Sophie Mirabella (Indi, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Early Childhood Education, Childcare, Women and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Education Legislation Amendment Bill 2008 and the Schools Assistance Bill 2008. I begin by saying that the coalition has a strong record in delivering results for both public and independent school sectors in Australia. The results speak for themselves, whether in large capital grants, smaller grants or other funding mechanisms. Right across Australia in the cities and in the country there are living examples of the former government’s commitment to quality education—quite often in funding essential programs and infrastructure that incompetent, lazy and neglectful state governments had either refused or been unable to fund.

As has been noted by many of my colleagues, the Schools Assistance Bill 2008 introduces some new requirements about which the opposition is quite concerned. These new requirements have generated significant concern within the non-government education sector already—namely, the requirement of complying with the national curriculum, which we have not even seen yet; the changes to the reporting requirements for schools, particularly as they relate to funding sources; the removal of the former government’s non-government schools establishment grants; and the powers granted to the minister in relation to refusing or delaying payments to non-government schools.

This bill reopens the debate about parental choice in schooling in Australia. There is a hidden agenda here, none of which has been dispelled by Labor’s sudden and questionable conversion to the merits of the SES formula. Sadly, old habits die hard for the political extremists who put their theoretical socialist agenda before common sense. We are witnessing the return of the politics of envy and we have to ask: did it ever really go away? When the former coalition government brought Catholic systemic schools under the SES funding agreements, Cardinal Pell said:

The socio-economic funding model fits in well with the Church’s concern to make education available to all Catholics and especially to families on low incomes who make up the bulk of our schools’ clientele.

In other words, when Labor members wax lyrical about Scotch College, the Kings School or Xavier College, they miss the point entirely. A flourishing network of low-fee Christian and independent schools has opened up right across my electorate and indeed right across Australia. Those schools provide the choice in education that parents want. That is why their enrolments are growing. But the Labor Party think choice in education is a dirty word. Certainly we on this side of the House think very differently.

Every journey starts with a first step. And the measures in this bill could well be the first step towards Labor revisiting their envy soaked 2004 schools hit list. Mr Latham may be gone, but the ideological battleground is still well and truly alive for those on the other side of this House. The ghost of the former member for Werriwa remains in this place, channelled perhaps most forebodingly in the current Minister for Education. She was after all his numbers man and now she wants to revisit his disdain for the independent, Catholic and low-fee Christian school sectors.

My fellow colleagues have pointed out that the current Minister for Education had previously bemoaned the former government’s immensely successful SES funding formula—the socioeconomic status formula—as ‘a flawed index’ which ‘does not deliver on the basis of need’. Earlier in her career, in a speech in this place, she bemoaned the SES formula based on her own five objections. Four of them had policy grounds, but the fifth was the most telling, where she focused on her own ‘philosophical’ objections. It is here where the true nature of Labor’s obsession against the independent school sector comes home to roost. But it would be entirely unfair to quarantine the Labor Party’s attacks on the SES formula to just the Deputy Prime Minister. We had the member for Throsby last week say that the current SES scheme ‘lacks integrity’. We had the awkward moment for Labor in the last election campaign when their candidate for Eden-Monaro said the SES was a ‘ridiculous postcode system’. The member for Prospect—now sitting on the government’s frontbench—must have got his speaking notes from the Deputy Prime Minister when he said in 2004 that the SES model was a ‘fundamentally flawed index’.

Do we really need to delve any further to see that Labor has form on criticising the SES model? Their rhetoric on schools funding is there for all to see. There is a clear pattern of disturbing commentary against the model of school funding put in place by the former coalition government. Now the Labor Party want us to put all that behind us and simply believe them when they say there are no risks to school funding from this bill—in spite of their serious indifference to the SES model. All their pronouncements make very clear that the Labor Party’s real agenda is to abolish the SES model and to return to a resource based model, rather than a need based model. This would be a disastrous step for education in this country and students right across the independent and Catholic system would be worse off.

My fear is that there will be a revivification of the sectarian wounds of the past. This is the ideological battleground where the Deputy Prime Minister herself is most comfortable. And she has form. In the past, she gave her time to helping the MUA in the wharfies dispute despite being John Brumby’s chief of staff at the time. She threatened the business community when she warned business groups against becoming propagandists for the Howard government—saying they could get ‘injured’ if they campaigned in favour of Work Choices. She threatened the private health sector when they sought assurances on the private health insurance rebate. And now she is in charge of an education bill worth some $28 billion over the 2009-12 period for the non-government school sector. Is it any wonder parents across the nation are concerned and worried at what this minister will do to the schools to which they send their children?

The mandating of conformity to the new national curriculum without exception troubles us because we feel it is unfair to force schools to adopt a curriculum that has not yet even been seen. This is not even touching on the concerns that may well eventuate in the near future with ideologues such as Marxist historian Stuart Macintyre along with critical literacy guru Peter Freebody in charge of the task of framing the national curriculum. The requirement that non-government schools make available for publication all of their sources of funding will do nothing to promote transparency and will have everything to do with making life difficult for non-government schools. The fact that such information is superfluous to the requirements to calculate the SES funding simply highlights this and makes you want to ask why they are imposing such onerous conditions on schools. Why do they want them to waste their time providing such information when it is not even essential?

In closing, the opposition have highlighted the very serious concerns we have with this legislation and accordingly moved amendments. It would be nice and it would show some common sense if the government were to seriously consider these amendments, but in light of the Deputy Prime Minister’s past form and that of many of her colleagues that is, sadly, highly unlikely. The great losers—and some people on the other side know this—will be the students of this nation. It may well take many years for the damage that is done to be recovered. I will obviously be making known my concerns with this legislation to my local schools and will continue to seek their feedback.

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