Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

I wish to speak to the second reading of the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007. This is another one of those newspeak, Brave New World titled bills. It has a particularly charlatan ring to it from the very beginning—namely, the title.

This bill amends the provisions relating to the Investing in Our Schools program as well as providing funds for two other school programs: capital grants for non-government schools and the Literacy, Numeracy and Special Learning Needs Program. Investing in Our Schools provides small targeted capital grants directly to government and non-government schools. In her second reading speech on this bill, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Ms Bishop, noted that the Investing in Our Schools program had proved to be very popular. She said that this was one of the reasons that additional funds were to be appropriated.

What struck me as odd about her remarks was that she failed to mention that, for government schools—but not for non-government schools—a new lower cap has been placed on the grants that any individual school may receive. As is normal in these questions, the opposition supports in principle any move to provide additional funding for schools. This bill does that, so we are supporting it. However, we will not go along quietly with the nonsense that the government promotes when it talks about these issues. Accordingly, I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

                 “whilst the Senate welcomes the additional funding for the Investing in our Schools program, it notes that when making the announcement the Minister was silent on the change of criteria for government schools halfway through the life of the program and condemns the Government for:

             (a)    leaving many government schools ineligible to apply for additional funds by reducing the funding cap from $150,000 to $100,000; and

             (b)    failing to guarantee the future of the Investing in our Schools program beyond the current funding round”.

What we have is a clear position in terms of the respective views in this parliament. The Labor Party takes the view that there can be no higher priority than the education of our kids and young people. Education is about the future prosperity of the nation. Education is about our continued security. It is about social cohesion and social harmony. It is therefore unfortunate that what the minister fails to mention in her second reading speech that the effect of this bill is to actually lower the amount of the grants that are available for government schools in the Investing in Our Schools program. As I said in the second reading amendment, the ceiling for grants will be lowered from $150,000 to $100,000. In other words, what this government is doing is shifting the goalposts mid-program. It has suddenly told government schools that they can just scrap the applications they have prepared for the $150,000 grants—throw it out and write another one—because there is now a reduction by one-third of the amount of money available.

When the program was announced as part of the coalition’s 2004 election commitments, the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, indicated in a letter to all school principals:

… the maximum amount an individual school community will receive is $150,000 over the next four years.

The same amount was included in the guidelines for previous rounds of the program, and the advice issued on the Department of Education, Science and Training’s website at the time said that schools could apply for several projects up to a $150,000 limit over the life of the program. The guidelines for the latest round, however, which were released on 19 February this year, indicate that government schools are now only eligible for $100,000 in funding.

The government has reneged on its commitment as far as government schools are concerned. It has pulled the rug out from under their feet. Even those government schools that have already received a grant of less than $100,000 will only be able to receive a grand total of $100,000. Only the schools that have been lucky enough to have received $150,000 to date will benefit from the more generous level of funding. On the other hand, non-government schools are eligible for grants that are completely uncapped. The sky is the limit. In the most recent round of funding, I understand that 12 non-government schools received more than $1 million each. While a third of the funding available to the non-government sector is capped at grants of $75,000 per school, I stress that there is no absolute cap for the remaining two-thirds of the funding for the non-government school sector. We have two sets of rules operating. Isn’t this the way this government approaches much of public policy? Government schools have had their maximum grant level slashed by one-third to just $100,000, while non-government schools are able to apply for over $1 million.

As the minister herself said, this has proved a popular program. Many schools have decided to take advantage of it. But in the face of it, there is no reason why different rules should apply to schools in the two sectors. There is no reason at all, and I look forward to the minister’s explanation as to why it is that these double standards apply. If the government’s schools policies were based on fairness and need then surely the rules for this program would be exactly the same across government and non-government sectors. Government schools would be able to apply for $1 million just as non-government schools can. You would expect that that would be a fair and open approach to this matter. That is not the way this government operates. As I understand it, for the non-government sector funds are targeted at the neediest schools, but there are at least as many needy schools in the government sector that might benefit from the generous amounts available through this program to some of the non-government schools.

The government is far from even-handed in its policy approach to school funding. It fails dismally the fairness test. It fails to fund all schools on the basis of need. Labor is committed to funding schools on the basis of fairness and need. My colleague Stephen Smith has made that very clear. Yesterday Mr Smith, the shadow minister for education, made four very clear and unequivocal points about Labor’s new policy for schools. This policy is yet to be worked out in the finer details, but Mr Smith and Mr Rudd have made it clear to the Australian voters that Labor’s policy approach will be based on the following four points. Firstly, Labor believes that a greater investment should be made at all levels of education, including in schools and schooling. Secondly, Labor will fund all schools on the basis of need and fairness. Thirdly, Labor will not cut funding to any school. Fourthly, we will not disturb the current AGSRC indexation arrangements for schools funding.

Those are the four clear commitments on schools funding that Labor has made. These four principles underlie Labor’s schools policy. The voters of Australia can be confident that we mean every single word of those four principles and we will not deviate from them. We are not going to this year’s election with the policy we took last time; we have a new policy. The new policy is yet to be worked out in detail but Labor has said that we will work together with the stakeholders in the school sector on the details of that policy. I know that my colleague Mr Smith looks forward to doing exactly that. Our new policy will be fair to non-government schools; it will also be fair to government schools because it is a principle based on need. That is the fundamental underlying principle of Labor’s policy. We cannot be clearer than that.

I note that, on the subject of Labor’s schools policy, the Prime Minister has taken my name in vain in the House. I notice that he was trying to put words in my mouth yet again. On Tuesday the Prime Minister quoted me as saying, in a debate of a few years ago, that Labor believed that private schools were an addition, not an alternative, in terms of providing reasonable access to quality government schooling. If it is in Hansard, I probably did say that, but the Prime Minister—our rattled, nervous Prime Minister—was trying to make out that I meant that Labor did not support the existence or the establishment of private schools. Nothing could be further from the truth, and my words, as quoted, make that perfectly clear. My remarks were about choice in schooling. I said that private schooling represented an additional choice for parents, on top of the choice—a choice that must be available to all parents—to send their kids to a quality government school. The genuine choice of a government school must be available to all families, rich or poor, in the country and in the city.

Many parents in fact exercise their choice to send their children to a non-government school. That is their right and Labor supports them in that choice. That is the point I was making. I was not saying, and I was not implying, that Labor did not support that choice. And I was certainly not saying that private schools ought to be closed down, or ought not to be established. Mr Howard was completely wrong in the way in which he presented my remarks. Mr Howard might be clever, but he sometimes gets things very wrong.

Mr Howard is right, however, if he thinks Labor accords high policy priority to public schools. We always have and we always will. That is the case if for no other reason than the majority of Australian students—almost 70 per cent—attend government schools. There is an underlying matter of principle at stake. It is the principle I referred to in passing a moment ago. It is the principle that high-quality government schooling—public schooling—must be available to all kids in Australia, no matter who they are and no matter where they live. Your life chances should not be determined by postcode. It is a right of all Australians to have genuine equality of opportunity.

That principle is not worth the paper it is written on when it comes to this government’s approach, because it is not backed up by sound, fair policies based on the principles of funding according to need. While supporting families in their choice of schooling, Labor recognise that most Australian students attend government schools, and we are committed to ensuring that those children in government schools get an education of the highest quality. It is the responsibility of any government to guarantee that all children have access to high-quality public schooling. In government, Labor will work together with the states and territories to ensure that this is exactly what happens in Australia. Our children should be getting the best education in the world. Our children are entitled to that, and that is what Mr Rudd’s education revolution is all about. It is about ensuring that the national education system, at all levels, is up there with the best in the world. Our public schools must be up there with the best in the world.

I now turn to the particulars of this bill. I noted in my remarks at the outset that this bill fails the fairness test and fails to allocate funds based solely on need. Labor supports the bill on the basis that it provides additional funding to schools, especially to needy schools. We are concerned, however, that the bill reduces the amount of funding available to individual government schools through the Investing in Our Schools program. It shifts the goalposts for government schools. It shifts the goalposts of public education in Australia. That is simply not fair. I note further that the program finishes up in 2008. This year, 2007, is the final year for applications under this program. The needs that this program were designed to address will not disappear in 2008; there will continue to be needy schools. I look forward to the government announcing what its intentions are in terms of the replacement for this program.

The government is open to the charge that this program—this essentially ephemeral program—was no more than a political stunt designed in the last election. It was not a cheap stunt—we have to assert that—because it has now cost $1.2 billion all up over four years. It is another one of Mr Howard’s clever stunts. Because of Labor’s concerns about the unfairness of the bill, the opposition has moved a second reading amendment in the terms that I have outlined. I trust that that position will be carried by the Senate.