Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Can they make the interjections through the chair too? Professor Wanna from the ANU tells Fact Check that 'mostly funding envelopes running out 10 years are fiction' and that in reality the claims made by Labor are erroneous because the reality of our current democratic system means that the promises of years five and six were just that—they were so far out of it. What we have been able to deliver is exactly the same funding envelope that your government went to the federal election with.

So, as is probably clear from the debate in the chamber, we do not agree with the majority report. I would recommend the dissenting report as compulsory reading for those who are interested in addressing the heart of what goes to educational outcomes, which is ensuring that those students that do attend our schools in Australia have an excellent education by targeting our funding on what matters to kids in schools, not just throwing a bucket of money at it. That was the evidence we were given. The evidence that you will not read in the majority report, which came from principal after principal, from student after student and from parent after parent, is that it is about addressing those issues which actually make a difference. It is about making sure that students and their educational outcomes are at the heart of everything we do.

The common argument promoted by the Australian Education Union and other advocates of increasing education funding is that more money equals better educational outcomes. Quite simply, we are forgetting about the principle of diminishing returns, a principle I am sure, Mr Acting Deputy President, you know all about. According to that exact principle of diminishing returns we do not just keep adding dollar on dollar, million on million, billion on billion. We actually need to be working with the states to ensure that the work that they have done over a great period of time in their local areas can result in tangible outcomes for students in classrooms. So it is not all about more money equals better outcomes. The Abbott government will provide the same amount of funding that the Rudd-Gillard government committed to school funding. So it is absolutely erroneous for those opposite to state that somehow we have been cutting money.

What I think will actually make a difference to the educational outcomes of advantaged and disadvantaged students in Australia is to end the sloganeering. I want to briefly touch on the $7 million that the AEU has provided to the 'I Give a Gonski' campaign. What we do know from research is that what makes a difference to kids in schools is a bipartisan approach to funding the things that matter to make a difference. Unfortunately, opposition senators just cannot get over the fact that they could not deliver a national needs based funding model. We have. I know it hurts, but just get on board.

Senator Jacinta Collins interjecting—

We can fund the things that matter, Senator Collins, like ensuring that high-quality teachers are operating within our schools and that parents are engaged within our schools. The evidence we received from those who came before the committee, particularly the principals, was that the more autonomy we were able to give them at a local level about who they could hire and what they could spend their budget on actually made a difference because they could target their individual programs to their local communities. Rather than having Canberra tell them what they should be doing and where, we could be giving the imprimatur to leadership by those who are on the ground educating our young men and women for the 21st century and giving them the resources they need. So we do need an end to the sloganeering. I want to draw the attention of the chamber to comments made by Dr Jennifer Buckingham in April 2013:

The 'I Give A Gonski' campaign gives the impression that the proposed school funding reforms represent a big, fat cheque for public education.

And I think the comments here today reaffirm that that is a fair assumption. The implication is that if you do not give a Gonski you do not actually care about schools and, more importantly, that you do not actually care about public education. There are a million young Australians educated outside capital cities in this nation and 600,000 of them attend public schools. So for you to stand and assume that I do not care what goes on in public schools in this nation is absolutely wrong.