Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

I understand why Senator Brandis is sensitive here, so maybe I should reiterate my point about the fantasy figures that are in the school funding estimator. To try to convince parents in schools that there is an increase involved in this funding, the government has rebased the figures for 2017 on the basis of a formula that will never apply to 2017. They then used those silly figures to compare with 2018 and claim that it is an increase in funding. Well, it is not. The department could not defend it. The department had to fess up about what was really going on here. That is why the government's figures in this area have never been regarded as credible.

But what is worse is this minister's and this government's failure to provide the information that should be available for all of us to assess what is really going on here. The minister uses national growth figures, national sector figures and hides the impact of his one-size-fits-all policy behind them. And that impact is very alarming. It is very alarming for Victorian schools. It is very alarming for Catholic education. It is very, very alarming for public schools. But as I said earlier, the arrangements in place for schools delivered an 80 per cent increase for public schools out of the additional Commonwealth-state funding arrangements. Now we only have state funding arrangements, and guess who gets the 50 per cent increase? Public schools get only 50 per cent now, whereas under the former arrangements it was 80 per cent. (Time expired)