Wilson Tuckey (O'Connor, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Prior to his departure, the member for Bonner made a couple of remarks which I think require a response. The first one was that we are dealing here with funding for private schools, and it appears that that funding will be tied to the acceptance of those private schools, those non-government schools, of a national curriculum. Having been a shadow minister for defence personnel, I understand completely the great pain and difficulty experienced by any family that transfers from state to state when the state governments cannot not get even together and have the same entry year for their student populations. And, of course, the difference runs to all sorts of curricula. If defence personnel and others have to go from one state to another, they are entitled to know that under the government school system there is a common curriculum and a common starting age et cetera.

I nevertheless cannot understand why that needs to be applied to a private school, where the parent has some say in that particular decision and obviously can go elsewhere if the service or the curriculum does not suit them. I would like to come back to that. Unfortunately, the member for Bonner has not hung around for my good advice, because the second thing that I wanted to do was to explode the myth of the federal parliament’s contribution to government schools. The only funding of any substance that goes to the private school sector comes from the budgets approved in this place. A very small amount is begrudgingly provided by state governments. That is the reason that the Australian government under Menzies stepped in to this particular area.

Having said that, it is the habit of the school teachers union in particular to advise parents to advertise in the media that that sum of money is given to the private school sector and a lesser sum of money is budgeted in this parliament specifically for government schools. That is a fact. But it overlooks entirely the simple fact that roughly 50 per cent, between 48 per cent and 52 per cent, of all the expenditures of state governments is provided through the budget of this parliament—and, more importantly, by the poor old taxpayers, who are compulsorily contributing their taxes to this parliament because it has most of the tax-raising capacity.

To simplify that, in years gone by, Prime Minister Howard looked at the mishmash of funding arrangements and took upon himself the reform of the Australian tax system—with, I might add, the support of all of us present at that time in government—and to introduce a GST. In that process he and we, unlike those opposite with some of the decisions on taxes that were brought into this parliament in the last budget, went to that particular election telling people that if they re-elected us we would introduce tax reform including a GST. That was a huge political risk. It was exploited to the nth degree by the then opposition under Beasley and we lost quite a few seats.

What did we also promise the Australian people that we would do with the money once it was collected? We promised that we would distribute every cent of it to state governments. What did Prime Minister Howard say during the election debate? He said that this was the first time in a long time that the Australian states would have a growth tax. By the way, it has grown well beyond the predictions at the time. He said that that was so that they could do their job throughout the Australian democratic system. What was that job? To provide education, hospitals and law and order to the community.

As I said, the money has increased dramatically and, as I look around Australia, I cannot find where the money has gone. But unless we bring to account that contribution which is not spent on private schools—the billions collected and distributed—it is a farce to say that the government school system gets a raw deal from this parliament. It probably gets four or five times the amount that the private schools get. One of the reasons for that is the fact that Australia at the last count had 2,268,000 students in the government schools sector and 1,148,000 in the non-government school sector.

I have corrected a couple of myths. You can bet your bottom dollar that that will not alter the misleading advertisements run by the school teachers union, whose interest does not seem to be in the education of students but in protecting the power they seem to exert from time to time by closing down schooling with strikes.

The reality is that Australia has a system in which both of those sectors are available to the Australian people. Parents of those 1.2 million children—be it through a small Catholic or Christian school or one of the more elite schools—are making a huge financial contribution towards the education of their children. Were that system to be undermined, as is the ambition of this government, then that cost would fall upon the taxpayer in ever increasing degrees or, as is so typical in the health system, the level of service would decline accordingly.

We are here today to discuss two bills. One is the Schools Assistance Bill 2008, which provides $28 billion over four years for the purpose of giving funding assistance to the non-government school sector, some $640.5 million for further Abstudy assistance and $102 million for other purposes related to Indigenous education. I would like to come back to some of that in some time. But all of a sudden we discover that there are some rather curly pieces in this funding arrangement. Probably the worst is the clear intention of the government to return to what I always called the ‘no new schools in the non-government sector’ policy. It was referred to under Minister Ryan as the new schools policy. What was it? If a Christian or other community wanted to open a school, until they achieved a certain student attendance they did not get any help at all. They had to say to parents interested in the establishment of the school, ‘Pay full fees.’ And they had to find premises.

I saw that in the town of Geraldton, where there was an attempt to open an Anglican grammar school. Under the so-called new schools policy they got no student assistance and no capital assistance until they achieved a certain attendance. Of course, they could not do that. The Catholic school up there lent them one of their redundant school buildings because they had amalgamated their girls and boys schools. They had a free building virtually, but they still got nothing. The present system pays up to 70 per cent of tuition fees, depending on the size and wealth of the school. But they got none of that and, of course, they could not get their numbers up and, consequently, the school was going to collapse. We then got elected and we brought in our arrangements. That school has 600 students today and magnificent premises, and there has been a very significant contribution from this parliament and from the parents involved. What we are talking about today is funding, yet we see that this proposal virtually goes back to that old system and makes it impossible for new schools to be commenced. No doubt the teachers union will be laughing about that.

These are matters of grave concern. I have already made some remarks about curricula. I am all in favour of improved curricula. I also believe that in the government education sector curricula should be uniform—it should be homogenised, or whatever word we want to use. That would be a good thing. I am delighted to see that whoever has been selected to propose the new English curriculum has said we are to go back to teaching grammar. I just happen to have a granddaughter, aged nearly 15, who was fortunate enough to go on an exchange from her school to a boarding school in Connecticut for three months. The thing that struck her most was that she had to learn some English grammar. The Americans—certainly in these elite schools—are of the view that grammar is part of English. Of course, when one reads today’s newspapers, and I make this comment to those sitting up top, it has been totally forgotten that you do not finish a sentence with a preposition— ‘something has been given to’ instead of ‘to whom it has been given’. Of course, the next question is: when the new curricula come in who is going to teach the teachers? I would advise them not to read our newspapers to get enlightenment.

The whole fact of life is that we had this attitude to education that did not make children think. Worse, it is a long time since we thought the first and highest capacity for a school teacher was the capacity to teach. I had the privilege of going to an elite government school that also produced people like former Prime Minister Hawke, former Secretary to the Treasury John Stone, and Governor of the Reserve Bank, ‘Nugget’ Coombes—all who attended a little before I did but not much. That school was an elite government school that everybody fought to get into and that you got into by scholarship. It did not matter how rich your parents were, if you could get a scholarship to Perth Modern School in those days you went there. On my arrival we got a new English teacher, who in his first address to us pointed out that if we thought he knew everything we were wrong, but he thought he knew where to look. On the occasions we asked questions he would always be able to go and find out and answer it at a later date. I cannot say that about the Deputy Prime Minister—I am still waiting for an answer to a question I put to her at the last sitting—but the whole matter was that this man, in a very laid back way, was a great motivator. He had us wanting to learn about the English language, and I am pleased to say he delivered me what we called a distinction in those days. He himself got more distinctions than the other two English teachers in that school.

This is part of the challenge, and I do not know that it has been addressed. I constantly hear the Minister for Education and Deputy Prime Minister telling us about how much money has been committed by this government, and that is welcome, but we are yet to see any of the results. I refer to it as measuring excellence by expenditure, and it is not the way to do it. Private school funding is of extreme importance, but I do not see that that funding should be tied to the curricula that those schools teach. There is a reference in the second reading speech to transparency. Of course, schools should make what they are teaching patently obvious. I believe that some of the so-called private schools have not got the capacity to teach some of the higher levels of maths any more than the public schools do, and they should be condemned for that because they charge the fee and do not necessarily provide the service.

Just while everyone is rushing in to listen to me before question time, I make the point for the government that out there in the retirement brigade are all sorts of professionals who should be offered relief from any means testing or anything else so that they are encouraged to go back and teach those higher level subjects—be they retired engineers or retired scientists. I spoke at the Institute of Engineers recently and asked them why they did not encourage their retired members to go back into schools part time and teach. The fellow said ‘We go there and we promote engineering as a profession and give the kids talks about it.’ Of course, the kids cannot get anybody to teach them the basic subjects they need to get entry to engineering when they go to university, yet the Institute of Engineers thought it was too hard to encourage their retired members.

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