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

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Education and Training (Senator Birmingham) to questions without notice asked by Opposition senators today relating to schools funding.

This motion relates to a lack of information and the poor capacity available to senators to make very serious decisions about what education arrangements may indeed apply for the next six to 10 years. It simply is not good enough.

The minister was unable to provide answers to questions from Labor senators today. He gave the same stark response he has given time and time again—ballpark growth figures, he claims. I would highlight that he has not yet made the clarification that he needs to in relation to his comments in question time yesterday. In question time yesterday he claimed that Catholic Education would get a growth in their share. This is simply untrue. At the time Senator Brandis was not listening properly and thought the point was a different one. The issue is that the minister should have come back to this chamber to clarify that what he put in answer to Senator Farrell was simply false. There is no growth in share for Catholic Education. That is why we have seen those figures about the loss of funding that those schools face over 10 years.

What the minister did refer to today is what has been coined, and indeed what I highlighted, the 'fantasy figures' that were used in the school funding estimator. I think it is useful to take senators through exactly why The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and Fairfax Media reported those fantasy figures. What the minister did in that case, and what the department did—which is quite concerning, given that the department responded to requests to present information that way—was to re-base 2017 funding figures, on the basis of a formula that will never apply to 2017. They have re-based the figures for 2017 in order to promote and pretend that there would be an increase between 2017 and 2018. This is why the Senate agreed to the order for the production of documents. What I understand from the President now is that all we have is a letter—who knows what that letter says—yet we are now in the committee stage of consideration of the legislation.

All this minister has done is to engage in closed-door conversations with some senators, presenting information that is not publicly available and probably is not credible, because the minister's record is not credible. We have all heard the expression, 'Lies, damn lies and statistics.' Well, that is what has been going on here. I cannot imagine—