Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I just make the point on funding of BER and special schools—and I think this is an important point, and would be celebrated by people of good will—we deliberately drew this program up so that all special schools could benefit from the greater amount of money available under the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program. So even secondary schools that are special schools can get the bigger grants, which I think is fantastic news for special schools around the country that have not had money for capital for a very long period of time.

I will answer the member’s question on recurrent funding. We have increased recurrent funding for students with disabilities. We provide that funding to block grant authorities. In the case of Catholic schools we provide it to the Catholic Education Office, and it works out the division from the Catholic Education Office to Catholic schools—the identical disbursement system for schools’ money operated by the Howard government. If the member wants to be heard to say that the Catholic Education Office cannot be trusted to properly disperse funds, then I would have thought that was a very controversial call. But, given the Leader of the Opposition has somehow said that he has now converted to paid parental leave, I suppose bashing the Catholic Education Office will be next.

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