Kelly O'Dwyer (Higgins, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to talk about an issue that is incredibly important to my constituents—that is, the importance of education and of all of our students receiving the best educational opportunities. The whole process as to the debate of the Australian Education Bill has been a farce from beginning to end. The government claims on the one hand that it is introducing the Gonski reforms as recommended in the Gonski report, yet it is doing nothing of the sort. The central recommendation of that report was $6.5 billion of new funding; that is not what this government is doing. This government is cutting funding to school education by more than $300 million.

What concerns me particularly is that what we saw yesterday was a gagging of debate in the chamber on the Australian Education Bill and the 71 pages of new amendments. What concerns me about this is that the government has rammed through this legislation when only two out of eight jurisdictions have signed on, the Catholic and independent schools sectors have raised questions that have not been answered, and most of the discussions have been in secret with confidentiality agreements. Why? We learnt a little bit when we looked at the 71 pages of amendments that were dumped into the parliament two days ago in the evening.

The first is the 'capacity to contribute'. This is one of the two critical nasties that were included in this bill. The 'capacity to contribute' is really code for parents paying more; that is, parents paying increased fees if they choose to send their child to an independent or Catholic school. It is clear from what was introduced into the amendments that we are not talking about aggregating when considering 'capacity to contribute', we are looking at individual parents and what they can pay. This will see an increase in fees.

The second thing that should concern everybody, the second nasty included in these amendments, was in the implementation plans. The minister for education is giving himself the power to reach into every school—state schools, independent schools and Catholic schools—to approve their plans so that if any school intends to vary the national model, the minister will need to sign off. This should give everybody great cause for alarm.

I know that in my electorate schools like Korowa, Lauriston, St Catherine's, King David, Melbourne Girls Grammar and Catholic schools like St Cecilia, St Joseph, St Mary, St Michael's, St Roch's, Presentation College, Holy Eucharist and Our Lady of Lourdes are all concerned about what it is going to mean for them, for their parents and for certainty of school funding going into next year. We are none the wiser and I call on the minister to clarify. (Time expired)