Amanda Rishworth (Kingston, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Health) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the Australian Education Amendment (School Funding Guarantee) Bill 2014. This bill is very important for two main reasons. Firstly, this government, since coming to office, has broken its promise that no school would be worse off and the promise it made at the last election that it would keep the Gonski school funding model. This model is so critically important to ensure funding and resources are allocated on a needs basis. Unfortunately, the government has trashed that model. Secondly, Labor opposes this government's savage cuts to school education, whether it be in early childhood, primary or secondary school and all the way through to higher education. That legislation is currently before the Senate committee. These cuts will have devastating impacts on Australian students, the education sector and the economy. This bill should not be necessary, and it would not be necessary if the government had kept its word and fully implemented the Gonski school funding model.

Labor recognises the need for a national needs-based funding model designed to support the student resource standard by allocating extra funding for students with a disability, students from lower socioeconomic backgrounds and students from rural and regional communities to ensure that every student across the country is allocated the resources they need to achieve their best and that every school can be its best. Students support this model. Mums and dads support this model. Schools support this model. The sector supports this model. The Liberal Party supposedly also supported this model.

I remind the House that it was the now Minister for Education who on 29 August 2013, days before the last election, said to the mums and dads and the teachers of Australia:

… you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school …

Like most things promised by those opposite before the election, the minister was misleading the Australian people.

Despite the reckless actions of this government, the bill before us today will stop Australian schools sliding backwards. It will put a stop to the savage cuts to schools that have been occurring under state Liberal governments, including more than $180 million in cuts inflicted upon students in Western Australia by Premier Barnett this year alone. These cuts are leaving our schools worse off. Left to continue, these cuts will lead to the decline of our educational facilities and education standards, leaving Australia poorer as a nation. Australian education standards and Australian graduates are world class. This government, with its budget of broken promises, wants to diminish Australia's intellectual reputation.

Labor had a plan for our schools, a plan that would have seen the Commonwealth, states and territories work together to improve educational standards for Australians everywhere. Tony Abbott pledged to honour his agreement to the Gonski school funding model but has since walked away from it. He has walked away for cynical political purposes. In doing this, he has put at risk a once-in-a-generation opportunity to ensure that every Australian school is of the highest standard and that every student gets a fair and equal opportunity to achieve their best.

It is time for Tony Abbott to start admitting he got it wrong. It is time for the Prime Minister to fund years 5 and 6 in the budget and roll out the full agreement, as he promised to do before the election. No weasel words from the Prime Minister or from the Minister for Education can take away the fact that there was a clear commitment to Gonski—including signs in the member for Boothby's electorate on election day saying that the Liberal Party would match the Labor Party dollar for dollar. It is time for the government to keep that promise. But it is also important that we ensure that the states and territories do their bit to lift our education standards.

This bill will tie the Commonwealth funding for schools in every state and territory to the very basic principle that there are no more state education budget cuts. This bill is an important part of Labor's plan that the states and territories have signed up to, but we need a Commonwealth government that will hold them to account and ensure that together we are working to lift the education standards of our country. So I call on the government to support this important bill before the House today, and I hope that they will reconsider decent school funding. (Time expired)

Jane Prentice (Ryan, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak on this farce of a private member's bill, the Australian Education Amendment (School Funding Guarantee) Bill 2014, yet again. Those opposite do not seem to be able to fathom the fact that the coalition government is actually putting more funding into schools. That is right: the coalition government restored the $1.2 billion that the previous Labor government stole from Australian schools. In Queensland, this means $794.3 million more funding, and this fact has been acknowledged by the Queensland Minister for Education, Training and Employment. And the coalition has not stopped there. The annual increase for all Queensland school sectors, government and non-government, for recurrent and capital spending is an increase of 10.8 per cent in 2014-15, an increase of 11.3 per cent in 2015-16, an increase of 10.7 per cent in 2017-18 and—yes, Madam Deputy Speaker—another increase in 2017-18 of 7.5 per cent. That is all increased spending. Total Commonwealth funding to government schools in Queensland will grow by $662.3 million by 2017-18, a 68.7 per cent increase from 2013-14, while the non-government sector will grow by 35 per cent over the same period.

It is indeed unfortunate that we cannot afford Gonski's original recommendations, which I would just like to point out are not at all the same as the model Labor tried to pass off as their Gonski reforms to ensure they got a media splash. No, unfortunately, due to the reckless spending and waste of the previous Labor government, we are currently experiencing the fastest increase of debt in our nation's modern history. Because of Labor, if nothing is done to rein in their spending commitments, we are looking at an interest bill of $3 billion each month, which is $300,000 million, or one new hospital, every month. This money is being wasted on interest repayments which could have been used to fund the full Gonski vision. It is wasted money because Labor put their irresponsible spending on the nation's credit card with no means to pay it off.

Just as bad as Labor's innate ability to rack up record levels of debt, their irresponsible levels of spending were not enough. No, instead they felt the need to pretend to the Australian people that they were spending even more. Indeed, when you look at the projected expenditure of Labor's education funding, it is hard to tell what it is—an economic sleight of hand or some malicious time bomb planted by reckless politicians who knew they would never have to face the reality and pay up.

It is shamelessly simple. The vast majority of Labor's so-called promised funding comes well after the forward estimates, so Labor never wrote it into a budget paper. In true Labor style they made up exciting slogans, printed pretty flyers on high-gloss paper and put out lots of press releases. But the reality behind these grandiose statements is about as genuine as Labor's infamous 'We will return to surplus this budget'—all myths.

As a party that pretend they are the ones who care most about education, not once did those opposite stop to think about how to get best value for the Commonwealth's education spend. Not once did they stop to think that, despite almost two decades of rivers of gold flowing into the school education sector, Australia's school testing scores continued to steadily decline. Yes, that is right: the Productivity Commission's Report on government services 2014 shows a graph clearly outlining Commonwealth spending on schools increasing, yet the program for international student assessment scores has been decreasing in both literacy and numeracy. This is because governments should not just recklessly throw money at our education system and hope for the best, as the previous Labor government did.

Instead, as the coalition government are doing through our Students First plan, we should focus on the four key areas that evidence shows will make a real difference for students. Those key areas are teacher quality, school autonomy, engaging parents and strengthening the curriculum. And, in an important point, Australian school education is actually the responsibility of the state governments. The federal government, which really has no responsibility over schools, contributes approximately 15 per cent of the total schooling budget for states and territories.

Just to recap, we have a coalition government that is actually increasing funding to schools beyond the forward estimates, is adding an additional $1.2 billion that Labor ripped away from schools and is ensuring that the money being spent will actually result in better outcomes for students and teachers. Only the coalition is putting Australian students first.

Debate adjourned.