Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I know it will break Senator Bernardi's heart but probably will not surprise him to hear that the government will not be supporting his amendment. I certainly will not insult you, as you would see it, with any of the comments that the chair may have just quietly muttered before. I can imagine your reaction to that. Senator Bernardi, I appreciate the intent behind your amendment. It is the type of amendment that, were you to want to apply sunset provisions across all areas of government spending, would be a means and a mechanism to do so. As Senator O'Neill has indicated, it is also the type of amendment that would create uncertainty, as you got closer to the end, about what the scale of funding would be. We should recognise that there is always an opportunity for the parliament to seek to amend and vary spending commitments that have been made by previous parliaments, as this chamber is doing right now. That is the nature of such arrangements.

The government have sought to chart a pathway that does not follow through with what we believed were both unaffordable and—as I think Grattan Institute has detailed and demonstrated—unwise funding commitments made by the previous Labor government but that, instead, came up with a model that provides fairness and consistency, stops and ends the capacity for state and territory governments to cost-shift back onto the Commonwealth and ultimately seeks to put in place some limit on the share and scale of the contribution to schools that the federal government makes, a share and scale which has been growing for many years now. We have seen state and territory governments, different political bodies and political lobbyists seek to use pressure at different times and junctures to continually push up the level of federal involvement in school education. While the reforms we have passed tonight will grow it, they will also cap it. As we discussed earlier, Senator Bernardi, the obvious impact of getting to a set share and a consistent share across the country is demonstrated by the fact that the 2027 cost estimates do not vary as a result of the amendments that have been made and passed through here during the debate on this legislation.

We think we have put forward an appropriate model. It therefore avoids the risk that your amendment may pose that in four years time an argument may well be made for even greater spending to be put through when such matters have to be reconsidered, which would be contrary, I am sure, to the intent of what you have brought to the parliament. I thank you for that.

I acknowledge, as have others, your engagement in other debates and particularly your focus on school outcomes. On the school outcomes front, I would draw your attention again to the provisions in the bill we have brought forward, particularly section 22, that provide some capacity for the first time for the Commonwealth to make some of the funding provided to states and territories conditional upon their following through on some of the commitments they might make. If we are to be, as has become the case over time, a more significant partner in the funding of school education then we also ought to hold state and territory governments to account for the way it is used, to ensure that it does lift outcomes.

An example I have given during this debate is the agreement reached, during the life of the coalition government, between state and territory governments and the Commonwealth on teacher education reforms to ensure minimum literacy and numeracy standards for initial teacher entrants and that primary school teachers in future have subject specialisations. Those types of agreed reforms, which can help lift teacher quality in the future, are absolutely things we should have the capacity to ensure the states and territories follow through on, to get better outcomes in place for school education.