Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. How is it fair that under the Prime Minister's $22 billion schools cut students at Our Lady of La Vang in Adelaide will lose half their funding? Does the Prime Minister realise that all the students at this school have an intellectual disability and that many students have multiple disabilities, including complex health, personal care and behavioural needs? Why is the Prime Minister cutting half the funding for each student at Our Lady of La Vang?

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. The honourable member knows very well that the needs based funding model, of which she used to speak so eloquently, has been abandoned by her.

Tanya Plibersek (Sydney, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You're cutting funding for disabled children!

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney is now warned!

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

She can shout as loudly as she likes. The facts and her conduct speak for themselves. For years she told us about the need to support—

Ms Plibersek interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Prime Minister will resume his seat for a second. This is a familiar pattern with the member for Sydney, but just so she is clear: she has been asked to cease interjecting a number of times through question time. She has been warned that if she interjects again she will leave. If she is planning on interjecting I suggest that she start packing up.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Sydney knows very well that the recommendation of the Gonski panel in 2011 was to introduce transparent, consistent national needs based funding. And the needs based funding is based on a Schooling Resource Standard which is then adjusted with loadings for disabilities, for low incomes, for lack of English language and so forth. There is a whole series—half a dozen—of special loadings: remote schools, small schools and so forth.

Now, that calculation, which has been used under the Labor government and continued under our government, has been consistent for many years. Many arguments have been made about improving and refining the SRS measure. Of course, that is a commitment the government has—we will continue to work with the sector to improve it and to refine it.

As the minister for education has made clear, schools that feel the SES measure has not treated them appropriately are able to have their needs assessed on the basis of parents' income, in a much more direct and granular way. So this is a very conventional approach that has been operating for many years. It allocates the funding on a needs basis. It does so transparently. It does so consistently. That is what Labor argued for for years. They claim to have introduced it, but they did not. Ken Boston, David Gonski's fellow member of that panel, described Labor's 27 secret deals as a corruption of the Gonski recommendations. We are not giving a Gonski; we are not talking about a Gonski; we are delivering. And we are delivering on that needs based funding, and the honourable member knows it better than most. What she is standing up for is not Gonski. It is not needs based. It is 27 secret, inconsistent deals, a corruption of the Gonski panel's recommendations.