Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Cabinet Secretary) Share this | Hansard source

As I said earlier today, I thank Senator Roberts for the opportunity during this discussion on the cost-of-living impact of this budget to return to my theme for this week, which is the book of Gonski. Because, of course, the school fees paid by many Australian families are critical to how they deal with the cost of living in their family budget. I am pleased to see that Senators Back and Seselja were in the chamber because I think some of what I say now will help them understand what this serious problem is. Overnight, Senator Birmingham lost the Grattan Institute on this matter. I am going to take a moment to read exactly what the Grattan Institute said, rather than my interpretation of the Gonski report. Let us see what the Grattan Institute said overnight on this issue:

There appear to be two main issues for the Catholics. The first is the 'capacity to contribute' measure, by which non-government schools with students from wealthier suburbs receive less public funding than comparable government schools or non-government schools with students from more disadvantaged areas.

The Catholics argue that it is wrong to assign students the average socio-economic profile of the catchment area in which they live, because their students are on average less well off than independent school students from the same catchment.

Let me stress this point: 'There is some analysis to back this argument.' This is the Grattan Institute; this is not me. 'Indeed, the original Gonski review'—I still have it here with me. Pages are starting to fall out of it. In fact, the most critical page, which highlights the detailed consideration of this issue that the Gonski review undertook.

The original Gonski review argued that 'work should commence as a priority to develop a more precise measure of capacity to contribute to replace the existing SES measure'.

This is the problem. The problem here is that Gonski recommended this work occur. He said certain things should happen in the interim, which the Labor government put in place, and which Minister Birmingham, without having done this policy work, has ripped out. That is the real story of this matter. Rather than Mr 'Policy Pure'; it is actually Mr 'Policy Inept'. This is why I say he has been can do conniving. He knows what he has done here, but he is busy pretending otherwise. He has built a shield, which is the elite, high-fee independent schools which is worth only a small element of the overall cuts here. And he is using this shield, publicly, to cover the much bigger cuts.

Let us talk about some of these bigger cuts, because in estimates, I am sure, we will unearth more and more detail here. We know that the move in relation to the system weighted average measure, which Gonski 1.0 recommended should remain until this SES review had occurred, is worth, to Catholic schools, nationally, $80 million a year. What we do not yet know, because the minister is busy pretending that this is some special case for Catholics—which is false—is what the system weighted average was worth for other low-fee independent schools.

We have schools like the Lutheran schools that I visited in rural Victoria, who also operate within a system and who also benefit from a system weighted average until such time as we rectify the acknowledged errors with the SES measure. What has Minister Birmingham done? He has just maintained the pretence that one size fits all is okay—only with respect to Commonwealth dollars, remember. He is operating on assumptions of what contribution parents should make, but he will not fess up about what they are. He just derides Catholics for exaggerating or being hysterical or rent-seeking, but he will not say what his own assumptions are about what parents would need to contribute for their schools to reach a student resource standard. Oh, no, he is not dealing with any of those issues. He is just maintaining the position that he is Mr 'Policy Pure' and that he will not be bullied.

Compare that to Senator Cormann today, who said that the budget was pragmatic. There is no pragmatism here; it is just a charade and it is a farce. Because, even if we accept the Grattan Institute's recommendation and now say we fix the SES measure, by the time it comes into place, we will have compromised the delivery of education within Catholic education and put enormous pressure, adding to the already existing pressures on our government school systems. And this is where I say the government is not even wary of the consequences in relation to cost shifting here. This is what is so damning about this suggestion that Gonski 2.0 is the 'New Testament', according to some of my colleagues here—Malcolm Turnbull's 'New Testament'. The amount of harm—and this is why I say this is conniving—this will yield will pale into insignificance with what someone like George Brandis has been able to do to community legal centres: leaving people waiting or allowing these things to occur, because they have not done the policy work they should have.

Remember Gonski 2011. As a priority, this work on the SES measure should occur. In the meantime, you set up the new needs based system—as the Labor government did in the way Gonski recommended—in discussion with states, territories and non-government schools building a consensus, as was recommended. It required 27 different arrangements—that did indeed exist at that point in time—to move towards a common student resource standard. But, instead, we have this minister parading around on this charade that one size fits all for Commonwealth dollars is the answer. Well, it is not. I covered earlier why it was not in relation to the funding share from the states versus the Commonwealth, but now I am covering the other serious problems of this package, which is why I say it is a dog of a package.

Let us go to the other issue that the Grattan Institute raised. The second issue is the so-called system-weighted average—it is the Grattan Institute saying this, not me—whereby the capacity to contribute for non-government systemic schools is calculated using the average SES of all the schools in the system. This has the effect of increasing overall funding to Catholic systemic schools by tens of millions of dollars each year–that is them, not me, confirming what I said earlier. But, remember, this is not just Catholic schools; this is systemic non-government schools, such as Lutherans and low-fee Christian schools. There are quite a number of them.

For Catholic schools, the system-weighted average approach potentially acts as a counterweight to the flaws in the SES calculation. If that is the case, removing the system-weighted average, which Gonski 2.0 does, should be accompanied with a review of the formula. Again, this is consistent with recommendations of Gonski 1.0.

So this pretence that this government is fully implementing Gonski is a load of rubbish. The small savings they will make from elite schools in no way matches the damage they do when they change the capacity-to-contribute curve. The curve on this graph, on page 178 of the report, is the guts of that matter. And, until we get from government how much they are saving by shifting that carefully calculated formula, as was recommended in recommendation 22 of Gonski, Catholic education is in serious trouble. And Catholic schools and parents will bear the brunt of this minister's policy ineptitude—policy-pure rubbish. This is a conniving dog of a package.