Steve Fielding (Victoria, Family First Party) Share this | Hansard source

I think there are some facts that have not been presented by the Minister for Education. It is worth noting these. The Senate, if I recall, passed the funding. That is fact 1. Fact 2 is that the Rudd government blocked the funding in the lower house. The third point is that—and the minister did acknowledge this—Family First does support a national curriculum. The fourth important point is that, regarding the unseen, undeveloped national curriculum, the government can come back in here at any stage they want and show it to all of us. Then we can all be reassured that schools will not be disadvantaged in any way. I do not hear a lot of complaints about the standard of teaching and curricula of non-government schools. The fifth point I would like to make is about whether there is enough concern in the community to have the national curriculum come back at another stage where it is not tied to the Schools Assistance Bill 2008.

It can come back at any stage. You could split the bill. The minister did not raise the issue of the media release from the Association of Independent Schools of Victoria that went out yesterday. It was made quite clear in their first sentence:

The Association of Independent Schools of Victoria (AISV) calls on the government to pass the Schools Assistance Bill with the amendments made in the Senate.

For the minister to come here and say that no-one out there has any concerns is very mischievous. Given the level of concern from some schools and some associations, given that you do not have to tie the national curriculum to this bill and given that there is bipartisan support for a national curriculum, taking it out would take a lot of angst out of people and would not divide certain communities.

Family First, from day 1, has been genuine in trying to find a way forward with this. That is why we want to go down the track of adding some simple words to the bill before us. We want to add to the clause on the national curriculum the words ‘or an equivalent accredited curriculum’. I wonder whether that sort of principle makes sense. I wonder whether that principle has been considered before somewhere else. In the state of Victoria there is financial assistance for non-government schools. That sounds interesting. If you have a look at page 19 of their guidelines, guess what words they use in clause 7. It is basically talking about making sure there are some standards for schools in Victoria, but it also has some extra words that say ‘or as broadly equivalent by the registered schools board’. There are the words showing this being done before in an equivalent system, so there is some basis for this.

Given the angst out there, I do appreciate how the Rudd government has backed down on a number of the issues in regard to disclosure and a few of the other items. But this is still an issue of concern. Given that you do not have to necessarily tie it to this bill and you can do it somewhere else at a later stage when the undeveloped curriculum has been developed, it would make sense to then maybe have it tied in such a way.