Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary to the Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Last night every member of the government, including the member for Banks, voted six times to push through a $22 billion cut to schools. How is it fair that, over the next two years, $1.1 million is cut from Beverly Hills Girls High School in Banks while Sydney Church of England Grammar School or Shore get a funding increase?

Mr Falinski interjecting—

Tony Smith (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Mackellar will cease interjecting.

Mr Falinski interjecting—

The member for Mackellar is warned! The Prime Minister has the call.

Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last night the member for Chifley together with his colleagues voted to do their very best to prevent the 60 schools in the electorate of Chifley from getting an average of $7.6 million each in additional funding from the government. That is what he voted for—an utter failure!

What he has done is see the opportunity to support additional funding based on need for the schools in his electorate and, for pure political reasons, vote against it. He knows, as every member of the opposition knows full well, that the needs-based funding they talked about for years but failed to deliver is now being delivered by my government. They should stop the games, stop the politics and vote for it. They should support the Gonski vision of needs-based funding across the nation—transparent and fair. They should stop all the exaggerations—like the member for Sydney talking about thousands of Catholic schools losing funding when there are only 1,728 in the whole nation.

When the Catholic Archdiocese of Brisbane's very sensible letter thanking the government for increasing funding to their schools and assuring parents that our policy would not cause them to increase fees was pointed out, she dismissed it and said they only had a little more than 100 schools in their electorate. The administrators, the managers, of the Catholic school system in Brisbane know a lot more about their schools' situation than the member for Sydney. They know that, every year over the next decade, their schools and the Catholic systems right across the country are getting more funding and that they will be able to provide more education and more services to their students. The same loadings for disability and for disadvantage will continue. The funding will be based on need, as it should, consistent with the Gonski vision which Labor once trumpeted and now betrays.