Louise Markus (Greenway, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Immigration and Citizenship) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to raise my concerns over the lack of commitment by the Rudd Labor government to ensure that local schools in the electorate of Greenway have access to funding assistance for basic school infrastructure. We have now learnt the Rudd Labor government has no intention of continuing a very successful infrastructure assistance program known as the Investing in Our Schools Program. The government has misled the House with the claim that the coalition had not committed to continuing the Investing in Our Schools Program. I would suggest those in the government, including Senator Carr, look beyond a press release from 19 February 2007 by the then Prime Minister when trying to accuse the coalition of scrapping the Investing in Our Schools Program. I would suggest they refer to a more recent release, on 28 August 2007, which was located on the DEST website, where the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, the Hon. Julie Bishop, said that there was ‘continued support for the Investing in Our Schools Program’ from the then government.

The decisions on education funding and policy are now with a Labor government. The question is now about the future. The Investing in Our Schools Program was very successful. Schools in my electorate, as in every other electorate in this country, appreciated the opportunity to set their own priorities for their school communities. The challenge for many school communities across Australia was lack of state government investment in repairs, maintenance and equipment. Whether it was for a new school without library books, a well-established school with toilet blocks at Third World standard, shade structures for outdoor activities or musical instruments, the Investing in Our Schools Program enabled school P&Cs, together with principals, to identify the needs of their school and their children. Schools applied for funding based on what they needed and in the majority of cases received the money that they required.

When the Prime Minister asked all his MPs to visit local schools, surely those MPs would have reported back that schools wanted this funding to continue. I put this question to every MP in this House: is there any member who could honestly say that if they had a choice between putting computers in secondary schools only or providing funding to all schools for what those schools identified that they needed, the choice would be the computers-only option? I think not. This is going to disadvantage school communities. On 20 February, in an article in the Daily Telegraph, Bruce McDougall said:

Angry ... principals are seeking an urgent meeting with new Federal Education Minister Julia Gillard at which they are expected to voice a strong complaint about the decision—

to cancel or not continue with such funding. On 20 February this year during question time the Prime Minister said, ‘This government believes in investing in our schools.’ I believe this statement too could be regarded as misleading. While most members in this House would support computers being supplied to secondary schools, what about our primary school students? There are some significant flaws in Labor’s plan.

Across Western Sydney, I have come across incidences of the electricity supply not being sufficient at the local school level to cope with additional equipment such as air conditioning and computers. In this instance, what if the electricity supply is insufficient to cope? What if the rooms where the computers will be held are in such a poor state that safety will be at risk? On 29 April 2007 at the ALP national conference Stephen Smith said:

We’ve made it clear that we are not interested in taking one dollar off any school. We want to invest more in all our schools, but have that investment made on the basis of need and on the basis of fairness.

So let us begin with ‘we want to invest more in all our schools’. That is a little hypocritical when you consider that primary schools are excluded from the digital revolution. Does the Rudd Labor government consider that children aged between five and 12 do not need or use computers? Secondly, let us talk about investments being ‘made on the basis of need’. The dictionary defines need as being ‘a lack of something useful, desired or required’. So if we have a school that does not need more computers but desperately needs to replace worn and mouldy carpet, does that mean that the school will get the carpet rather than the computers because investments are being made on the basis of need? That seems appropriate. This is what the Investing in Our Schools Program did.

The President of the Australian Council of State Schools Organisations has stated that the Investing in Our Schools Program was their ‘No. 1 priority’, and country schools talked about the extra challenge now being placed on rural communities already affected by drought to raise funds for basic school equipment—equipment and projects they could fund through the Investing in Our Schools Program. The Deputy Prime Minister, when talking about investment in schools, only referred to the digital revolution and trade centres, which have absolutely nothing to do with primary schools. It appears that the government does not care about primary school age children.

Primary schools in my electorate such as Windsor Park Public, Vineyard Public and Quakers Hill Public will all have a choice: raise the funds themselves or join an exhaustive list of government run schools in New South Wales waiting for the Iemma Labor government to support their requests. I suspect the wait will be long. Last year, the coalition government increased funding to schools by over 11 per cent, but the state and territory governments only increased funding by an average of 4.9 per cent. While the state and territory governments continue to short-change their own schools, school communities such as those in my electorate may be waiting a very long time. During Senate question time, Senator Carr was asked whether the Labor government intends to scrap the Investing in Our Schools Program, to which he replied:

The Rudd Labor government is committed to a more targeted approach to infrastructure funding through the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program and the Digital Education Revolution.

Again, this is based in secondary schools—which no-one would deny would be a good idea—with no benefit whatsoever to primary schools. I call on the Prime Minister to be fair dinkum as he travels around this great nation of ours listening to the people, to stop what he calls the blame game, to accept instead that the coalition government introduced a program that benefits all schools across this nation and to reintroduce Investing in Our Schools so that schools such as those in my electorate can move forward rather than lie idle waiting for state Labor governments to do something.