David Fawcett (SA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I particularly take note of the comments made by Senator Wong, who went to a very good private school in Adelaide. But her concept of 'across the nation' seems to be rather lacking, when the plan Labor put in place for education, supposedly a national framework, left out a number of the states and territories. Her comment that this was a nationwide scheme shows a distinct lack of understanding of geography and demographics. The fact is that people live in states other than those signed up by the Labor Party.

I am also concerned about the concept of guarantee. The Commonwealth, which signed contracts with the independent and Catholic sector, for example, is in a position to guarantee that money, because it signed a heads of agreement for a contract to give a certain amount of money to the states. How those school systems spend that money is up to them, but the Commonwealth can guarantee that money. With a state system, because Australia is a federation where the Commonwealth government is a creature of the states, when the Commonwealth gives funding to the states it is a state government responsibility to allocate that funding. Without breaking the constitutional requirements around who is responsible for education in the state, the Commonwealth cannot guarantee what the states will do with that money. It is particularly puzzling that members opposite get quite so wrapped up in the fact that the government is quite correctly identifying that whilst we can guarantee funding to one sector all we can do is say we will give the same amount of money to state governments, but how they distribute it is up to them. There is nothing particularly remarkable about that statement of fact and the constitutional basis for it.

In terms of the agreements, there was a press conference before question time today that made a little redundant much of the speech Senator Wong has just given. Obviously the speech was prepared early this morning and perhaps it could have done with some judicial editing—