Teresa Gambaro (Brisbane, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Citizenship and Settlement) Share this | Hansard source

I can advise the coalition will not be opposing this motion. I agree with most of the context and the sentiments expressed in the motion, as put forward by the member for Kingston, especially sections 1, 2 and 3 which thank Mr Gonski for recognising the power of education over the lives of our children and express support for some of the principles that came out of the Gonski review.

At the onset, I express my pride in representing an electorate that contains some of the most distinguished public, independent and Catholic schools in Queensland. The list is far too long to give, but I specifically mention New Farm State School led by principal Carmel McGrath. The school has produced outstanding results in recent years and is the winner of my annual literacy competition in the primary school category this year. Well done to New Farm State School. Out of the four winners and runners-up, two are from All Hallows' Catholic School, my old school, and one each from Oakleigh State School and New Farm State School. Through this competition I have witnessed first-hand the extraordinary writing talent of some of Brisbane's best and brightest young students. I am amazed by the intellectual capacity of these young individuals who represent the future of this great nation of ours.

It is interesting we are debating this motion as the Australian Education Bill is commencing its passage through the House of Representatives. The Australian Education Bill contains nine pages and 1,400 words. It sets out aspirational goals and essentially achieves the same thing as this motion. They both express the aspirations and the views of the parliament, but they contain no detail. Because of the issue the government has with Gonski, it has not released any detail, so we do not know where the money is coming from and the government cannot outline how individual schools will be affected.

It is all very well introducing bills and motions outlining principles and outlining goals that we are going to strive for, but the reality of the situation is that unless you know exactly, and unless you outline exactly, how the reform is going to be delivered and implemented then the talk will amount to absolutely zilch—nothing. Part 3 of the motion states:

(3) supports the principles emerging from this review which have been incorporated into the Government’s National Plan for School Improvement, including the need to deliver;

(a) a fairer school funding system based on the needs of every student in every classroom;

(b) more support for schools and students who need it most;

(c) quality teaching in every classroom;

(d) more power in the hands of school principals; and

(e) more information about school performance for parents and the community …

I do not think you will find any members of this House who will disagree with those principles. As members of parliament and as leaders in our communities, of course we agree with those sentiments. Who wouldn't? But the devil, as always, is in the detail. How are we going to make sure that those principles equate to action and ground and real change in our schools?

The coalition believe that the current quantum of funds for every school and indexation must be the basic starting point arising from any funding model. No school should lose funding as a result of a new funding model. The coalition also have our own set of principles that outline our values for schooling, including that families have the right to choose which school meets their needs, their values and their beliefs; that all children must have access and opportunity to a quality education; that student funding needs to be based on fair, objective and transparent criteria distributed according to socioeconomic need; that students with similar needs must be treated comparably throughout the course of their schooling; that as many decisions as possible should be made locally, right on the ground, by parents, communities, principals, teachers, schools and school systems—school sectors, school systems, must be accountable to their communities, families and students; and every Australian student must be entitled to a basic grant from the Commonwealth government; and that schools and parents must have a high degree of certainty about school funding so they can plan for the future and not be hit with any surprises.

Parents who wish to make a private contribution towards the cost of their children's education should not be penalised, and nor should schools in their efforts to fundraise and encourage private investment. Funding arrangements must be simple so that schools are able to direct funding towards education outcomes, minimise administration costs and increase productivity and quality.

Let me assure this House that I will fight every day to ensure that not one school in my electorate of Brisbane is worse off as a result of the changes made to education funding. I make this commitment to teachers and to parents of my electorate. Not one school will lose a dollar of funding in real terms under a coalition government—not one school. This is the commitment that I can give to every constituent. I would call on the Labor Party to make that very same commitment.

As we know, the review panel chaired by David Gonski handed the final report on schooling to the government in December 2011. The main recommendation was to implement a new funding model, at an additional cost to all government areas of $6.5 billion per year. The panel's original proposal was that the Commonwealth and the states split the cost of introducing the model on a 30 to 70 basis, and that would require each government to lift their existing expenditure in school education by approximately 15 per cent.

Dozens of technical issues arose once the panel's model was tested by the government. Both the National Catholic Education Commission and the Independent Schools Council of Australia reported serious anomalies. Leaked modelling in August 2012 revealed that approximately a third of all schools, both government and non-government, would lose funding. The coalition has consistently maintained that any new funding model introduced by the government should see no school left worse off in real terms.

The government has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on consultants to redesign various aspects of the Gonski panel's original proposal for a funding model since the report was handed to the government in 2011. None of that modelling has ever been made public by the Gillard government and no formal response was ever provided by the government to each of the panel's 41 recommendations. We have seen various state education ministers, both Labor and coalition, continue to complain that none of this detail—and it is very important detail: it is a huge reform—has been provided. You would think that you would provide some detail, or that there would be some basis, some costings, or some sort of direction on how you are going to implement this once-in-a-generation reform but again, this is a government which designs policy on the run. None of this detail on how this new funding will operate in practice has been provided by the Gillard government. And the same issues keep coming up time and time again. Various education ministers—of all persuasions, as I have said, not just from the coalition—have all complained. Recently the education minister from my own state in Queensland, John-Paul Langbroek, said:

We've had absolutely no detail about numbers. We don't have a model from which we can work. We also don't have any idea about what state contributions are supposed to be let alone whether we can afford them.

You would think that some degree of detail would be released out there so that state and territory governments could move forward with the government in advancing the Gonski review and the Gonski recommendations.

All sides of this House want our schools to be the best in the world. Who would not want that? We all want the best quality education for our children and for future generations. We want our students—and I see that the member for Moreton is opposite. He was a former schoolteacher, is that correct?

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