Slade Brockman (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Pot, kettle, black. We've got the Labor Party standing up here today, accusing Minister Birmingham of starting some sort of sectarian battle, when they're the ones who have, quite frankly, made a funding offer to a particular sector of the education system that doesn't apply to any other part of the education system, and in a way that fundamentally misrepresents what this government is trying to do in education.

It's one of the myths that we constantly hear—it's important to say this for all those people listening out there and all those people up in the gallery. There are no cuts to school funding from this government. The Quality Schools package in fact delivers an extra $25.3 billion on top of the 2016-17 budget in recurrent school funding over the next 10 years. That's 10 years out to 2027—a very solid and serious commitment to the funding of all students in every education sector of Australia over the next decade. That is both significant and very important. Funding for Catholic schools, in fact, is estimated to grow from $6.3 billion in 2017 to $6.6 billion in 2018, to $7.6 billion in 2021 and to $9.9 billion in 2027. The Catholic schools system will receive a total of $28.4 billion in Commonwealth recurrent funding over the four years from 2018 to 2021. What we are doing here is providing significant and accounted-for funding for all parts of the education sector, including the Catholic education sector, over the next 10 years. This is an average per-student increase in the Catholic sector of 3.7 per cent over the next decade, clearly higher than inflation.

Funding is provided directly to the Catholic system and not to individual schools. It is the Catholic systems that redistribute this growing level of funding to their schools according to their own needs based model. The move to a six-year transition for schools or systems below the targeted Commonwealth shares of the funding standard provides additional funding compared to the 10-year transition that was originally proposed. We also have the National School Resourcing Board undertaking a review of socioeconomic status, score methodology and current capacity to contribute arrangements for non-government schools and systems. This will look at the funding in this area and ensure that it is adequate. The board has already met with representatives from the Catholic schools sector, including principals from Victoria. The government will provide additional funding to support transition to the new funding arrangements for ACT Catholic schools.

This is a government and a minister committed to providing significant and budgeted funding for schools over the long term, so schools and school sectors, such as the independent sector and the Catholic sector, can plan for the future and can plan with certainty. What's most important for the schools sector is to know what's coming, when it's coming, to be able to plan for increases in students and to be able to plan for the educational needs of those students over time. So what we need are numbers that can be believed—not fantasy numbers, which is usually what we get from the other side. Here we have $25.3 billion in recurrent funding over 10 years. That brings the total Commonwealth recurrent funding to almost $250 billion out to 2027. This is real needs based funding. The real needs based funding is provided and grows from $17½ billion this year to $31 billion in 2027. This is dealing with the education system in a fair way. It's giving students what they need, it's giving the various parts of the education system certainty going forward and it is fair across all parts of the education system.