Zoe McKenzie (Flinders, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to add to this debate on Appropriation Bill (No. 1) 2023-2024 and the second May budget which it implements. Since the May budget, I have seen the impact of the last Labor budget on my constituents across Flinders and the pressure it's putting on them in terms of surging interest rates, unconstrained inflation and cost-of-living pressures.

In these conversations, however, parents have also expressed their concern that this government and its counterpart Labor government in Victoria are opposed to parents and students alike having choice in education. Choice, of course, is a fundamental tenet of Liberal philosophy and education policy. Parents and students and those who work in the education sector should be free and encouraged to choose the best teaching environment to suit their needs. I support all types of education—government and non-government alike. Both play an essential role, socially, economically and culturally, and both sectors deserve our support—different support, of course, reflecting the capacity of those to make private contributions to back up their choice, but some support, nonetheless, because all are taxpayers, and education is a critically important element in every Australian's life.

Today I will, however, focus on the budget's impact on the non-government and independent school sector. Many schools in that sector are low-fee, in terms of their fees for their students, and located in under-served parts of our community. They have, nevertheless, been hit hard by aspects of Labor's budget. Based on rigorous analysis through the Senate estimates process, it would appear that this budget cut $756 million from government schools, regional education and Indigenous schools. This came as a surprise to parents who were not warned in the lead-up to last year's federal election that their choices would go unsupported by this government.

In the place of clear and careful education policy, this government has commissioned a raft of reviews: a review of childcare, a review of schools, a review of universities. How many reviews does the government need to tell it what to do about the education sector?

When the coalition was in government, we delivered year upon year of meaningful reform in the education sector which upheld parental choice, increased funding to schools, increased access to child care and took the initiative on driving quality in higher education. Indeed, the coalition has been a long-term, active and arduous reformer across all levels of education—and I know, because I worked on many of them: the establishment of more than 20 Australian technical colleges, for example, in the mid-2000s; a dynamic and determined campaign to drive up trades apprenticeships; the shaping of training and particularly apprenticeships and traineeships around industry need; and the reform of Australia's higher education system to make it more diverse, with a stronger focus on quality teaching and impactful research.

This government, on the other hand, sits on its hands, watching as school standards plummet, teachers are buried under mountains of bureaucracy and parents despair as their children flounder in an overly complicated curriculum. In the 2023-24 budget, this government extended the current life of the National School Reform Agreement. However, it failed to commit the attached funding. So that means that, for many independent schools, as to the 2023 allocation of funds received through the NSRA, they now have to stretch those funds across another year up until 2025. Bureaucratic, impractical and frankly unfair decisions like this have tangible impacts on the quality of education students receive. The industry have told me that they have struggled with this change, as they were given very little notice of the fact that the funds for 2023 would have to stretch across two years. Most, if not all, of the funds had already been committed to programs in the current year. And some of the non-government representative bodies are expected to continue to provide services and support for reform initiatives—particularly to their lowest-fee members—despite not being funded to do so. This undermines the position and tenability of the non-government sector in the wider education landscape of Australia and it punishes parents for their choice and their sacrifice.

Throw this into this mix, of course: the Victorian Labor government has added salt to the wound by imposing payroll tax increases on non-government schools. No longer exempt from payroll tax, schools will, depending on the size of the fees they charge, be facing payroll tax bills of upwards of a million dollars in some instances. While the Premier has indicated that he may roll back some of this impost, the precise application is unclear. This will make life much harder for middle Australian families who want to provide their children with an education that suits their needs. Schools have told me that some will be paying more in payroll tax than they actually receive in state government funding. So let me repeat that: they will be paying more to the state government in payroll tax than they receive from the state government to undertake the necessary tasks of teaching and learning.

In a foray into fantasy and nonsense, this tax is even called the COVID-19 debt— (Time expired)

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