Don Randall (Canning, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I speak on the second reading of the Financial Framework Legislation Amendment Bill (No. 3) 2012 because this is an issue in which I have a great deal of interest. It affects schools in my electorate as well as right across Australia. I point out at the beginning that this is a Howard government program which was initiated successfully into schools. It was then adopted by the incoming Rudd government and, after hearing rumours that it would not be continued—surprise! surprise!—in the last budget it had an injection of cash. We were being lobbied by chaplaincy teachers, if I can call them that, and schools about this program because they feared it was going to be defunded, but I congratulate the government on the fact that it continued its funding.

The reason we are here today speaking on this bill presented by the Attorney-General is as an urgent response by the government to the High Court's decision in Williams v Commonwealth of Australia and Ors [2011] HCATrans 198, which was handed down last Wednesday. We know that, and the decision found that the funding for the National School Chaplaincy and Student Welfare Program—in other words, the chaplaincy program, which this side of the House strongly supports—was beyond the executive power of the Commonwealth because it was not supported by an act of parliament. So this is what we are doing here today: we are providing an act of parliament because there is no valid exercising of the executive powers of the Commonwealth under section 61 of the Constitution. All this is correct. One of the flaws which was pointed out by the shadow minister and the member for Stirling was the fact that we have some reservations about the fact that the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth seems, in this legislation, to have awarded himself extraordinary regulatory powers to make decisions under this act, which is why I am going to speak further to the bill as it affects schools in my electorate. I have a letter from YouthCARE, which I received today, regarding the legislation for this chaplaincy program. I can either table it or read it in full. Can I table this letter?

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