Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Northern Australia) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, not at all, and it reinforces the fear I have. You assured me in your response in the second reading debate that you would give me the assurance I sought. You were to assure me that, over the next four years, the schools that I have named would not receive less. If you are confident in the response you just gave to me, you will have no problem whatsoever in giving that assurance. But I can tell you, before your advisers tell you, that you will not be able to give that assurance because the bill does not say that. You referred to clause 70. It starts off by saying:

(1) The Minister may make a determination authorising payment of financial assistance to a State ...

That is going to be useful for independent Catholic schools! It continues:

... for recurrent expenditure in relation to Indigenous students receiving education at a non-systemic school, or at schools that are members of an approved school system, in the State, for a program year.

It goes on:

(2) In making a determination under subsection (1) for a non-systemic school, or an approved school system, the Minister may consider—

he does not have to—

the following amounts of financial assistance received (or to be received) by the school, or all schools in the system ...

How does that work for St Pat’s and Shalom? It continues:

(a)

financial assistance authorised for the calendar year 2008 under either or both of the following:

(i)

Division 2 of Part 6 of the former Act;

(ii)

the Indigenous Education (Targeted Assistance) Act 16 2000;

(b)

financial assistance to be authorised for the program year under this Part (apart from under this Division).

Quite frankly, Minister, you made a snide comment about me confessing that I had not read the bill until 11 o’clock this morning. That was because I could not believe that you and your department would not have been trying to take up the obvious flaw that the Catholic education system and I were trying to point out to you for your own benefit. But you clearly have not read the bill, Minister. I do not want to have a fight about that. I do not care whether you have read it or not, but your advisers have.

What I want you to tell me, or for your advisers to tell me, through you—unfortunately, your advisers cannot talk here—is the answer to those questions. If the funding is paid to the state, how does that help Shalom College? If it is paid to a systemic school I can understand that the school itself can make the decisions. It says ‘may consider’, not ‘will’, not ‘must’, not ‘will guarantee it’, not ‘will give Ian Macdonald the assurance’, but ‘may consider’ what they received before.

Minister, you have not read it, but I will go on to clause 71. It is headed ‘Indigenous funding guarantee—funding amounts’, and it says:

The sum of the amounts paid to the States under section 70 for a program year must not exceed:

(a) the funding amount specified in the following table for the program year ...

Then you have some tables there.

What happens if, by acting on the assurance you have given me, the funding amount in the program year exceeds $5,500,000, which clause 71 says is the upper limit? What happens if, according to the minister’s determination, he thinks it should be more than that but he is constrained by this bill to a maximum amount of $5½ million in 2009 and the different amounts that are mentioned—amounts that are going down? I would just draw that to the attention of the Senate. In 2010 it is down to $4½ million, in 2011 it is down to $4.1 million and in 2012 it goes down to $4 million. So it has gone from $5.5 million down to $4 million over the funding term. And that is the maximum that can be paid under clause 70—which you were very keen to point out to me gave the schools some guarantee. It does not give them a guarantee, Minister.

I again invite you to give me the assurance that those schools that I have named will not, over the next four years, get less than they are getting in the current year, indexed, as I indicated. That is what you have been telling everyone in the committee. That is what you have been telling the Catholic Education Commission. So it will not hurt you, Minister, to tell the Senate, and we will put it on the record so that everyone will know that—subject to you bringing in an amendment later on, because I do not think this bill covers it—we have your assurance as an honourable senator and an honourable minister that none of those schools will receive less. You should not be worried about saying—if you are confident, as I am sure you are and as I am sure your officials are—that these schools will not get less.