Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to provide some contribution to this debate on the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 before us. I just want to place on record my appreciation of Senator Nettle’s contribution, because I think she started to hit the mark there. I know the Senate is sitting at a late hour and we are being broadcast, and I am probably competing with the avid fans of Tony Delroy on the ABC, but it always gives me a good opportunity to talk about the real funding needs of this country. In the last 24 hours there has been much debate in the Northern Territory about the funding of education, particularly secondary education out bush. If we want to talk about the comparison between places such as Kings School in Sydney versus everywhere else, let us talk about your ordinary high school at the end of your street—Glen Waverley High School or Catholic secondary colleges around this country, and there is a place for those. I went to St Columba’s College in Essendon and it is a fantastic school, a grand school.

If only I knew then what I know now. Two weeks ago, I was standing at an outstation in the Northern Territory known as Garrthalala. Kids from that area actually catch a plane every Tuesday morning into this outstation. For those people who might be listening, that outstation is about 100 kilometres south of Gove, home of Mandawuy Yunupingu and Yothu Yindi, people who live near Blue Mud Bay in the Northern Territory and call that place their home. So these kids catch a plane from surrounding outstations into Garrthalala. They get there on a Tuesday morning. They stay there on Tuesday and Wednesday and they fly out on Thursday afternoon. Are they at a boarding school? No, they are certainly not. They pull up their swags on the school’s veranda every night, and they camp on the veranda of the school. So what do they do for meals three times a day? They are rostered on to cook their own meals. They are rostered on in the little kitchen between the two classrooms that has been set up. It provides meals for these kids, at least on a Tuesday and a Wednesday night. Why are there two rooms? Because they have a program running for the boys and a program running for the girls. If you know anything about Indigenous culture, you will know that is the best way for you to get through to these kids.

But I do have to say that they had in front of them half-a-dozen laptop computers. Mind you, they were operating extremely slowly. Not on broadband? No way. On dial-up? Absolutely. By satellite? Well, when the weather is pretty good. So I want you to picture that. Picture that as you also look at the local secondary school or high school that your kid might be going to, and you will then have some appreciation of why in this place we are pretty passionate about defending public schools and why we are very avid in campaigning to make sure that every kid in this country gets not only the best chance at life but a chance at life—to be able to attend some secondary school.

I am aware of the debate from Tracker Tilmouth and people in the Territory in the last 24 hours. I do digress a bit here tonight, I know, but you have to remember that, in the Northern Territory, Aboriginal communities like Garrthalala existed for 27 years under the coalition of the Liberal, National and Country parties with absolutely no—zero—provision of secondary education in their communities. There was none in little communities like outstations—no way—let alone communities like Maningrida or Wadeye. There are now 3,000 people in that community, so it certainly would warrant a secondary school of some sort.

There have been criticisms that the Northern Territory government are not delivering. I strongly object to those criticisms. If you have followed the funding of Indigenous education as I have done for the last 25 years of my life, you would know that each and every year, despite the rhetoric from this government, for the last 11 years, funding to Aboriginal education has in fact declined. It has been rolled up and rerolled into different programs so that the deckchairs on the Titanic look more numerous than they actually are. But, if you roll it back and analyse it and have the knowledge that I and some of the staff I have worked with have, you would know that the funding has in fact declined, and it has been harder and harder to gain. The changes to the ASSPA program and the PSPI program that I have talked about so many times in this place are examples of that.

Let us look at the Northern Territory government. We find that, in the last five years of the Clare Martin Labor government, at least 63 children who live in places like Garrthalala have now reached year 12—have now obtained what you and I, as non-Indigenous persons in this country, want for each and every one of our kids. Let me tell you: Aboriginal people are absolutely no different here. There is a belief out there that somehow they do not value education. They do, but they want an education system that delivers curriculum that is relevant to their kids. The Martin Labor government in the Northern Territory have been able to at least get 63 kids—and each year that number increases—to pass year 12.

And more and more, each year, we find that they are providing funding to open secondary education provision in remote communities. Are they doing it with any extra support or a leg-up from the federal government? No, they are not. They have to do it with the funds that are given to them from the federal government. How is that funding based? Of course, it is based on the number of kids that attend the school, so it is a bit like a dog chasing its tail, really. There is no assistance whatsoever to say the Northern Territory government, ‘Here’s a couple of million dollars extra this year over and above the IESIP funds we give you to attend to attendance and to set up more secondary schools in the Northern Territory.’ So it is being done out of the existing budget, trying to capture kids who do not come to school at the moment. They have to do it out of funds that they currently get.

I think they have made some amazing gains in the short five years that they have been in power, when you think about the fact that the Country Liberal Party was there for 27 years, and not one secondary lesson in any Aboriginal community was delivered in a classroom in a school in that period of time. When I worked at Yirrkala back in the early eighties, we tried to set up a secondary program for kids there instead of them doing the postprimary program that was around, and we were flatly forbidden by the Country Liberal Party government at the time to do that. They were not going to and refused to fund and resource that outcome.

So, when we talk about the resourcing of public education in this country and we have the debate about whether it should be public or private schools, my debate is about what public schools are going to get this assistance. In particular, in all of this rhetoric and all of this discussion about who is going to get what out of the education bucket, let us have a really long, hard look at what Indigenous children in this country do not get and what they would need in order to survive and prosper in this country as well as any other person that I am aware of ought to.

The bill before us tonight provides funding to the states and territories for government and non-government schools for the next three to four years, mainly through the Investing in Our Schools Program. It revises the capital amounts for infrastructure grants for government schools in 2007 and for non-government schools in 2007-08. The Investing in Our Schools program was a 2004 election promise made by the federal government. It is a $1 billion promise under which, until recently, schools could apply for up to $150,000 over the four-year term of the program.

But wait—there is more! With this government—tricky, mean and clearly out of touch when it comes to Indigenous people—the goalposts have quite recently been moved. But that is only for public schools, not for private schools. Private schools can still apply for grants of up to $75,000. The amount for government school grants has been reduced to a maximum of $100,000, down from $150,000. The amount that government schools can now apply for has been reduced by a third. I understand that Minister Julie Bishop has defended the move, saying that the government never intended to give all schools $150,000. I see: so you say one thing before the election in 2004 and another thing afterwards. The minister went on to say that an extra $181 million had been provided to the program and that government schools that had received less than $100,000 would be helped. What about those who want to apply for more than $100,000? What about the toilet blocks that Senator Nettle was talking about, for example? What about the schools in remote and Indigenous communities that might want to apply for more than $100,000 and were hoping to get $150,000 under this grant? They can no longer do it.

The government are so inflexible and so blind to the needs of Indigenous communities in this country that they do not say: ‘We’ll move the goalposts even further and perhaps those little, struggling Indigenous schools in remote communities can apply for $200,000. We are so in touch with Indigenous Australia and remote Australia as a federal government that we know that to build a toilet block in downtown Pascoe Vale or in Belconnen, here in Canberra, is half the price of building it somewhere in the Northern Territory that might be 400 kilometres west of the Stuart Highway.’ They do not recognise that in their funding.

Even schools that are struggling in the Northern Territory, out bush, in remote Australia, who would get $100,000 if they were lucky enough, cannot buy the same amount of equipment. The same capital infrastructure will not go as far in a remote community for $100,000 as it will in downtown Sydney. It just will not do that. Transport costs, freight costs and the costs of labour for erecting capital infrastructure are two to three times the amount in remote communities. This government does not even recognise that. You may as well say that $100,000 to a school at, say, Yuendumu or Kintore is, in reality, more like $50,000 or $60,000, because the additional costs they incur trying to bring in those services, those goods and that equipment are two to three times the amount.

It is really disappointing to see that the goalposts have moved for government schools around this country but that they have not moved enough to recognise that Indigenous schools might need double that amount of money. Those schools are in a remote part of this country, so their dollar will not go as far as it would in some other schools. It is disappointing to notice that once again Indigenous kids in this country will not get the additional assistance that will be needed in the coming years.

This bill will offer more funding to schools. The Labor Party will support the bill because some crumbs from this government are better than nothing. This government has, for 11 years, dragged its feet on the proper funding of public education as a whole. We are the only OECD country to have greatly reduced public education funding. What a reputation that is. In the lead-up to the election, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, might say, ‘Vote for me. I have a record on public education funding.’ You certainly do. You are the only Prime Minister of an OECD country who has actually reduced funding to public education over your 11 years in office.

Both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education, Science and Training conceded in question time on 13 February this year that we could be doing a lot better in education. This is a perfect example of that. Both of those elected members of parliament went on to claim that the problems were nothing to do with them but rather the fault of the states or territories or—wait for it—even the education unions. It was the usual old blame game, rather than acknowledging and accepting the fact that the problem lies with their blinkered ideology, which sees education as an expense rather than an investment. They see it as an expense to be borne by the users as much as possible.

So, no, we will not be spending $150,000 on each government school that might want to apply for a grant. That would cost us way too much. We would not want to invest in the future of this country. We would not want to invest in the future economy of this country by skilling up our kids at this point in time and providing them with proper infrastructure and capital needs at their schools. But what we will do is shrink the budget even more and outlay the money in other areas where we do not get such a good return for our investment.

Private schools have enormous incomes from parents’ fees and they have luxurious facilities. I have heard tonight of archery ranges and pony riding schools. If you could just picture that, standing in the middle of Arnhem Land as I do sometimes. It is a joke. These schools will still be funded by the taxpayer to make their facilities even better. I want to emphasise that we certainly believe that education facilities should be of a high quality. There is no doubt about that. But while this is going on, many small schools in the remote areas that I represent and which I have described at length to you tonight cannot even get their school painted or get a few computers fixed.

The blame game has really gone on long enough. Under this government, our national productivity growth has declined over the past 10 years. This government has been able to ride on the coat-tails of a world economic boom, claiming massive credit which is absolutely not warranted or deserved. This government has been happy to attack teacher training, teachers’ abilities and education outcomes. This government has decided that civics is a must and that schools should have active flagpoles which can only be pronounced open by a government member. That is democracy for you. I know that a new flagpole was launched at Karama Primary School in the last 10 days.

Debate interrupted.