model that can be fairly applied across all sectors and jurisdictions, including the consistent application of the principles and formula informing SRS funding.

Rehoboth is one school within a network of 125 Christian schools, many of whom we know will be writing to their local Members to express similar thoughts. The Gonski 2.0 reforms would positively impact hundreds of schools and thousands of students. We ask you to consider our voice, raised against the strong campaign we know some in the non-government sector have mounted in opposition to these reforms.

This issue is not about self-interest, but what is best for all schools, and the sector, in the long term; indeed, overall schools in our network would be better off should the 2013 Act remain intact. But the policy that would result from these reforms would be fair, affordable, and consistent.

We encourage you — do not let schools be unnecessarily caught up any longer in the "funding wars" of the last few decades. This is a rare moment when it is possible to resolve a long-standing issue for the benefit of all.

If you'd like to know more about the specific implication for Rehoboth, I would be pleased to talk further with you.

Yours faithfully,

Mark Steyn

Chief Executive Officer

Association for Christian Education

Operating Rehoboth Christian College

I invite the members opposite to contact him as well to find out about his support for our program. Also, from Mr Phillip Spratt from the Australian Council of State School Organisations:

The move to reduce the 27 funding agreements into a single model, with no special deals, may finally bring truly needs based funding to all sectors.

From Martin Hanscamp, the executive officer of the Australian Association of Christian Schools:

AACS would like to express its profound support for the bold schools funding policy... This is good policy and our bunch of Christian schools want you to hear that loud and clear.

From Shelley Hill, from the Australian Parents Council:

It is very positive to hear the commitment to a single, needs-based, sector blind funding model for Australian schools.

As I said, I have plenty more that I could share with you in the House. I would like also to note some points from the Australian Association of Christian Schools, who also said:

Well done for: providing a long term funding model; providing a model that can be applied fairly across all sectors and jurisdictions; addressing deals and inconsistencies; affirming a needs-based and sector blind approach; the consistent application of the SRS funding principles and formula; developing a policy framework that has a good chance of legislative success; tackling the timidity of 'no school will lose a dollar'; offering 10 years of adjustment and even extra transition arrangements where there's a reasonable case; continuing to provide a generous measure of most reasonable funding (for the Commonwealth's part that is).

As I said, there is plenty more that I could tell you about, but time constrains us. This is a good policy. It is good for our students, our parents and our teachers, who are eager to provide our children with an education that every single one of them deserves. I encourage Labor to put aside politics for once and support these amendments so we can provide for Australian students. I am in full support of the amendments and commend them fully to the House.

Susan Templeman (Macquarie, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Some people make 15 minutes feel like an eternity. But I know it is not going to be enough for me to explain why I support the amendments put forward by the member for Sydney, Tanya Plibersek, and oppose the Australian Education Amendment Bill that this government has put forward.

I vividly remember the day, in August 2013, only a month before election day, when the then leader of the opposition, the member for Warringah, declared a unity ticket on school funding. The promise was 'not a dollar different—we're on a unity ticket'. I was the Labor candidate for Macquarie at that time, but I had only recently stepped down as president of Winmalee High P&C. So a bit of me was incredibly relieved to hear that at last the politics were going to be taken out of education funding. But of course, they should never have been trusted. They should never have been trusted to treat school students, teachers and parents with respect.

There are 51 public schools in my electorate of Macquarie. Every one of those 51 public schools in the Hawkesbury and Blue Mountains will lose money under the government's changes to the way it funds students. These changes are part of the budget that the Prime Minister claims loudly and proudly is fair. How can it be fair, when every public school in my electorate will be worse off under their formula? How can it be fair that the nine Catholic schools in my electorate have their funding agreement tossed away? Schools like St Monica's, St Matthew's, Bede Polding, Chisholm, St Finbar's, St Thomas Aquinas, St Columba's, our Lady of the Nativity and St Canice's. Greg Whitby, the executive director of Catholic Education in the Diocese of Parramatta, has written to me of his disappointment that Catholic Education leaders were not even consulted prior to the radical change to the funding levels. He fears that these low-fee Catholic schools in my area will be impacted.

I have heard repeated claims by the Prime Minister, the Treasurer and every MP on the other side who has bothered to speak so far that the funding is fair. Just saying it is fair does not make it so. It is the facts that determine whether it is fair or not. So let us look at the federal government's own briefing paper for journalist, for a start. It reveals $22.3 billion of savings over 10 years. In other words, in case those opposite do not understand that language, that is money your government is saving by reducing the amount of money that it had planned to go to schools.

If you do not want to trust the government's own briefing paper, what does the New South Wales Minister for Education say? Well, he talks about having had a deal with the Commonwealth, that he expected that deal to be honoured and that the result of these changes was that there were millions and millions less than was expected to go into schools in New South Wales over two years. And the New South Wales Department of Education wrote to every school principal warning them not the trust the Commonwealth department's calculator—the same calculator they so gleefully refer to when trying to prove their claim that funding has increased. Nope: the data is dodgy. And how is it fair that the Northern Territory, with the greatest funding gap to bridge, gets the worst deal, which will not even keep pace with inflation?

By any independent measure, the facts show how out of touch this Prime Minister and this government are. While they blithely rip away $22 billion of funds from students and teachers across every school sector, they throw $65 billion at big business in the form of a tax cut and give millionaires a tax cut. They say it is fair, but just saying it does not make it so. The governments approach is not needs based. It is not sector blind. They have dressed up a massive funding cut with words to trick parents and teachers into thinking they care.

Let's keep in mind that schools in New South Wales have signed up with the Commonwealth to a six-year funding program. The state agreed to increase funding alongside federal funding, and of course that is not the case under this new plan, in which the expectations on states have changed and they no longer need to commit to helping their schools reach a nationally consistent level of funding. That is a massive flaw in the government's plan, and it will entrench inequality between school systems. And we are lumbered with an arbitrary formula, which does not come out of any Gonski panel findings, that the federal government will fund 20 per cent of public education and 80 per cent of private. That is the opposite of sector blind; that is sector specific.

Under Labor, every school in New South Wales would have reached a fair level of funding—95 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard—by 2019. That is every school in New South Wales, not just independent schools but Catholic schools and public schools—all of them. And on the day that we celebrate public education—although neither the Prime Minister nor the education minister were inclined to be with us this morning, with the Australian Education Union, the New South Wales Teachers Federation and parents and teachers from all over the country—let's talk some specifics in my electorate to show just how much those opposite care, particularly about public education.

The four public high schools in the Hawkesbury will, between them, have $2.5 million less over the next two years. Richmond High School will be $151,000 worse off over the next two years. Windsor High School, with its special needs unit, will miss out on $659,000 of funding. Colo High School will be $597,000 worse off, and Hawkesbury High will get $487,000 less than had been agreed to. Public primary schools are also in the firing line, with hundreds of thousands of dollars missing in action from their funds. Over the next two years Hobartville will miss out on $443,000. This is a school that caters for a large cohort of students with special needs, as does Windsor Park, which will miss out on $338,000 in 2018-19. Windsor South, a school achieving great results with the additional funding it has had over the last 3½ years, will be down by nearly $430,000 over the next two years compared with their agreement. And Bligh Park now finds itself with $423,000 less over the next two years. Oakville Public School drops by $350,000.

It is not just these larger schools and these bigger numbers that are a betrayal of public education by the federal government. The smaller schools will also really feel the pain of the funding cuts they suffer. So, even though Cattai, with its around 60 students, will be only $36,000 worse off, and Colo Heights and its 50 students $78,000 worse off, and Kurrajong East and its 65 students $58,000 worse off, and Macdonald Valley, with fewer than 10 students, $15,279 worse off, those amounts will hurt. Being starved of those additional funds will have a profound impact on those schools' ability to support and extend their students in the way they would like to and in the way they deserve.

And let's think about what 'fair on every level', according to the other side, looks like for the rest of the Hawkesbury Schools. Comleroy Road, a school that earlier this year celebrated Harmony Day with songs from around the world, loses $84,000, and Ebenezer loses $91,000. This is a school near a church that the Prime Minister's family built. It is the oldest surviving church in Australia. Now he is happy to rip $91,000 not just out of that school but out of that community. They have their annual school art show and fair coming up and, I can tell you, they will not be able to replace $91,000 through those efforts. Freemans Reach will lose $200,000. Glossodia will lose $224,000. Grose View will lose $171,000—a lot of trivia nights to make that up. Kurmond will lose $130,000. Kurrajong North will lose $58,000. Kurrajong Public will lose $139,000. Maraylya will lose $62,000—a school with no school hall, where assemblies are held outside. Their job fundraising for a hall just got a whole lot harder. Pitt Town will lose $189,000. Richmond North will lose $180,000. They are using their current funding to see that every student learns computer coding, so they are seeing real benefit from the early funding, but they are going to miss out over the next two years. Richmond will lose $261,000. Wilberforce will lose $236,000. Windsor Public School will lose $222,000 over the next two years. If you could not keep up, that is $7 million in all over the next two years from Hawkesbury schools. I think what really gets me about the government using schools as a place to save money—$22.3 billion over the next ten years and $12 million in my electorate alone over the next two years—is that this is money that would go to pay teachers, support staff, speech therapists and counsellors. In areas like mine, where there are small, sometimes quite isolated locations, when you take money out of a school you take it out of the community.

I turn to the Blue Mountains, which is an area that has a higher concentration of teachers living in it than any other part of the country. Those teachers, who teach all over my electorate and on the plains of Western Sydney in all systems, will not be fooled by the deception of the Prime Minister into believing that this funding is fair. They can do the maths. Blaxland High School takes the biggest hit and will be worse off to the tune of $577,000 over the next two years. I spent time at Blaxland last week with the SRC and some of the Aboriginal students in their new garden space. This is a school that deserves additional funding. For Winmalee High School, where my son was educated, it is nearly half a million dollars less than they were due to receive for 2018 and 2019. Katoomba High School is $488,000 worse off and Springwood High School $406,000. These last two schools, like many others, are housed in buildings that could really do with a 21st century update. But if you take money out of teachers and resources, P&Cs are going to spend their scant funds trying to bridge that gap.

This supposedly fair funding is horrible for the public schools up and down the mountains, from the small school at Mount Victoria, where a shortfall of $60,000 will big a big hit, through to Lapstone primary school, which is hardly rolling in it—they are desperate for a new library, which the NSW government does not seem interested in providing. They will be $144,000 worse off over the next two years. From the top of the mountains to the bottom—Blackheath will lose $202,000. Megalong Public School is a tiny school where $6,800 missing from funding is going to have an impact. Katoomba North will lose $177,000. Katoomba Public will lose $182,000. Leura will lose $165,000. Wentworth Falls will lose $229,000. Lawson will lose $189,000. Hazelbrook will lose $290,000. Faulconbridge will lose $206,000. Ellison Public School will lose $214,000. Winmalee will lose $247,000. Springwood—where my niece and nephew attend— will lose $274,000. Warrimoo will lose $119,000. Blaxland Public will lose $106,000. Blaxland East will lose $237,000. Mount Riverview Public School—a really self-reliant school, which has not seen a lot of early money—will miss out on $154,000. And Glenbrook will lose $167,000—that is money they will not receive but should have received in 2018 and 2019. On the Blue Mountains side of my electorate, that is $5 million over the next two years alone. Across all of New South Wales schools we are losing $6.9 billion over the next decade. How on earth can that be fair?

Let us address the issue that somehow the funding in this bill is an increase in money. It is an increase if you remember the $30 billion cut in the 2014 budget—the worst ever cuts to education funding. That is the base those opposite are using to claim that what we are seeing now is a funding improvement. So it is not a $30 billion cut; it is a $22.3 billion cut. That means it is a $7.7 billion improvement. So if we do the maths that way, sure, it is an improvement. But we cannot get away from the fact that this is still a $22.3 billion cut—the second-biggest cut to education funding in our history. I cannot support it. Compared to the agreements the states and different systems have signed up to—what had been committed to by Commonwealth and state governments and by every system within the education sector—it is a cut. I cannot support it.

This is the other myth being created: that there were unnecessary deals done in different states. The reality is that there are three education systems in every state and territory, all of which were at different starting points in their funding. To even out the playing field—to make sure every single child received a basic level of funding and then to add loadings to compensate for special needs and disadvantage—was never going to lend itself to a one-size-fits-all model. Our model was fair. It was sector blind. It took into account the needs of each child. This bill does not, and I cannot support it.

Labor invests in education because we believe there is nothing better for our society or our economy than well-educated, well-trained Australians in good, well-paid jobs. Everyone should have access to that education no matter their post code and no matter their family's circumstances. This is not just about parents and their children, teachers and their students or principals and their teachers; it is about every small business that wants to hire a local kid when they leave school or even while they are still at school. It is about every household that want to see themselves living next door to people who are educated and employed. It is about every member of our society being given a fair chance to learn to read, to learn to write and to learn to learn so that they can be an ongoing contributing member of our communities. One a Prime Minister who is completely disconnected from reality would describe $22 billion of cuts to schools as fair. It is not fair, and I cannot support it.

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is my great pleasure to rise and speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. On 2 May the Turnbull government announced an extra $18.6 billion in schools funding on top of the already record funding for Australian schools to be delivered over the next 10 years. This will bring our total 10-year investment to a record $242.3 billion from 2018 to 2027.

What we are doing in this bill is implementing the true Gonski needs-based funding model. As the member for Macquarie leaves the chamber—it is a shame because I did want to actually pick her up on a very fundamental flaw she made in her contribution. She mistakenly misrepresented the member for Warringah and the government's policy at the time. I want to make this very clear. In 2013 the member for Macquarie, as a candidate for Labor Party, was clearly not listening very intently, because out commitment was to commit on a unity ticket to the first four years of funding, not to the six-year package. The member for Warringah made that very, very clear. It just goes to show how easily the member for Macquarie can get up in this parliament and seek to misrepresent our commitment.

Why did we do that? We keep hearing from members opposite about this additional $22 billion, but the bottom line is that this was never in Labor's budget. This was never incorporated into the forward estimates. It was pushed off into the never-never, in years 5 and 6. All of that funding so-called increase was never delivered as part of Labor's budget. We made a very firm commitment we would agree to the first four years of funding. In fact, when we came into government in 2013 we discovered that the Labor Party had short-changed a number of states and we had to very quickly find an additional $1.2 billion.

What we found here was a lot of smoke and mirrors from members opposite about what the funding was that they committed to, because if the Labor Party were serious about this so-called $22 billion it would have put this money in its budget; it would have included this money in its forward estimates. What we have seen from the Labor Party, like in so many other budgets and in so many other slippery figures, is an absolute failure to deliver on what it said it would do.

We have done a lot of hard work, and I want to commend the Minister for Education for the incredible amount of hard work done to fix Labor's mess when it comes to schools funding. We have had a really astounding result in Corangamite: every school goes forward. In 2017, funding to all 66 schools in Corangamite is equal to $82.967 million. In 2018 this increases by $3.85 million, and over the next 10 years the Commonwealth will provide total funding to Corangamite schools of $1.063 billion—that is more than $1 billion over the next 10 years. That includes an additional $233.9 million, and that is through a fair, needs based funding model.

I do want to make the point that Australian government funding for schools has been increasing for several decades. But while our funding has been growing, our results have been in decline. This is an issue that was never really dealt with by members opposite, who tended to put their heads in the sand in looking at how our dollars were being spent effectively in our schools.

How much funding we provide is, obviously, very important, but what we do with it is what really counts. I reflect on when Julia Gillard first announced the so-called Gonski needs based funding model, before I was elected. What occurred very quickly was that it became evident, consistent with David Gonski's model, that some schools would either have their funding stagnate or they would actually go backwards, because that is what David Gonski intended. He intended to look after the schools which most needed the funding, including schools in Corangamite. When this list became evident and was published, Julia Gillard quickly—basically—completely demolished David Gonski's entire policy by committing that no school would be worse off.

The problem with that is that the Labor Party did not have the courage to implement a true needs based model. The very wealthy schools, which David Gonski had recommended might need to take either a small reduction or a freezing of their funding, actually were given the guarantee by Labor—by members opposite—and by the then Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, that they would get an increase. That is not what David Gonski intended.

I say that we have actually demonstrated considerable courage, as a government, in saying to some very wealthy schools, 'You will not do quite as well because we are implementing a model that puts schools that need funding the most first.' That is why we really had to do a lot of hard work to fix the mess that Labor left behind—and we have heard a lot about the 27 different agreements and some of the various secret deals that were implemented with a whole range of different sectors of the school communities across Australia.

This bill before the parliament today will implement the government's commitment to support parental choice and to deliver real, needs based funding and long-term certainty for parents and schools, and it will tie funding to reforms that evidence improvement in student outcomes. The bill will also set Commonwealth schools funding for the next 10 years and beyond. It will apply new indexation arrangements to Commonwealth schools funding and it will transition schools to a common Commonwealth share of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2027.

On 2 May, when this policy was announced, David Gonski joined the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education and said:

… I'm very pleased to hear that the Turnbull Government has accepted the fundamental recommendations of our 2011 report, and particularly regarding a needs-based situation.

…   …   …

… I'm very pleased that there is substantial additional money, even over indexation and in the foreseeable future.

What David Gonski said on that day, with the Prime Minister and with the Minister for Education, is that we are implementing a true needs-based model, which Labor failed to do—and that is the fundamental problem.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Sarah Henderson (Corangamite, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will take the interjection from members opposite. They are saying, 'Rubbish!' It is not rubbish, because in the original formula some very wealthy schools were actually meant to lose some of their funding or to have some of their funding stagnate. Julia Gillard and the Labor Party panicked. They did not have the courage to implement the true Gonski needs-based funding model. And now we are fixing that mess. I am incredibly proud of what we are doing with needs-based funding. It is wonderful to see Gonski 2.0 being implemented by our government.

I want to reflect particularly on some of the Catholic schools in Corangamite and some of the increases that they will be receiving over the next 10 years. Sacred Heart, Colac, in 2017—$4.007 million and a total over 10 years of $48.5 million, which is an increase of $8.456 million; St Aloysius' School, Queenscliff—$1.18 million this year from the Commonwealth and a total of $14.4 million over 10 years, which is an increase of $2.5 million; St Brendan's Catholic Primary School, Coragulac—$570,000 this year and a total of $6.9 million over 10 years, which is an increase of $1.204 million; and Trinity College, which is a wonderful secondary Catholic school in Colac—$9.6 million this year from the Commonwealth $9.6 million and a total of $116 million over 10 years, which is an increase of $20.378 million.

I have been contacted by some parents from Trinity College concerned about their funding, and I want to reiterate to them that, of all the schools in Corangamite—and this is based on the Schooling Resource Standard and trying to deliver a fair and level playing field—Trinity receives more money per student than any other school in Corangamite. In 2017, each student receives $13,172 from the Commonwealth and in 2017 this will rise to $18,416 per student. This is a great outcome for Trinity College in Colac. This is a very substantial increase—$116 million in total over 10 years, which is an increase in excess of $20 million .What does this funding allow all schools to do when it comes to planning their future? It allows them to plan their future with certainty. The schools know that this funding is actually embedded in legislation. It starts—not in years 5 and 6, like Labor did, in the never-never—from 1 January 2018.

Today I am meeting with the principals of Colac Secondary College, Simon Dewar, and Sandra Eglezos, who is the new principal of Belmont High School. I am very pleased that, over 10 years, Belmont High School, which is another incredible school in Corangamite, will be receiving an additional $10 million from the Commonwealth, recognising of course that the majority, 80 per cent, of funding for government schools comes from the states. So we are the minority funder—heading towards 20 per cent. Colac Secondary College, led by the wonderful and very enthusiastic Ian Dewar, will receive an additional $5.45 million over 10 years.

I am incredibly proud of what this bill delivers. It delivers certainty. It delivers fairness. It delivers transparency. Every single school and every parent can now go onto the schools estimator website and look at what their school will receive not only this year or next year but also over the next 10 years. For the first time, schools will now be able to properly plan long term.

I was at the Christian schools gala dinner at Parliament House on Monday night. I sat with the principal of Covenant College in North Geelong, which has a lot of students from Corangamite. I know that schools like Covenant are very pleased with this certainty, with this funding model. One of the plans Covenant has is to provide more funding for those students with a disability. They have some incredible ideas and they really welcome the opportunity to plan long term.

I want to reflect on the comments of Craig Emerson, former Labor minister for tertiary education, in TheAustralian Financial Review on 23 May 2017. Craig Emerson worked very closely with former Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the previous Parliament. He said:

Now is a once-in-a-generation opportunity to lock in a school-funding system that can give every disadvantaged child a chance of a good education, and Labor has pledged to block it. It’s heartbreaking.

This is a former Labor minister for tertiary education who worked very closely alongside former Prime Minister Julia Gillard in the previous Labor government. He says it is absolutely heartbreaking that we see 10 years of funding certainty, a plan that delivers fairness, and Labor has pledged to block it. He has now basically revealed Labor members for what they are. They will stand in the way of any good policy. It does not matter what we bring to this parliament, the Labor Party is there to do one job and that is to oppose. It is very regrettable that the Labor Party is opposing this policy. It is wonderful for school students, it is wonderful for parents and it is wonderful for this nation. I commend the bill to the House.

Terri Butler (Griffith, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak in favour of the amendment that has been moved by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. Today is Public Education Day. It is a wonderful day to celebrate the contribution public education has made to the world and to our country. Education is an investment in our country's future. The costs of education, borne by the taxpayer, are very important to making sure that the kids of today have the skills they will need for the jobs of the future. That is important not just to those children and their future lives but to all of us—because in 10, 20 or 30 years time we will need those kids to be able to do the jobs of the future, earn incomes and pay taxes to make a contribution to the economy and to the federal budget.

That is one of the reasons education is so important, but another reason is the contribution it makes to the social and cultural life of the nation. We are a nation that needs to build social and cultural capital. For the purposes of cohesion, we need to have people who are educated not just in terms of understanding content and knowledge but are developing the skills they need to be part of our society and culture. I do not think you can really overstate the importance of schooling as a policy issue. That is why it is important to take great care in the way this parliament treats school education in this country.

As I said, it is Public Education Day. I am a product of public education. I went to a public primary school and a public state school, and I certainly got a great education. I am very proud of the fact that I went to some great public schools over the course of my life. I am also very proud of the fact that my children now go to a wonderful local public school in the electorate of Griffith. It is a school that is very focused on equipping kids with the skills they need to be great citizens and, more importantly, great people. It is a school that practices what it preaches when it comes to ensuring that kids have access to play-based learning in the early stages of their schooling, that teaches philosophy from prep, that engages with parents, that talks through the approaches to teaching at the school with parents and that is led by a really wonderful principal. I am really lucky to have that as one of my local schools.

I have also got about 59 other fantastic schools in the electorate of Griffith, all of which do an amazing job not just in educating the kids but in being part of the community for a very long time. Some of those schools have been around for longer than our Federation. Greenslopes State School celebrated its 125th anniversary recently. St Laurence's celebrated its centenary. There are a lot of other such schools in my area: Cannon Hill State School celebrated its centenary and Carina State School celebrated their centenary. A number of schools have been celebrating very big milestones. Of course, who could forget probably one of the oldest schools in the electorate, Bulimba State School, that had its sesquicentenary recently.

These are institutions within our community and we need to treat them with respect. On Public Education Day, it is apt to acknowledge the contribution of public education; but that should not be interpreted as meaning any disrespect or diminution of the importance of Catholic schools and independent schools. I have some excellent Catholic schools and independent schools in my electorate. In fact, the week that the government made it schools funding announcement, I met with one of my local Catholic schools, which is a fantastic part of our community. It is a school that is known for its cultural, sporting and academic prowess. It has incredible events that bring together people across the inner south side.

I met with the principal and the chair of the board. They were absolutely heartbroken by what this government is doing to education. They were talking to me about their worries about what would mean for local students and local parents if the school had to put up fees for Catholic education. They were talking about the fact that they work very hard to make sure that Catholic education is available to people whatever their means are, not just to wealthy people but to people—and the mix of students in this school bears this out—of ordinary means living on the south side. In fact, they—like all Catholics schools in my local area—take on a cohort of students who cannot afford to pay fees at all. What they do is they absorb the costs of that through scholarships or other means. They are worried about their ability to do that if these funding cuts go through.

It is a very grave shame that this government thinks that it is appropriate to cut funding to schools by $22.3 billion. That is a cut of more than $22 billion to schools funding, and a cut that the government boasted about in the briefing note that they distributed to journalists when they claimed that this was a saving of $22.3 billion. It is a cut that is not just admitted to but boasted about by this Turnbull government. That is a great disgrace. If we do not invest in education right now, then that is going to pose problems for our economy and our society for a very long time to come. If children do not get the skills that they need for the jobs of the future and if they do not get the skills that they need to be good and productive members of our society and our economy, then that will lead to problems down the track.

It is reckless and wrong to cut funding to schools education. That is particularly the case when we are talking here about a government that wants to give a $65 billion tax revenue giveaway to corporations, including the big banks. This is a government that wants to prioritise giving away tax breaks to companies while at the same time hitting parents and communities through cuts to the school education. I might add that it is also through cuts to university education, almost $4 billion in cuts over four years to tertiary education. That is what we are seeing from this government. It compounds the cuts we have already had from them in relation to vocational education, which is over $1 billion in cuts since they were elected.

But to say to the Australian people, 'You have to cop tax breaks for companies and, to pay for that, we're going to cut funding to schools,' is an absolute disgrace. People will not stand for it. People in my area, on the south side of Brisbane, are worried about what is going to happen to the school fees that they are paying, are worried about what is going to happen to primary and secondary education and are worried about what is going to happen in the state schools when they do not get the funding that they need.

What makes it so galling for people is that this is a government that was elected on the basis of claiming a unity ticket with Labor's needs based sector-blind education policy in 2013, to the extent that they had placards up at polling booths saying, 'We'll match Labor's funding dollar for dollar.' They were putting up signs trying to persuade people that they could vote Liberal and still get Labor's education policy—and it was not true. They did not flow on Labor's education policy, they did not flow on Labor funding, they did not commit to needs based sector-blind policy. They absolutely categorically failed to do that.

In my area schools have been telling me about the work that they have been able to do using what in Queensland is called the I4S money—the Investing for Success money. They have been able to get more resources, more support for kids, more one-on-one attention. That is what the money is doing. The consequence for them of losing funding, of not getting the funding that they had been anticipating, is significant. Of course it is—you cannot take $22.3 billion out of schooling nationally and not have that have an impact on the quality of schooling for our kids and for the future. I have schools that are very concerned, I have parents who are very concerned, and as a parent myself I am very concerned about what these cuts are going to mean for schools education, and as a member of parliament I am concerned about what these cuts are going to mean for the future of our nation. They bandy around this concept that money does not really matter, but if money does not matter why did the government make such a show of pretending to support our policy back in 2013 in order to get elected? Frankly, I always think it is people who do not know what it is like to not have money who say money does not matter. If money does not matter, then why is it that my schools locally have been saying to me that it has been so important to them to get the additional funding, the I4S money, the money that has flowed through from the commitment made under Labor, enabling them to deliver for students and for the community over the past four years.

I remember what it was like to be a schoolkid. I had some great teachers. I remember as a teenager an English teacher by the name of Mr Grossetti, and if nothing else I will always be grateful to him for introducing me to the poetry of Judith Wright. He was an inspirational teacher—he was an old school, North Queensland man who did not take any rubbish from anyone, but he was inspirational. He passed away the year after I finished school, I think at 52—very young. Teachers like him were inspirational to kids like me, and that is still happening now. I do not want teachers to lose the opportunity to be inspirational, to teach. I do not want them to be drowning in pressure from workload because of the pressure that comes through funding cuts to school education. I do not want to see teachers put in a situation where they leave the profession because it is just so frustrating—they can see what needs to be done but they cannot get the government support that they need in order to do it. I do not want to see teachers feeling broken-hearted themselves because they feel like this country does not value the work that they do. It is not just teachers—it is administrators, it is teacher aides, it is all the people who go into making a great school education system.

What message does it send to all those professionals, to all the people who support them, to the parents and friends and parents and citizens groups and to the kids themselves when the government of the nation is bringing to this parliament a bill that cuts funding to schools by $22.3 billion. I do support the second reading amendment that the Deputy Leader of the Opposition has moved. I do not want to see a $22.3 billion cut to schools funding. I do not support it and I do not think anyone in conscience could support it. I do not want to see an average $2.4 million cut to schools and I think most parents and most people in our community more broadly do not want to see that either. On Public Education Day, I do not want to see public schools having to hold bake sales to be able to afford the basics. I do not want to see a situation where, to pay for corporate tax cuts, we are putting schools under pressure. I do not want to see Catholic schools having to do that, and I do not want to see independent schools in a situation where they end up worse off than they would have been under Labor's funding arrangements. I want to see schools getting the support that they need to do the best possible job educating our kids. Not just for me, not just for you, not just for my kids, not just for yours, but for the future of the nation, for the economy and for the society.

I support the second reading amendment. I am greatly concerned about what this government is doing to schools funding. I think it really illustrates the vast separation between the conservatives on that side of the chamber and those on this side of the chamber, when it comes to our values. Labor values people. We want to see all children given the opportunity to succeed—the best opportunity that they can be given, whether it is through public schools, Catholic schools or independent schools. We think that education is an investment; it is not something that should just be seen as a cost to the budget. In fact, it is not something that should just be assessed in terms of the immediate expenditure in the budget; it should be assessed in terms of its contribution to our economy. I think sometimes in this place there is a bit of a tendency to focus on the budget first and the economy last, and that is really the wrong way around. If we want economic growth, that means we are going to need productivity. If we want productivity, that means investing in our people. It means building human capital. Schools funding is foundational for that purpose. If you understand the separation in the values between the conservatives on the one hand and Labor people on the other, it is very clear to see that our values are community driven. They are values of supporting people no matter what their background and no matter what their parents' income is. We believe in creating a country in which everyone can get a world-class education. The Liberals and Nationals, on the other hand, are quite happy to cut funding to schools education. That is what they are trying to do through this bill, with, really, very little regard for the impact that that will have. (Time expired)

Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to discuss the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, but start with a story. It is a story that took place in my electorate in the cut and thrust of a federal election campaign. A week before the election, I returned a phone call from one of my constituents in Mount Waverley in Chisholm. I returned this call after a winter's day in the cold and rain. I called him late that winter's evening because something in the emotional undertone of this man's voice message compelled me to call him back that night rather than the next day. He spent the first few minutes conveying his immense gratitude for my returning the call, but then he said, emotionally: 'Julia, I'm so sorry to burden you with this. Yesterday my wife was diagnosed with breast cancer.' He started to cry, and then said, 'There are so many tests and a lot of expenses with scans et cetera.' I wondered where this was going, and then he just blurted out, very emotionally, 'Julia, tell me it's not true.' 'What?' I said. He said: 'Last night'—the day of his wife's diagnosis—'I took a call on my landline. It was really late. It was about 10.30 at night. I thought it was more bad news, but it was someone'—in his words—'obviously from the Labor Party or a union guy, who, point blank, said, "The Liberals are going to sell Medicare." Tell me it's not true.' I then spent half an hour on the phone with this lovely man—an elderly gentleman from Mount Waverley—and reassured him that this was absolutely not true. Why do I tell this story? I tell it because it demonstrates that for those on the other side telling mistruths is second nature. Labor's opposition to the education reforms, their bullying approach and their misleading comments continue to this day. Worst of all, Labor have chosen to mislead in two of the most important areas in Australian's lives—health and education. It is outstanding, but not surprising, that they are excelling at creating mistruths. We have just heard the member for Griffith mention the words 'cuts' and '$22 billion' so many times, none of which exist.

When the Quality Schools program was announced by the Prime Minister and Minister Birmingham, with David Gonski standing alongside them, endorsing Gonski 2, Labor obviously did not know where to turn. Clearly they felt skewered. For many months now they have tried to lay claim to the value and equity of the Gonski name. But what Labor did not factor in is that their lies and misleading conduct just will not prevail this time. They will not get the trajectory they had achieved to a large extent from the 'Mediscare' campaign.

Upon the announcement, the opposition leader, Bill Shorten, for example, and his army of spin doctors, went into overdrive. They hurriedly announced that the opposition leader would conduct a press conference at a Catholic school in Melbourne, the key objective of which was to denounce the education reforms, particularly for Catholic schools. Labor and the army of spin doctors were hard at it—but hard at it with spin, untruths, getting false messages out, a very 'Mediscare'-esque type of campaign. What they did not bank on, though, was that this time they could not target the most vulnerable in the dead of night, like that elderly gentleman in Mt Waverley—those who do not have mobile phones and therefore cannot switch to silent mode in the evening, those who are the most vulnerable. No, this time they had to confront the facts—and they still have to.

They had the principals, the fine school leaders, and the parents and teachers of Australian schools to answer to in the cold light of day. They could not accommodate the fact that the Prime Minister was there standing with David Gonski, the man himself, which, on its own, ostensibly showed to Australia that he has endorsed the Quality Schools program as it has articulated his vision. It has not created this mishmash of secret deals and this rushed supposed implementation, unfunded. Moreover, what they really could not deal with was the absolute, solid transparency of the Quality Schools program. At every turn, every untruth they raise about individual schools, they raise flawed, inconsistent data. But the truth and transparency of the school funding estimator is all anyone needs to turn to.

Moreover—and quite bizarrely—notwithstanding that the opposition has the greatest number of Catholic schools in his electorate of Maribyrnong, Labor's spin doctors obviously thought it best and more strategic that the press opportunity for the opposition leader should take place in the Holy Family School in Mt Waverley, in Chisholm, and not in his local electorate. The opposition leader and his massive press contingent dragged themselves to my electorate of Chisholm, the seat we took from Labor in the last election. 'Let's put politics before the people', is likely what they would have said as they created this fictionally based outcry over these fair and reasonable reforms. They could rely only on mistruths, complete and blatant disregard of the facts. The shadow minister for education refused to commit to a $22 billion funding commitment for money they do not have, and the shadow Treasurer emotively declared that Catholic schools were in 'meltdown'—not according to the facts. Labor continued their media campaign, running around the country using alarmist, emotive language, and they have continued this truly remarkable campaign of lies this week. But what Labor really, really hate is the transparency. Every time they try to sell a fictional story about an individual school, anyone need only go to the estimator.

The Turnbull government will deliver the real, authentic Gonski needs based funding model that Labor did not. We will end Labor's special deals with states and territories, unions and non-government school leaders. Labor traded away the principles of the Gonski report and corrupted the Gonski brand and integrity and model for pure political expediency. The other thing they have not done is actually talk to the people who will be most affected by this: the fine school leaders of our country, who have our children's—and our children's children's—education in their hands. No: Labor have relied just on their media machine. Well, unfortunately for Labor, a key value and principle that our school leaders impart to our children is the necessity and integrity behind telling the truth.

I personally communicated with, spoke to and met face to face with many of the fine school leaders in my electorate of Chisholm, particularly over the last few weeks, to clarify the facts. I talked about the reforms and the specific numbers and increased funding that their individual schools would receive. School leaders, and every Australian, have a high regard for the facts, unlike Labor. And when the facts are presented to them in a transparent and clear way, it is more than appreciated.

As I discussed with the school leaders in my electorate, the facts are this. Fact: the government will commit an additional $18.6 billion for Australia's schools over the next decade, commencing in 2018. Fact: it will be distributed according to a model of fair, needs based and transparent funding. Fact: the investment will be tied to school reforms which are proven to boost student results. Fact: such a strong level of funding is vital, and what is more vital is how the funding is used. Fact: the Turnbull government's education reforms and needs based funding model for schools, endorsed by David Gonski, is about fairness—no more Labor generated secret deals; no more 27 deals and favouritism for certain sectors or schools; and not the mishmash of the rollout conducted by Labor.

Labor have decided to target Catholic schools particularly in this campaign of lies. Here is another fact for them: the Catholic schooling system around Australia will receive more than $1.2 billion in extra money over the next four years and around $3.4 billion in extra money over the next 10 years.

In relation to systemic arrangements, that is, school operated systems, including the Catholic schooling system around the country: they will still continue to receive their funding as a lump sum funding entitlement into the future—the principals know this—enabling them to redistribute that money across their schools as they see fit. There is no reason, with that scale of additional funding flying into their schools, that fees need to increase anywhere around the country. If they do, that is a decision for the Catholic education authorities, who are responsible for allocating that lump sum.

In fact, the only concern expressed by the school leaders I visited, particularly in the last few weeks, is more about the alarmist media campaigns and misleading commentary made by emotive language and untruths about the future of their children's education from Labor, all of which is counterproductive to the integrity and philosophy of Gonski 2.

Here are some more facts for the Labor Party—those on the other side: some facts about Chisholm. In fact, Chisholm has 48 schools. In every sector and in every local community in the electorate of Chisholm, those 48 schools, including 12 Catholic schools, will be receiving significant increases in funding because of our needs based funding model. In Chisholm, the total increase in federal government funding over the next 10 years is $244 million. This is great news for the primary and secondary schools in Chisholm and for their over 20,000 students.

The facts are what the Turnbull government relies on. Let me tell you some facts, Mr Deputy Speaker, about Holy Family School in Mount Waverley—the one where the opposition leader had his press conference but did not speak to the principal, interestingly enough; certainly not in public.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

He did not speak in public to him on the media. And I now know why, because here are the facts: full-time enrolment at Holy Family School is 360 students. As for all parents in Chisholm, the quality school reforms program—the needs based funding model—is all good news. This is clearly not what the opposition leader wanted to have happen in the press. The needs based funding model is all good news. The total increased funding for Holy Family School in Chisholm, from 2018 to 2027, is $4,306,600.

Needs based funding is important, because it allows schools to do things like invest in more specialist teachers to help kids who are falling behind in their classes. In this regard, let's talk about Berengarra School in Box Hill North, also in my electorate. Berengarra is a nonprofit, co-educational secondary school which meets the individual needs of students of normal intelligence but with social and emotional problems. They will receive a total increase in funding of $11,540,800. At Salesian College there will be a total increase in funding of over $17 million and the fantastic Mount Waverley Secondary College will get an increase in funding from 2018 to 2027 of over $14 million.

The question, 'Which school is your child going to?' is likely asked of every parent in this great land, or 'Which school do you go to?' is often asked of children. At some stage in their lives, it is probably asked of every Australian child. The importance of providing choices for parents to decide on which school for their kids is a defining and critically important element for Australians, regardless of their socioeconomic status or faith.

Like the thousands of people in Chisholm, my parents were like many—of hardworking immigrant heritage. They certainly were not rich, elite or privileged. In fact, they were the opposite.

However, they embraced the fact that they were lucky enough to live in this country, where fairness underpins our values and philosophy. To have the choice of schools is a principal and continuing tradition wholly embraced by liberalism. Every Australian child deserves to be the recipient of an education that is needs based. The Turnbull government's bold plan will transform Australian schools. It will set Australian students on the path to academic excellence and achieve real needs based funding for students from all backgrounds in every town, every city, every region and every state, in every classroom. Ultimately, every child needs quality teachers and schools with the right resources and the right tools and programs in place so they can succeed. That is exactly what the Turnbull government's Quality Schools plans will deliver. Just because Labor wants to secure a special advantage for certain schools is the antithesis of the Turnbull government's Gonski reforms. Importantly, our increased funding will be tied to reforms that evidence shows make a real difference to supporting our teachers in schools and to improve student outcomes.

This is a fair system that is good for students, good for parents and good for teachers. The Turnbull government is delivering a uniform model for school funding. Under that uniform model we are able to invest more into students who need it most. For example, students with disability will receive funding growth of 5.9 per cent per student through the life of the Turnbull government's reforms. The Turnbull-Birmingham reforms are sensible, pragmatic and fair. They are based on facts, not fiction. The principals and teachers who I have spoken to are quite justifiably alert to the changes, but they are not alarmed by rhetoric and emotive, baseless language, because there is absolute, total transparency in these reforms. Most importantly, these reforms are needs based, so regardless of which name, which faith or sector is on the school gate, every Australian kid has the same opportunity.

Lisa Chesters (Bendigo, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. This is not needs based funding. It does not matter which way this government tries to spin it, it is not. In my contribution to this debate I am going to outline a couple of examples from my own electorate of Bendigo, a regional electorate that is not dissimilar to many other regional electorates throughout Australia.

Before I was fortunate and privileged to be elected to this place, when Labor was in government I had the great opportunity to go out to Lightning Reef Primary School. It was being opened by the then education minister. We had the state people there; we had our federal people there. It is a school in an area of extreme disadvantage. There are pockets of real disadvantage in the Bendigo electorate. These suburbs and postcodes, unfortunately, feature very highly in the low SES index at a state level and on the disadvantage index.

When I was there, wandering around and chatting to the teachers in the beautiful new classrooms that were built by Labor through contributions through the Building the Education Revolution funding, I noticed that there was a small group of about 10 children that were taking their classes in the shared learning space in the corridor. I looked at their artwork and sat with their teacher for a moment and spoke to them. They had two teacher aides—it was not enough. They were what the school had nicknamed the preprep class. These were kids who had come into the school without the skills that they needed to start prep. They struggled with language, they struggled with their colours. Their artwork was like the artwork of a three-year-old, not a five-year-old. They were from traumatised, broken homes in the electorate. All of them had significant trauma in their households. This school has a number of students that fall into that category. This school only has six households where they do not have a health care card. In this school they struggled to get someone on the school council who has a job.

This school, despite all of its challenges, is trying its very best. They prioritise teacher aides over watering their oval. They prioritise investing in numeracy and literacy over an arts or language program. This is the school of hard knocks. It needs extra funding. Under the needs based funding that Labor put forward, it would have started to receive the resources that it needs. It needs a cook to help with nutrition in the school; it needs social workers to help parents and kids who come to school who fear going home from school because of violence at home. Yet this school will not get needs based funding under this government's proposal and the bill that is before us. No, this school will only get $34,000—that is all this government will give this school: $34,000; that is it. This is the school most in need in the Bendigo electorate, and they do not even get enough money for an extra teacher's aide. They do not get enough money to water their oval. They do not get enough money to help kids who do not have lunches. This school talks about how Monday is the hardest day because they have kids who come to school who have not eaten all weekend and by Friday they send them home with food packages so that at least the older kids in the family can help feed the younger kids. This is happening today, in 2017, in the Bendigo electorate. Yet this government says all the rhetoric: 'We have delivered needs based funding.' Well, no you have not.

There are other schools in the Bendigo electorate that will miss out significantly on funding. Bendigo Senior Secondary College, under Labor's plan, would have got $1.6 million next year. This school has the largest VCE in the state of Victoria. They have the largest VCAL and VET program. They partner with the Catholic school system. They partner with other secondary schools in the area to deliver the most inclusive and comprehensive education plan. This funding would have ensured that every student had the resources, the teachers and the support that they needed. Yet this government is not giving them the $1.6 million that is needs based funding; instead, this government is only giving them $265,000. This is a school that does not turn away any student. This is a school that gives every single student an opportunity in their final two years of study—whether they are going on to TAFE, looking for an apprenticeship or going on to university—and gives them the skills and expertise that they need. I want to commend the teachers, their acting principal and their former principal, Dale Pearce, for the excellent work that they have done to prepare this school. But they deserve their needs based funding, not the joke of a needs based funding put forward by this government. They deserve that extra $1.6 million next year and the year after, to ensure that every student that goes there has the skills to go forward after their secondary school education.

They are not the only ones. Crusoe College and Weeroona College, which feed into Bendigo Senior Secondary College, will lose up to $800,000 in extra funding. They are getting nowhere near that from this government, whatsoever. Weeroona College has this brilliant program called SWT. SWT helps kids who have dropped out of schooling—kids having trouble fitting into their classroom, who have significant trauma at home and who may have had long periods where they were not in school at primary school. They pick these students up, give them hope and encourage them. It is intensive. It is a separate school within a school. They build the capacity in these young people to re-engage in education. And they are having brilliant outcomes. All of their students to date have been able to re-enter the rest of the school and the classrooms, or have been able to enter TAFE or another learning environment. This program is working. And it is being funded through the original Gonski formula. It is being funded through the extra resources that were committed. Why was this program possible under Labor but not under the Liberals? Because it is resource-intensive. They require a smaller student-to-teacher ratio. They require experienced teachers who have decades of education behind them and are able to work intensively with these young people to give them a chance. These are young people who have been broken, not by a school system but by society. They have not had the support that they needed in their junior years. They are now in secondary school, and this school has worked out how to help save these young people, give them hope and encourage their aspirations so that they can finish school with the skills they need to go on to have functioning lives. Yet this government wants to cut the funding that makes these programs possible.

I mentioned Crusoe College, another school that has an incredibly innovative program called SWITCh. The school cannot quite fathom how successful this SWITCh program has been. They are actually supporting about 10 per cent of the school population. Kids with anxiety, kids who may not be able to cope in a classroom of 30 and kids that are really struggling with catching up to the rest of their classmates because they just do not have the basic numeracy and literacy skills are able to go and be part of the SWITCh program. It might be for one class a day, it might be for a whole day, it might be for six months, it might be for six weeks. But this program, rather than seeing these kids disrupt the whole class, invests heavily with them at their level, builds them back up and gives them opportunities so that they can learn and grow. It is a highly successful program that is literally saving these young people.

In this program, they invest heavily in mental health. They use a combination of state-based funding, chaplaincy funding, equity funding or original needs-based funding to ensure that they have all of the resources. They have pooled it all together from these little pockets of money. These young people, some who have quite severe mental health concerns, are rebuilding their confidence and are re-engaging. They are doing incredibly well. We should be very proud of what these schools are achieving today, which is Public Education Day.

I want to share some personal examples of students—some stories—to highlight how invaluable the SWITCh program is. I have changed this young person's name to Tracey. She shared her story but wanted to make sure that she had anonymity when I stood up to share the story. It was halfway through 2016 when Tracey's mother heard about the SWITCh program. Tracey had gone to multiple other schools, but the big factor for why she was not succeeding and could not face going to school was her anxiety. After Tracey came to Crusoe, she became aware of the opportunity to engage in the SWITCh program and be part of the classroom. She started to attend school. At first, it was for a couple of hours each day. Slowly the teachers invested in building her confidence and her resilience to the point where she felt comfortable to come to school every day. It was not long before Tracey started to attend classes—first one, then two. By the end of the year, she was in full-time schooling again. This is the success of this program. It rebuilds our youngest people, our youngest adults into engaging properly.

There is an outreach program at Eaglehawk. I actually made a donation towards this program. I said to the young people there who were quite interested in gardening: 'Come up with a plan.' Not only did they come up with a plan but they did all of the costings. They engaged a local business. The business owner came in to support them. They did the costings, they did the measurements, they did the design. Then my small $500 contribution enabled them to build this magnificent garden. The community of Eaglehawk rallied behind them. But the whole point of this was the fact that they were practising their numeracy skills, design skills and literacy skills. They also had that proud moment of achievement. These are just some of the few examples. I could spend all day talking about the amazing work our schools are doing with genuine needs-based funding.

We have a large Catholic school footprint in regional Victoria. Their Doxa program is saving young people. Equally, at the other end they are giving their talented and gifted students the opportunity to participate and engage in education programs. Bendigo South East College is giving people who have a strong interest and association with defence the opportunity to partner with our local RSL to record and preserve our war veterans' stories from the Vietnam War. This was due to funding made possible through investing in teachers through the needs-based Gonski program. For our young sporting stars, we have accelerated sports programs within our state-based education system that mimic and marry what people get in the private system.

We have a government before us that will continue to fund and invest in their version of needs base, which is the very rich schools. They are not delivering for the schools most at need, like Lighting Reef, Crusoe College and Weeroona, who are trying to break the cycle of disadvantage. Education is a fundamental pillar in trying to break intergenerational poverty, and our schools can do it if they just get the right resources. Yet this government is ignoring that plea—they are scrapping genuine needs based funding and are instead going back to that old rhetoric of giving it to the schools who already are privileged and who already have significant resources.

It is not right that this government is saying to the people of Bendigo and central Victoria that Girton Grammar School, which is a very good school—excellent teachers, fantastic resources, amazing facilities—will get an extra half a million dollars in funding next year yet Lightning Reef, who cannot afford to water their oval, will get $34,000. Girton Grammar School is a brilliant school, and I have wonderful engagements and exchanges with the teachers and students at that school, but they have the opportunity, because of their school budget and their parent's capacity to pay higher fees—plus the extra money that they get from this government—to actually hire the Melbourne Theatre Company's set for Beauty and the Beast for their school production and put it on in Ulumbarra Theatre. Yet we have schools in our electorate like Castlemaine Secondary College, who cannot afford supplies for their art program. Needs based funding means putting that half a million dollars, matching that and going further for Bendigo Senior Secondary College, for Crusoe College, for Eaglehawk Secondary College.

Just because you said is needs based does not make it so. It is a con. They are misrepresenting what needs based is. Perhaps they need to go back to school to understand language, to understand education, to understand what needs based is and to understand what fairness is, because people will work it out—and very quickly. Our catholic school system is very upset. They are upset to be to receiving lectures from this government about fairness and about needs based. They deliver needs based funding to their schools, and this government could learn from them. Whilst we have one Lightning Reef only getting $34,000 but the school up the road getting half a million dollars, that is not fair. I urge the government to rethink this plan.

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

It is a pleasure to rise on the Turnbull government's Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. The amendments that the government is proposing will introduce real needs based school funding and increase the investment as part of a new initiative that will give Australian students the quality education they deserve. If the member for Bendigo wants to trade quips about education and the lack of some of the subjects that she was mentioning on our side, I would say that it always frightens me that our school system has not taught people the value of money and financial prudence. In her speech, the member for Bendigo continued to reveal that, if you do not understand where money comes from, what money is and how you pay for things, you will never be able to govern this country properly. What we have heard from her today is actually a recording of the fact that the government is increasing the amount of money we are spending on education again. In fact—and the member opposite shakes his head—the government is committing an additional $18.6 billion for Australian schools over the next decade. At the moment the case that the Labor Party is making is that $18.6 billion is not enough of an increase—that they would somehow, theoretically, increase it by much, much more. I will get to that shortly.

Of course, the one thing that the Labor Party does not talk about in this House and will not address in this debate is performance. Why is performance declining when funding is increasing? The government is growing record levels of recurrent funding. You will see $17.5 billion in this year, 2017—a record level of recurrent funding—and over the decade that will increase to $30.6 billion. That is a record increase by a Commonwealth government. It grows in real terms by 15.4 per cent over that decade. Of course, compare that to the states—their funding growth is only nine per cent. The member for Bendigo did not address that, because her Labor chardonnay socialist mates are in government in Victoria. But they are only growing state school funding by nine per cent over the decade, when the Commonwealth is growing it by 15 per cent over the decade—again, not mentioned by the Labor Party. This is money that is budgeted for, that is paid for, that is a real increase and sees a truly national model for the first time, delivering on the Gonski promise.

I am glad to see that the member for Macquarie is here. Her office is near my office and, I have to say, at the beginning of this sitting fortnight I walked in early in the morning and noticed that there was a Gonski poster in the member for Macquarie's office. I invite all members here and those listening to go past the member for Macquarie's office right now—you can walk out of here, go down the corridor and go past her office—and in the window you will see four pieces of tape where the Gonski poster used to be. There is no Gonski poster anymore. What happened between the Monday of this sitting fortnight and now? Gonski is gone-ski in the member for Macquarie's office. It is important to note that David Gonski has endorsed the government's plans, because this is truly a national model that is for the first time ripping away Labor's 27 separate agreements.

I was in this chamber, unlike, I think, both Labor members opposite, when these agreements were done. I remember the unedifying spectacle of the then Labor Prime Minister Julia Gillard running out to the states, offering them as much money as they would accept. It was not a traditional Commonwealth-state negotiation or bargaining deal. She was offering any deal she could put on the table to get them to sign it. What did the state premiers do? They all ran around and signed because the Commonwealth was offering a blank cheque. There was no money there. There was no revenue stream that could possibly ever pay for it. There was no intention of ever paying for it. Those premiers signed on to those 27 separate deals at a premium price that would never have to be accounted for by the then Prime Minister Julia Gillard or a Labor government.

Every time a Labor member stands at this dispatch box and says, 'The government is taking away this money from schools,' it is absolutely and utterly not true. You can theoretically offer any amount of money for any purpose in this Commonwealth if you have no intention of ever meeting that commitment or funding that commitment—that is really phoney money. Those opposite know that almost every school in the country is getting a substantial increase in funding over the decade. They know that it is a needs based model that we are producing—and I can point to my own electorate in this regard. My electorate does have some big non-government schools. I have only two schools losing money over the decade, and they are the biggest and perhaps the best of schools in my electorate. There are only two in my electorate that are losing money. But the most pleasing thing as the local member, who has been elected for 10 years and has worked through, as all of us do, the great challenges in helping those with disabilities and most in need, is that every single one of the schools in my electorate that specifically provides services for students with disabilities is getting not a small increase but a massive, a substantial increase over the decade. I look at that and I think: 'Here is what Gonski was talking about.'

Why would the member for Macquarie take down the Gonski poster when what David Gonski's model and his report say is that you have to provide needs based funding, and the people who need it the most are students with disabilities? It is the whole case for the taxation system; it is the whole case for government to take so much money out of people's pockets. It is to help those most in need and those with disabilities. It is starting at that point. I will speak to my electorate. In my electorate—and it will be the case in your electorate, member for Macquarie; I am happy to go through it school by school with you—those schools that help with disabilities will receive the biggest funding increase over the decade.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Speak to the bill.

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

I am speaking to the bill. The member here is really losing the plot if he thinks I am not speaking to the bill. These are schools in my electorate that are getting funding increases because of the bill before us here in the House. They will receive those funding increases as a result of this bill.

Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I don't think you've read the bill.

Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Link to 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—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Macquarie will stop interjecting.

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

at a time when revenues are declining, whether it is company tax receipts or income tax receipts, and when expenditure is a challenge. The Labor Party will not help us with that challenge either here or in the Senate. The government has cut $26 billion out of the budget since the election but, of course, had more savings stymied by the irresponsible approach of those opposite to fiscal management.

We are putting forward a bill for education that will increase education funding by $18 billion. Of course, Labor say that they want to want to do it by an almost unquantifiable amount more for every single school without the ability to attach the real money to it. I think that, when people examine this debate and they look at the individual outcome for their school, they are going to see that this government's approach meetings the expectations of the community.

We have heard a lot about the different debates in the systemic systems around the place, including in the Catholic system. I can record that certainly in my community, in Western Sydney and the Parramatta diocese—having dealt with the Parramatta diocese extensively—the system and the model for the Catholic system in Western Sydney works very well. There are not challenges in funding for the schools in Western Sydney, and the Parramatta diocese knows it. So it would be good to see if the member for Macquarie can point to a Catholic school where there has been a reduction of funds. That would be good to understand from her point of view—as she shakes her head. So please name one.

If you go to government schools, independent schools, Christian schools and the Catholic system throughout Western Sydney you will see increases in funding under this model, as you would expect from any fair model put forward by a government. So I would encourage all parents to not listen to the rhetoric of the Labor Party, who are seeking to create pure political mileage out of opposing something that they know is a substantial increase for schools, almost across the board. Even in my own electorate I find that there are only two schools that are losing money over the decade—and, indeed, they are the schools that you could point to in my electorate that have historically been the most overfunded.

I look at the endorsement from David Gonski himself. I will quote him, as the member opposite challenges my assertion. This is David Gonski:

I'm very pleased to hear that the Turnbull Government has accepted the fundamental recommendations of our 2011 report—

That is David Gonski, saying that we have accepted the fundamental recommendations of the 2011 report—

particularly regarding a needs-based situation … I'm very pleased that there is substantial additional money, even over indexation and in the foreseeable future … when we did the 2011 review, our whole concept was that there would be a school's resource standard which would be nominated and we nominated one, and I'm very pleased that the Turnbull Government has taken that.

That is not me—that is David Gonski, who presented his report. I know you are in denial about this. I know you are shaking your heads, but you can check it. That is an accurate quote. He has endorsed all of the elements of the government's plan as in line with what David Gonski recommended.

If members opposite would think about it in the real sense of what the government is trying to do, I think that is a sign that this is the right way to proceed with education funding in Australia. It will, of course, deliver a better outcome, a fairer outcome that will remove Labor's 27 separate agreements. It will certainly be welcomed by many of the sectors. I have pages and pages of endorsements, whether it be from independent Christian schools, from independent schools in general, from the Mitchell Institute, from the Grattan Institute, from the Secondary Principals' Council. There is page after page of endorsements that the government has received for its plan because it is a fair plan.

We are going to hear rhetoric from the opposition. We are going to hear some members attempt to persuade their individual schools that they are losing money, when in fact they are gaining real money. That is the purpose of the bill that the government is presenting. I think it is disingenuous for Labor members to get up and stand that this is a bad plan, when they actually know this is a good plan. The Gonski posters have come down out of the member for Macquarie's office, because they really have a problem in handling what has happened and in dealing with the challenge that David Gonski himself, who was regarded as the arbiter of what is fair and necessary for our education system, has himself endorsed the government's changes. He is a man of integrity. He would not do so without his complete and utter confidence that what the government was proposing was a national resourcing standard that he agreed to and a national needs based model that truly reflected his 2011 report.

I commend this bill to the House. I say to my electorate that I look forward to these funding increases being passed by the parliament, because it will ensure that education in my electorate, our state and our country continues to be well funded and well serviced by the Commonwealth.

Matt Keogh (Burt, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Today, like every day, I am standing up for the students, parents, teachers, principals, education assistants at schools in my electorate and across the country. People tell me regularly that they are sick of all the fighting and lies in politics. This legislation is precisely why we need to fight. It is also a shining example of the sort of lies that Australians hate.

It all started back in 2013, when the then Liberal opposition leader, the member for Warringah, said that the coalition were on the unity ticket with Labor on education funding. Come the 2014 budget, the Australian people saw the true colours of the government on education. Now, we have the weasel words of funding increases coming from the Prime Minister and his education minister. They are having trouble bringing themselves to say it, but it is clear from their own documents: the government's policy will cut over $22 billion from Australian schools over the decade. This means fewer teachers and thousands of students who will not get the benefits of specialist programs, additional in-class help, extra literacy and numeracy programs and extension for gifted and talented students. You wonder why Australians turn off politics. It is because of behaviour like this from the Turnbull government.

Today is Public Education Day. It is a day when we should be celebrating the achievements of our public education system, the hard work and dedication of our teachers, and the difference to the lives of our children that they are making. You know what? On our side, Labor does celebrate public education and all that it does to improve the lives of so many Australians through the dedicated hard work of all of those working in public education. However, today is also a sad day. Flags at every school across Australia should be at half-mast, because schools are under attack by this government. In Western Australia, the Turnbull government's new education plan will short-change WA public schools by $93 million next year and have created an alarming funding shortfall for our local schools. That is on top of what looks like $3.5 million that is going to come out of funding for our WA Catholic schools, putting upward pressure on school fees for families that are already struggling to pay them.

I want this to be very clear: the Turnbull Liberal government is asking this parliament to pass a law that will see less funding for Armadale Primary School; Armadale Senior High School; Armadale Education Support Centre; Ashburton Drive Primary School; Bletchley Park Primary School; Brookman Primary School; Caladenia Primary School; Campbell Primary School; Canning Vale College; Canning Vale Primary School; Canning Vale Education Support Centre; Cecil Andrews Senior High School; Challis Community Primary School; Clifton Hills Primary School; Excelsior Primary School; Forest Crescent Primary School; Forestdale Primary School; Gosnells Primary School; Grovelands Primary School; Gwynne Park Primary School; Gwynne Park Education Support Centre; Harrisdale Senior High School, which only just opened this year; Harrisdale Primary School; Huntingdale Primary School; Kelmscott Primary School; Kelmscott Senior High School; Kingsley Primary School; Neerigen Brook Primary School; Piara Waters Primary School; Ranford Primary School; Seaforth Primary School; South Thornlie Primary School; Southern River College; Thornlie Primary School; Thornlie Senior High School; Westfield Park Primary School; Willandra Primary School; Wirrabirra Primary School; Wirrabirra Education Support Centre; Yale Primary School; the Alta-1 College in Canning Vale; the Australian Islamic College in Thornlie; Carey Baptist College; Dale Christian School; Good Shepherd Catholic Primary School; John Calvin Christian College; John Wollaston Anglican Community School; Langford Islamic College; Sacred Heart Primary School; Southern Hills Christian College; Sowilo Community High School; St Emilies Catholic Primary School; St John Bosco College; St Jude's Catholic Primary School; St Munchin's Catholic School; Thornlie Christian College; Xavier Catholic Primary School, my alma mater; and many more surrounding schools that also educate those in my electorate. I and Labor will not let this law happen.

I am a parent and, like all parents in Burt, I want the best education for our kids. Education is fundamental to the core Australian value of a fair go. Education is critical to ensuring that every young Australian has the opportunity to reach their full potential. That is why Labor undertook the landmark review into school funding. It is why we introduced the Schooling Resourcing Standard, a sector-blind model which clearly defined the funding all schools need to deliver a great education. It was a funding model that guaranteed extra funding to give kids with poorer outcomes the extra help that they need.

Labor's funding model and the Australian Education Act 2013 enshrined the following objectives into Australian law:

… all students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach his or her full potential so that they can succeed—

That is, can achieve his or her aspirations.

… and contribute fully to their communities, now and in the future …

Make no mistake, that is what this government is walking away from. This bill proposes to remove those words, that intention and that objective from the act.

They are walking away from the targets that are also in the act, which were:

(a) to ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high quality and highly equitable education for all students by having regard to the following national targets:

(i) for Australia to be placed, by 2025, in the top 5 highest performing countries based on the performance of school students in reading, mathematics and science;

(ii) for the Australian schooling system to be considered a high quality and highly equitable schooling system by international standards by 2025;

(iii) lift the Year 12 (or equivalent) or Certificate II attainment rate to 90% by 2015;

(iv) lift the Year 12 (or equivalent) or Certificate III attainment rate to 90% by 2020;

(v) at least halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and other students, in Year 12 or equivalent attainment rates by 2020 from the baseline in 2006;

(vi) halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students, and other students, in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018 from the baseline in 2008—

That is next year. Seriously, you want to remove this? What sort of government are you?

The Liberal Party does not believe in education as a great enabler. That is clear. They do not want to guarantee the rights of every child to receive the best possible education that we can provide them. This legislation is a smokescreen, designed to try to kill a political issue for this government. But like their whole budget, it does not actually deliver on the words that they use. They say the word 'fair', but they do not do anything that is fair. They say the words 'needs based', but they do not deliver on needs. They talk about the right choices yet their priorities are all wrong, preferring tax cuts for Australia's highest earners and biggest businesses over properly funding our education system.

Those opposite have said time and time again in their speeches on this bill that if Labor proposes more funding for schools, then we need to say how we will pay for it. Well, that just shows how much attention they clearly are not giving to this issue, because Labor stands in clear opposition to the more than $30 billion of further corporate tax cuts that the government wishes to hand out to its friends—more than enough to pay for what should be one of our nation's top priorities: the proper education of our kids.

When the review of school funding recommended that all governments work together to ensure that every child has the best chance to succeed in school and in life, that is what the Labor government then did. The review said that what matters are the total resources that a school has for each and every child who walks through the school gate, not whether those resources come from the Commonwealth government or from the state government. People do not care about that issue; they just want to know that their kids are going to get the right education and that it is properly funded. That is why the Labor government worked with the states and territories to ensure that by 2019 every underfunded school would reach its fair level of funding, and in Victoria by 2022. It is very unfortunate, of course, that the then Barnett Liberal government refused to engage in those discussions with the federal government.

Labor said to those states that we would work with them to make sure that funding levels were brought up to the level that was required, and we recognised that they were working from different bases, because what was important was getting to the objective, not where we were starting. But only by working with the states and territories were we able to achieve that objective. The Prime Minister has said that does not matter anymore; it is not the total funding for schools that matters, according to this government. Make no mistake: the Prime Minister, the education minister, this Liberal government are walking away from a fundamental part of the School Resourcing Standard. They are walking back to the past when it was only a Commonwealth funding offer and did not lock in the states to keeping up their share of funding as part of the bargain.

Under what Malcolm Turnbull is proposing, some 85 per cent of public schools will not have reached their fair funding level by 2027. That is 10 years from now and eight years after they would have reached it under funding from Labor. Under their model less than 50 per cent of extra funding goes to public schools. Labor was providing 80 per cent of extra funding for public schools because we know that public schools still cater for seven out of 10 kids with a disability, seven out of 10 kids from a language background other than English, eight out of 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and around eight out of 10 kids from low-income families.

Our new funding model also had full public funding for all loadings for disadvantage so that Catholic schools and independent schools that educate kids who have extra needs would also get the extra funding that was necessary. We are very concerned that the government's funding model penalises some Catholic schools, that they will suffer real funding losses and will have to increase their fees or cut teachers and assistants at their schools. We are concerned about the inequities in this model. We support the proposal to gradually reduce funding for the 24 most overfunded schools, but we think what the government is offering is fundamentally unfair. There is no decent detail about how students who have a disability are going to be supported. I know from meeting with principals just this week how much they are concerned about this issue, and that is despite the government promising that it would fix that in the 2013 election.

For years the government has said that what matters is not money for schools but reform. Well, where is the reform package? The bill removes a commitment to deliver quality teaching and learning, to deliver school autonomy and to increase the say of principals and school communities, to deliver transparency and accountability or to deliver for students with extra needs. The government threw out the reform agreement that was in place with the states and has wasted valuable time over the last four years. And now they are saying we will have a new national agreement that will not get taken to COAG until 2018. They simply do not care about the quality learning and outcomes of kids in our schools. If they did, they would have pressed on with Labor's reform agenda. If they did, they would not be taking money out of schools, which prevents the kids from getting the extra help and support they need.

Over the next two years alone, a Labor government would have been investing about $3 billion more than the Liberals in schools, to get each and every school up to their fair share of funding. Labor will restore the $22 billion that the Liberals cut and properly fund our schools, because we believe that every child in every classroom deserves every opportunity. We want better schools, better results and better support for our great teachers. At the heart of our differences with the government lies a difference in values. Labor believes that no matter how rich or how poor your family is, where you grew up or which school you choose to go to, as a community we should make sure that everyone gets a great education. It is a promise we make to every Australian child.

In conclusion, I would like to pay tribute to all of my great teachers at the schools that I attended—St Francis Xavier's School and Mazenod College. They had to put up with me; they deserve some respects for that, and some thanks. They all know that I would not have been able to achieve the things that I have achieved, or be standing in this place, without their great help and dedication. And I pay tribute to my family of teachers—my mum, Helen, my brother, John, and my sister, Jacqui—who are doing great work in teaching the next generation of fine young Australians. And I pay tribute to my friends who are teachers, who have given me a great exposure to understanding the great work and the hardship that goes into making sure we can deliver a great education to young Australians. There are many of them but, in particular, I want to give a shout out to Gerrard, Anne-Marie, Cathy, Lisa and Sarah. Sorry, I am running out of time, so I cannot list any more.

I support the amendment but I very much oppose this legislation and the government's cuts to funding to our schools.

Rowan Ramsey (Grey, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This bill—the bill, not the amendment—should be greeted with nothing but acclaim in this parliament; it ticks all the boxes. Sadly, Labor members come in here bleating about non-existent cuts to non-existent funding. The funding that the Labor Party promised under Julia Gillard was virtual funding; it was the funding you have when you do not have funding. Remember that ad for Claytons, 'the drink you have when you're not having a drink'? Well, the Labor Party did not know where this funding was coming from; it did not exist.

So why are the Labor Party so upset? Why do they come in here all bitter and twisted? They are upset because, on a range of subjects, the government continues to do what they could not do. We have delivered tax cuts. They used to support tax cuts for businesses. We delivered them and now, of course, they oppose them. We delivered a free and independent Fair Work Commission. Fair Work Australia—remember that? The Leader of the Opposition told the Liberal Party to keep its hands off Fair Work Australia. And yet, when it came to the penalty rates decision, the member for Maribyrnong says, 'You Liberals must now interfere with the Fair Work Commission.'

We have established a naval shipbuilding industry in an area where they could not lodge one order for six years—and that is why we have a 'valley of death' that this government is dealing with as effectively and quickly as we can in the naval shipbuilding industry. We have delivered tax cuts for small and medium businesses. That is something they used to support. We have fully funded the NDIS. That is something they once espoused they would do. And now they will not reach across the chamber to assist us to do exactly what they did to fund the first half of the NDIS, and that is raise the Medicare rate.

Up until now, Labor has supported a true needs-based school funding policy. And of course we have delivered that—the true Gonski. But they no longer support that either. In fact, they support a system that has 27 different deals. That is not needs-based funding; that is political expediency. And Australians hate it. They try to convince Australians that the $18.6 billion extra that this government is allocating for education is not an increase but a cut! It is preposterous. And they hark back to the virtual $22 billion—the $22 billion that you have when you are not having $22 billion. Labor's contribution to the Gonski plan was to announce a six-year program, backloading the contribution, backloading the final two years, which were beyond the forward estimates. There was not much in the first four years, but beyond that point they said, 'The rivers of gold will suddenly materialise and we don't know where they will come from.' That policy had fairies at the bottom of the garden about it.

The reforms in this bill deliver to the Australian education system the true Gonski—the full Gonski, if you like, but I like to call it the true Gonski. How do we know it is the true Gonski? We know it is the true Gonski because it is endorsed by none other than David Gonski. It is true needs based funding, not based on 27 different funding models, not based on secret deals but based on a totally transparent system where every school, every student and every parent can look up their school and find out how much money it is receiving. Over the next 10 years—over the next 12 months—it is a considerable amount extra for all but about 24 schools in Australia.

Very importantly, this legislation locks in the proportion of Commonwealth contributions over the next decade, and it is rising. For independent and Catholic schools, the federal government contribution will rise to 80 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard, up from the current 77 per cent. The reason for the different accelerator factors in different schools and different schooling systems is that they are coming off different bases, and we are heading for an even platform.

The Catholic sector has been voicing some concerns, highlighting the fact that their rate of increase over the next 10 years is not as high as that of the independent sector, but that is because they are currently funded at a higher level, nationally, on average, than the independent sector. As we move to an even funding platform, it is absolutely unavoidable that the independent sector's rate of increase will have to rise, in percentage terms, faster than that of the Catholic sector, until we reach the point where all non-government schools are funded at the same level—that is, at 80 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard from the federal government.

Most importantly, for the majority of students, including in my electorate of Grey, who are in the non-government school sector, the rate of SRS will increase from 17 per cent to 20 per cent. Over the next 10 years that will come in equal instalments, and that is very important. So there is not a frontloading for the first four years or a backloading for the last six years or whatever it might be that the Labor Party concocted. This is a simple, step-by-step 10-year progression, fully predictable, fully anticipated by the schools. It is a huge increase. The federal share of SRS funding to these schools increased from 8.9 per cent in 2005-06 to 13.4 per cent in 2013-14. This year that figure will rise to 17 per cent, and by 2027 we will be funding 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard. This mechanism will ensure that all schools will end up on the same platform. We remind ourselves that state schools are owned and operated by the states.

Over the next 10 years, there will increase of 94.1 per cent or $6.4 billion in funding to the state school system—a new record amount in real terms every year. For non-government schools there will be an increase of 62.2 per cent or $6.7 billion. This is a huge extra investment in tomorrow's generation. There will no longer be any room for defenders of the education system to sheet home the failure to educate students to a lack of finance. This level of funding ensures that every child in Australia should have the opportunity to reach a good standard of education. Whether or not they achieve it will be determined by other factors in the education system.

I have looked at the schools of Grey, and every one of the over 130 schools is a winner. They are all better off this year, next year and for every year for the next 10 years—record funding every year. Take Ceduna Area School, for instance. This year it will receive $2.398 million. Next year, an extra $136,000. By 2027 a total of $31 million extra is going to the Ceduna Area School, taking their per-student assistance from $4,164 to $7,184. This is the 20 per cent contribution that the state is making to Ceduna Area School.

At John Pirie Secondary School in Port Pirie, this year they receive $2.137 million from the Commonwealth; Next year, an extra $129,000; and by 2027 a total of $29.38 million, or an extra $8 million over business as normal. Per student, they go from $3,518 to $6.070.

Let's look at a small primary school. Let's take Wirrabara, with 54 students. This year, they receive $163,000 from the Commonwealth. Next year they will receive an extra $9,800, and by 2027 they will have received an extra $611,000, and per-student will have been lifted from $3,023 to $5,216. These are very significant increases for government schools, and they lock this solid platform in.

I would also like to look at some schools in the non-government sector. Going through my list, I find that the schools that most need the help will get it. I recognise that some in the Catholic sector have taken issue with the model and are concerned that their low-fee schools will not receive as much money as they would hope. In this case, I have taken the opportunity to look at St Joseph's in Peterborough. It is a small Catholic primary school with 52 students. I point out that Peterborough is the lowest socioeconomic status community in my electorate of Grey outside the remote Indigenous communities. This is, essentially, the poorest town in the electorate. Next year St Joseph's will get an increase of $36,600, or an extra $620 per student. Even better, over the next 10 years the total increase is $2.17 million. On a per-student basis they will go from $16,075 to $23,057. This is a very clear example of the needs based formula at work. This, the most needy of communities, will get a very large premium over the less needy communities, the communities with more. It is an absolute graphic demonstration of the needs based formula at work.

A part from just a few—24 to be exact—extremely wealthy schools across the nation, every school is either no worse off or better off, and most by a great deal. That is certainly the case in the electorate of Grey, where every school is better off. So the non-government sector is pretty happy as well.

Just as a point of demonstration, I have been in parliament now for a little over 9½ years. At times when governments have announced policies that they have had to retreat from later, normally my phone is running hot. Whether it was when we were in opposition and the Labor Party may have got a couple of policy calls wrong—that happened on more than one occasion, as I recall—or when we have been in government and we have made decisions that people are really unhappy about, my phone runs hot. I have not yet received one call from a dissatisfied school—not one. No-one has initiated contact with me to complain about the funding future that is put in front of them. That demonstrates to me that they are all pretty happy.

We have hit the button on this. We have a number of sectors that have come out and expressed their support. The only people we can find who do not support this are those who sit on the other side and their bedfellows, the AEU, who are funding advertisements on our televisions telling people what a terrible job this government is doing. They have no other backers. They are on their own. This is a purely political argument that is brought to this place by those on the other side. It is disgraceful. Those opposite got what they want and the schools have got what they want. We have a true needs-based formula for true needs-based funding, and we have set in place a mechanism that will bring the entire sector level within 10 years. It is something those opposite should warmly endorse.

Even better, Mr Deputy Speaker—sadly, I have to say I have run out of time. I will have to tell you what is even better later on. (Time expired)

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're not serious, are you?

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're selling visas.

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The industry is the selling of visas!

Bob Katter (Kennedy, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The industry is the selling of visas!

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Kennedy will stop being himself!

Darren Chester (Gippsland, National Party, Deputy Leader of the House) Share this | Link to 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.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

I note the interjections. Claiming there is a cut is a bit like going to your boss and saying, 'Boss, I want a $100 pay rise,' and your boss saying, 'I can't afford $100 but I will give you a $75 pay rise.' So you have actually had a pay rise but you claim it as a cut. It is bizarre. Funding is going up year on year on year. Those opposite are making unsubstantiated claims and false promises to their communities.

Some older students will listen to these debates in parliament and watch the news and read posts on Facebook and see orchestrated campaigns from the likes of the Labor front GetUp! and some may actually believe what they read or hear: that there are cuts to education, despite the funding going up each year. This will affect a student's state of mind. It affects their confidence in the school system, and that is not fair. It is not fair of Labor to be scaring people and scaring families unnecessarily. It is not fair for Labor to play politics with the lives of students purely for political expediency. But, sadly, this is a growing trend within the Labor Party. This win at any cost no matter what the collateral damage may be type of approach is part of Labor's deficit of trust in the community.

In conclusion, I want to refer to an editorial in The Agenot known as a great supporter of the coalition or our side of politics, the old Melbourne Age. But in this edition yesterday, relating to the coalition's education reforms, The Age editorialised:

We believe the policy presented in recent days by the Coalition government, a package being referred to as Gonski 2.0, is a good compromise – and is the best chance our nation has of moving to a needs-based funding model.

Opposition members interjecting—

I am shattered to hear the members opposite disagreeing now that they have backed away from their claims of a cut and they are saying there is something wrong with doing a compromise. The Age also noted that opposition leader Bill Shorten's stance suffered a 'credibility deficit'. Mr Shorten, the Leader of the Opposition, claims he would spend $22 billion more than the increases which the coalition has actually budgeted for. Unfortunately for those opposite, they have not budgeted for it. Years 5 and 6 of Gonski—2018-19, which contained even higher leaps in funding—were never funded by Labor, and those opposite know that. Labor is simply spending money it knows it does not have. Nor has it any realistic hope of raising it without higher taxes or making cuts in other areas.

Those opposite will have the chance to speak during the continuation of this debate. I am quite happy for them to come in here and explain which taxes are going to increase or which cuts they are going to make to pay for their unfunded $22 billion. I am quite happy for them to come in here and explain it. I think what you will find, Mr Deputy Speaker, is not one of them will actually have a plan for how they are going to fund their unrealistic approach to this debate. It is not fair to the families, it is not fair to the students for Labor to be raising false hope and making false claims.

Our position is completely transparent. We being honest, absolutely, with the Australian people about our education reforms. That is why, as I said earlier, I encourage all parents to hear from both sides of the debate, listen to the details and avail themselves of all the facts. From that point on we can have a well-informed opinion on these reforms that will deliver record funding for all schools in my electorate and provide a real needs-based funding model to the students who need it most.

I thank the House.

Mike Freelander (Macarthur, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I do encourage parents in our electorates to listen to both sides of the debate. Education is very important to me and my family. I cannot claim a public school education, but this is not about pitting one school against another. There are over 80 schools in my electorate from all sectors—public, private, Catholic, et cetera. I have visited every school in my electorate over the last 34 years. We have some special schools for kids with disabilities. Some schools are high-fee-paying private schools. We have some of the most disadvantaged schools in New South Wales.

There is no greater factor in society that enhances social mobility than education. For a child who has received a proper education, the sky is the limit. Knowledge is the most valuable resource in our society. It is the most valuable gift we can give our children. But Australia has an unequal education system when looking at other advanced nations. And I see that myself.

My colleague the member for Fenner gave a speech a few months ago where he talked about educational inequality—the gap between students in the top 10th of performers and students in the bottom 10th of performers. This is an area where, demonstrably, Australia does very poorly. As the member for Fenner said in his speech, the top 10th of Australian students are doing very well. You can send them to any advance nation in the world and, as long as they know the language, they will hold their own amongst the best students. However, in very stark contrast, the bottom 10th, Australia's lowest-performing students, are well below the average in any advanced country. In fact, they are on a par with nations such as Brazil, Indonesia and the Dominican Republic.

Australia is failing too many of its students. As in many parts of Australian society, we are seeing our egalitarian roots fall to the wayside while the gap between rich and poor grows. We know for a fact that the gap in educational inequality has been shown to correlate strongly with income inequality. This correlation between educational inequality and income inequality drastically limits the opportunities education can provide for many of the most disadvantaged students in Australia.

The only way to address the vast issue of educational equality is a needs based funding system. I think there is general agreement on that. This is why Labor created a policy that was not trying to pit one school against another but instead looked where the need was and ensured there was enough funding for every school to provide excellent education for all students. Labor understands that it is wrong when the quality of a child's education is determined by their postcode. Labor understands that every child has different needs in a classroom, and some need more supports than others. This is why, after undertaking a landmark review into school funding and introducing a Schooling Resource Standard, Labor introduced a six-year funding model that provided a base level of funding so every child could receive a high-quality education, with additional funding for students with poorer outcomes to give them the extra help that they need.

I saw the benefits of that policy developing in every school I visited in my electorate in the last three or four years. This was a policy that led the then Prime Minister, the honourable member for Warringah, to come out in the 2013 election and say that the Labor Party and the coalition were on a joint ticket when it came to the school funding model. All it took was an election win for the coalition and the member for Warringah quickly backtracked, coming out with the travesty that was the 2014 budget and not funding the final two years of Labor's school funding model, which he had previously committed to—a disgrace. Now we have the member for Wentworth, with a little help from his friend, and the member for Cook come out in this budget and say that they will reinstate some—I emphasise 'some'—of the funding required for the last two years of Labor's needs based funding model. And, for that, they believe they should be congratulated. Disgraceful. I can assure the House that the students, parents and teachers in my electorate will not be jumping to congratulate the member for Wentworth and the member for Cook. They are more worried about the over $25 million that will be lost from schools in Macarthur.

The bill being introduced by this government represents $22 billion in cuts to education across the country, and no-one is grateful for that. As a paediatrician who has seen over 200,000 children in and around Macarthur, I have got to know the schools in my electorate very well. I will give a few examples of where the coalition government is cutting funding in Macarthur. Campbelltown Performing Arts High School, one of the largest high schools in the area, caters for a wide diversity of students. Many are in a selective stream and many participate in the performing arts, but there are also many students with learning difficulties. This school will lose $1.276 million over the next two years. Ambarvale High School draws students from a combination of department of housing and private housing, mainly from the four surrounding suburbs of Rosemeadow, Ambarvale, St Helens Park and Appin, soon to be massively developed. The school has a large Aboriginal and Pacific Islander population, as well as a strong support unit for children with mild to moderate intellectual disability—many of them my patients. This school will lose about $1.2 million over the next two years. Rosemeadow Public School, a large primary school with a number of support classes, deals with children with a variety of learning problems and some of these children come from very disadvantaged families. This school will lose $1.14 million over the next two years.

Airds High School, a very disadvantaged high school in the middle of the suburb of Airds, made up of department of housing accommodation, has a large Aboriginal and Pacific Islander population and a large number of children with disabilities. A large number of single parent families live in Airds, and the school is just across the road from the Reiby detention centre—a detention centre for juveniles charged with serious crimes. It has support classes for children with both mild and moderate intellectual disabilities, and it serves one of the most disadvantaged postcodes in the state of New South Wales. This school will lose just over $1 million. Eagle Vale High School borders Claymore, a suburb primarily made up of department of housing accommodation. The school also has many students from private housing areas in the suburbs of Eagle Vale, St Andrews and Raby. The school services a large Pacific Islander population and has children with high educational support needs. This school will lose about $990,000 over the next two years. Sarah Redfern High School, a school located in the suburb of Minto, which once again services a mixture of private and department of housing accommodation, has support classes for children with mild and moderate intellectual disabilities and a variety of other disabilities including autism. It is attached to a primary school, with a similar population of students, and an SSP school, a special school, called Passfield Park, for children with severe intellectual disabilities

This school, Sarah Redfern, will lose $960,000 in the next two years, and Passfield Park will lose $125,000 over the next two years. Blairmount Public School serves the suburbs of Blairmount and Claymore, which as I have previously stated is primarily made up of department of housing accommodation. It has a large number of students with learning difficulties that and it will lose $980,000 over the next two years. Briar Road Public School is a school in the suburb of Airds. I have been to it many times for case conferences. It is right next door to Reiby detention centre. It is a very disadvantaged school which has classes with students with a number of difficulties including autism and mild and moderate intellectual disability. This school will lose $919,000.

The electorate of Macarthur is a very diverse electorate with nearly 29,000 students—one of the highest school enrolments in the country. As I have mentioned previously, there are over 80 schools in the electorate. We have a large number of students of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander origin. We have many families who have come from New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, the Philippines, Bangladesh et cetera. We have many families who come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and many student who have lived a life of disadvantage. We have many children with learning difficulties and disabilities who attend both mainstream schools and special needs schools. Labor, unlike the coalition, understands the diversity of schools like those in Macarthur. That is why we are providing 80 per cent extra funding for public schools: because many public schools, especially the ones in my electorate, cater for seven out of 10 kids with disabilities, seven out of 10 kids with a language background other than English, eight out of 10 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and eight out of 10 Pacific Islander students. The schools that I have previously mentioned are schools that are already drastically underfunded and disadvantaged. You only have to visit the schools to see how far behind some of the best schools that I have seen in Australia they are.

These students need a decent education, and we need to give significant attention to these schools to be able to provide this world-class education for everyone. We are talking about classrooms that can have almost 40 students to one teacher. We are talking about students who are forced to share one outdated textbook amongst many because the funding is not available to buy new ones. We are talking about schools that have rusting sports equipment, deteriorating toilets, a lack of exercise facilities et cetera. I can assure the Prime Minister that many of the schools in my electorate are far from the palace-like education institution that both he and I attended. Cuts in funding of over $1 million to some of the schools in my electorate are going to be felt, and it is our students who are going to be hurt by it. The Prime Minister just does not seem to understand. He is fine with students continuing to miss out because of a lack of funding. He does not want Australia to be leading the world in educational outcomes. Earlier in my speech, I spoke about Australia's big issue around educational inequality. Is was understanding this huge gap in Australia's education system that pushed the Labor Party to come up with a system that would raise the educational attainment of the bottom performers in Australian schools. That is why we had the inquiry into the best education we can provide for our students: because it is undeniable that we are falling behind the rest of the developed world—particularly for those students in the bottom 10 or 15 per cent.

The bill that the Liberal Party has put before the parliament walks away from the targets that were set out by the Labor Party in the current act. These targets are: for Australia to be placed by 2025 in the top five highest performing countries, based on the performance of school students in reading, mathematics and science; for the Australian schooling system to be considered a high-quality and highly equitable schooling system by international standards by 2015-16; lift the year 12 or certificate II attainment rate to 90 per cent by 2015-16 and lift the year 12 or equivalent certificate III attainment rate to 90 per cent by 2020; at least halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in year 12 or equivalent attainment rates by 2020; and halve the gap between Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students and other students in reading, writing and numeracy by 2018 from a baseline in 2008. By walking away from this target, the Prime Minister and Treasurer are walking away from fair schooling for all, and this is something that is very important to me. Everyone should have access to the best possible education that Australia can provide for. We are a wealthy country and it is undeniable that we have been failing in our duty in the last 20 years. We need to improve our educational funding for every student that we possibly can.

I have a list here of about half of the schools in my electorate. They will all be losing funding from this federal government by the figures that were originally agreed to in 2014. I think it is a great shame and something that I do not want to see happen. I think the government needs to rethink its educational policy to provide the best education it can for those students who really needed. I myself will be doing all I can to visit the schools in my electorate over the next few weeks to see how they are going to cope with these funding cuts. I thank you all for your time, and I hope that we can see a better educational outcome for all Australian students.

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am delighted to be able to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017, because it certainly is most pleasing to have an education policy in this country that is actually funded. It is an important part of the equation. It is one thing to have a policy, but the Labor Party had a policy that was nothing more than a mirage—the education mirage—that was unfunded, and they had no intention of ever paying for it or ever delivering it. That is not a policy; it is nothing more than a mirage. It was a huge confidence trick on the Australian people. They put out a policy that has a schedule of payments and when the real heavy lifting has to be done, it is not the budget. It is a policy that was never budgeted and there was never any intention to implement it.

The Australian people are smarter than that; they certainly are smarter than that. They have woken up to the fact that the Australian Labor Party did not budget for their so-called education policy in any budget document. It was out there in the ether. You can imagine Prime Minister Gillard going down to the supermarket with an arm full of groceries. She comes up to the check-out and she bolts out saying, 'The person behind me in the queue is going to pay for it.' That is the coalition. We are the ones who followed them on and it is our responsibility to deliver an education policy that is transparent, that is needs based and, very importantly, that is actually funded. There is $18.6 billion in additional investment in education over the next 10 years.

I am delighted to advise the House that—despite hearing member after member saying that this particular school's funding is going to be cut and that particular school's funding is going to be cut—I can say categorically to the people who I represent that every school in the electorate of Cowper will receive increased funding over the next 10 years. That is a very important point. Unlike Labor's unfunded mirage, every school in the electorate of Cowper will receive increased funding—and it is real money. It is budgeted for. It is affordable. That is as opposed to Labor Party, who are doing nothing more than attempting to mislead. I heard the member for Adelaide, the so-called shadow education minister, at press conference after press conference decrying the coalition's position on education. When she was asked, 'Well, are you going to deliver on the funding?' She said, 'Well, it's not for us to do. We're in opposition.' They are in opposition. We want to keep them there.

As I said, every school in the electorate of Cowper is going to receive an increase in funding. Whether you live in Coffs Harbour, whether live in Port Macquarie or whether you live in Bellingen, Dorrigo, South West Rocks or Urunga, if you live in the election of Cowper and your children go to school, there will be increased resources to assist them in their education. That is funding that is delivered under a transparent formula, funding that is delivered to those schools that are most in need and funding that is absolutely appropriate to the 21st century.

I would just like to quote a few examples to the people of my electorate as to the sorts of funding increases that are going to be provided. Let us take in the Kempsey Shire: Kempsey Adventist School is getting an additional $18.1 million and South West Rocks Public School is getting $2.5 million. Macleay Vocational College, a school that does great work providing an education for kids who are facing very severe learning challenges, will get an additional $19.6 million over 10 years. In the Port Macquarie area, St Columba Anglican School will get an additional $23.5 million. Westport Public School will get an additional $2.9 million and Hastings Public School will get an additional $5.1 million.

In Bellingen Shire, Bellingen Public School will get an extra $3.2 million. That does not sound like a cut to me. St Mary's Primary will get an additional $3 million. Dorrigo High will get $2 million in extra funding. That does not sound like a cut to me. In Nambucca, Macksville High will get an extra $6.3 million. Nambucca Heads Public School will get an extra $2.4 million and St Patrick's Primary School will get an extra $6.9 million. I certainly welcomed the opportunity to call into St Patrick's on my charity ride. The children welcomed me as I rode in, and the band was playing. It was a great day when I visited St Patrick's in December last year.

In the Coffs Harbour area, Orara High School will get an additional $6.5 million. John Paul College will get an additional $26.5 million and Coffs Harbour High will get an additional $9.3 million. This is real money. This is funded. These are real increases. They take into account increases in enrolment. They take into account increases in need. These are very important funding figures, and they debunk the myth spread by members opposite that school funding is going to be cut.

But we on this side of the House know it is just not about the money. Funding is very important indeed; that is why we are providing extra funding. We are not providing a mirage; this money is real; this money is budgeted. It is how you spend the money that is important. In recent years, despite increased funding, we have seen educational outcomes declining. That is why the government is absolutely focused on putting in place policies that are going to improve educational outcomes over and above merely increasing funding. I draw to the attention of the House the government's policy 'Quality Schools, Quality Outcomes'. We are looking at a range of areas to improve learning performance such as strengthening teaching and school leadership, developing essential knowledge and skills, improving student participation and parental engagement—it is very important to have the school community engaged in the activities of the school—and building better evidence and transparency. Our key reforms include year 1 phonics and literacy assessment to assist in early identification and intervention. There will be initiatives to keep our best teachers in the classroom—and nothing affects the outcomes in the classroom more than the quality of the teachers we retain and the quality of the teachers we attract. There will be reforms to strengthen literacy and STEM skills such as requiring minimum literacy and numeracy standards for school leavers and ensuring that English or humanities, and maths and a science subject, are studied to get an ATAR. These are important reforms. They are not financial reforms but they go to the heart of improving the educational outcomes that young people will receive. We are very focused on the importance of STEM. If we are to be an innovative nation going forward, we have to have young people with the skills that are required in the 21st century.

Looking at teaching and school leadership, we want to see improved career and professional capabilities for teachers aligned with professional standards for teachers, national teacher registration and professional learning. There will be certification for new principals. There are targets for STEM qualified teachers and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander teachers. Australian professional standards for teachers will underpin teacher workforce policies. We will establish incentives to attract and retain experienced leaders and high-performing teachers in disadvantaged schools and schools with a high proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander students. We want to increase the supply of language teachers—so important in a world that is becoming more international every day. We want to include literacy and numeracy as an area of specialisation for primary school teacher training. We want to ensure that teachers use a range of strategies, including explicit literacy and numeracy instruction.

We have a very broad policy canvas, as it were. We are looking at the issue of funding and we are providing the funding that is required. This is very much what Mr Gonski was seeking. We have actually delivered Gonski; Labor delivered nothing more than a mirage. They delivered nothing more than a mirage. There were lots of green posters and lots of Teachers Federation people protesting outside their offices. Rather than investing in professional development, they were out there protesting with their green banners. We are delivering the funding. We are delivering a strategy that is going to improve student outcomes and deliver better outcomes for our young people.

I do recall the contribution by the member for Bendigo. Mr Deputy Speaker, you can always depend on the good old member for Bendigo to say something a little bit unusual. There she was, carping on about schools in her electorate losing money. Where are they? She was talking about Bendigo Senior Secondary College, Holy Rosary School and Weeroona College losing money. So she claimed. The fact is this: all of those schools are going to get an increase in funding in 2018. They are all going to see increased funding. The member for Bendigo was having a lend of her constituents falsely claiming that the schools were going to be cutting funding when, in fact, under our proposals every school—every school in my electorate, certainly—is receiving an increase of funding. Similarly, the schools in the electorate of Bendigo are going to receive an increase in funding.

This is a very important debate indeed. I was so delighted to watch the press conference where the Minister for Education was discussing these reforms. The Prime Minister was there and David Gonski was there. It was great to see him there. I can imagine the members opposite would be wondering, 'How are we going to fabricate something now to mislead the Australian people?' when Mr Gonski himself was there with the Minister for Education and the Prime Minister, advocating the advantages and benefits of the proposals we have outlined. There is $18.6 billion, a massive increase in funding. The funding will be combined with a range of other measures with a strong focus on teacher quality and a strong focus on retaining teachers in the system. These are very worthwhile reforms indeed. I am delighted to be able to stand here in this debate to say to my constituents: you can be assured that if your child is attending a school in the electorate of Cowper there will be increased resources available for that child to ensure that child gets the education he or she needs to ensure that they are competitive in the job market into the future.

I will bring my contribution to a close now. I think I have made the point very strongly that we have a funded policy. It is compared to a mirage from those opposite, the greatest confidence trick in Australian political history. It is like the NDIS; they had the same funding model, they pushed all the expenditure out into the future, they pushed the expenditure off the budget and they left it to the next person in the queue to deliver.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

Russell Broadbent (McMillan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

If members could be quiet!

Luke Hartsuyker (Cowper, National Party, Assistant Minister to the Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

We are about high quality education. We are about bringing the budget into surplus. We are about delivering education with additional funding that is appropriate so that we can continue that funding into the future.

Pat Conroy (Shortland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

What a ridiculous contribution from the member for Cowper! He is a member of the government. The analogy I like to use is: the government has robbed $30 from people and returned $8 and now they expect us to be grateful. They rob $30 and return $8 and expect us to be grateful that they now only owe us $22. The sad truth is that they are robbing the future of our kids with this policy. They are denying our kids and our grandkids the best possible education and the best possible start in life. That is why I am proud to rise today and talk about the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 and to join with my Labor colleagues in highlighting the Liberal-National coalition's total abandonment of the needs-based school funding that was the goal of the Gonski model.

Australians know that there is only one major party committed to needs based funding, and that is the great Australian Labor Party. Australian parents and grandparents in communities know that they have been blatantly deceived by the coalition regarding education funding. We were told before the 2013 election that Australians could vote Labor or Liberal and they would still get the same outcome regarding funding for schools. In fact, the quote used was that there was not a cigarette paper's worth of difference between the two parties. What a complete lie! What an utter mistruth! It is Australian students and communities that are paying the price for this.

The 2014 budget was proof positive that the coalition has abandoned this commitment. This legislation is further evidence of the Liberal's and National's complete disregard of needs based school funding, and their disgusting disregard for the power of a quality education to enable our youth to contribute to our society and to our economy.

Let there be no mistaking what this bill does: it cuts $22 billion from Australian schools over the next decade. But do not rely on my word—heaven forbid! Do not take my word for it, or the word of anyone from the Labor Party; take the word of the government's own documents. Documents that the government released and distributed to journalists said that this policy announcement constitutes a $22 billion saving against the 2016 election policy of the Labor Party in their 2013 agreement with the state governments and school systems. This was a $22 billion cut by them, out of their own mouths. They are effectively saying that they lied in that document, and I do not believe that. It is one of the very few times that I actually believe this government told the truth. Maybe it was an accident, but they actually told the truth when they admitted publicly that they cut $22 billion through this election education announcement.

On average, this represents a cut of $2.4 million for every school around the country. Most significantly, the bill removes the extra funding agreed with the states and territories for 2018 and 2019, which would have brought all underresourced schools to their fair funding level. Of course, this was the aim of Labor's reforms.

My colleagues and I are particularly concerned about the impact on public schools that this legislation will have, if passed. Public schools will receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the Liberal's proposal, compared to 80 per cent of the extra funding in Labor's plan. This is one of the mistruths out there, that somehow the Labor Party is standing up for rich private schools or that somehow Labor does not care for public schools. Let me repeat this fact: our fully-funded plan would have 80 per cent of the extra funding going to public schools. Their dog of a policy delivers less than 50 per cent to public schools. The real betrayer of public schools in this debate is the coalition. The coalition stands for less funding for public schools. The most basic fact is this: the government's gigantic cuts will result in fewer teachers and less personal attention for our most disadvantaged students.

I am proud to be part of a political party and a movement committed to education as the great enabler in ensuring economic growth, prosperity and social justice. The current Australian Education Act 2013 enshrines this noble objective. The act states:

All students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach his or her full potential so that he or she can succeed, achieve his or her aspirations, and contribute fully to his or her community, now and in the future.

This statement so clearly demonstrates the commitment to a fair go for everyone—the Australian value of a fair go. It is a damning indictment on the Liberal and National parties that they are actually removing this commitment from the words of this act.

They are also walking away from this target in the current act:

… to ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high quality and highly equitable education for all students …

What kind of sick and depraved legislators would abandon a commitment to high-quality and equitable education for Australian children? Australians know the answer to this: those who sit on the government benches.

Before addressing the impacts these cuts will have on my electorate, I want to emphasise the significance of the funding reduction and what the government's focus is on. At the same time as cutting $22 billion from schools, denying extra support for children with disability, Indigenous children and children with learning difficulties, this government is giving a $65 billion tax cut to their big business friends who fund the Liberal Party. The government is also totally misleading in saying that they are introducing a levy on the big four banks, because at the same time they are giving a massive tax cut to those same banks.

I agree with the Prime Minister and the Treasurer when they say that the budget is about priorities, but their radical right-wing priorities are wrong for Australia. Australians want investment in schools, Medicare and infrastructure, not a huge giveaway to the big end of town. This is what this debate is about; it is about priorities—funding education on the one hand or a $65.4 billion cut for big business. This is what this debate is about.

Mark Coulton (Parkes, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The debate is interrupted in accordance with standing order 43. The debate may be resumed at a later hour and the member for Shortland will have an opportunity to continue his contribution at that time.