David Shoebridge (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Hansard source

r SHOEBRIDGE () (): I commend Senator McKim for bringing this motion forward, and I endorse the words of my colleague Senator Allman-Payne in relation to the basic minimum for public schools.

There has been a long discussion about what the National School Reform Agreement should have when it is renegotiated for the next five years. But let's be clear: the Greens say that the minimum standard we will accept for the next National School Reform Agreement is that there be 100 per cent funding of the SRS at the start of the next agreement—that means by January 2025. It's not at the end of the five-year agreement and not halfway through the five-year agreement, but at the start of the agreement that there needs to be 100 per cent of SRS funding.

What is SRS funding? It's the Schooling Resource Standard funding. The Schooling Resource Standard isn't some sort of Rolls-Royce funding; it's the bare minimum funding needed so that 80 per cent of kids who go to that school get across the line. It's not something that we should be looking for aspirationally; it's the bare minimum. I want to be clear, on behalf of the Greens: we say that once we get to 100 per cent of the SRS, we then want to get 100 per cent of the kids across the line and the funding needed to get 100 per cent across the line. The Schooling Resource Standard isn't a kind of aspirational goal; it's the bare minimum. What is absolutely disgusting, from a country that has, broadly, Labor state and Labor federal governments, is that, at the moment, public schools only receive, on average, 87 per cent of that minimum funding—87 per cent! And a big chunk of that of course is from a decade of underfunding from the coalition—a decade of underfunding from the coalition federally. Instead of talking about what public schools really need—which is respect for teachers, pay for teachers and proper funding for schools—we've had the better part of a decade of culture wars from the coalition, trying to rewrite the curriculum from the federal parliament rather than doing the work that the federal parliament should do for public schools, which is to fund our teachers and our schools, and to support our kids going through their education.

Public education is the glue that holds any equitable society together. A fully funded world-class public education system is what marks out equitable, open societies from the sorts of increasingly divided societies we see around the world. As Greens senators, my colleagues and I rate—our team rates—public education as one of those core indicators for the health of any society. While this government—and, let's be clear, also the coalition before them—have done everything they can to come up with every excuse possible to say that they can't meet the bare minimum funding, the rest of the country is looking at this parliament and saying: 'Hang on a minute, you're willing to legislate for stage 3 tax cuts and give a quarter of a trillion dollars largely to those people who already have more than enough. There's a quarter of a trillion to give to people on 200 grand or more, but you don't have the money for public education?' Or the coalition and Labor come together and say, 'We have half a trillion dollars to spend on nuclear submarines', which we don't need and which make us less safe, but, 'we don't have any money for public education', or, 'we can't close the gap on public education'.

Let's look at what that means. That means this parliament is perfectly comfortable with public-school teachers having to buy the basics for their lessons, with public-school teachers having to pay out of their inadequate salaries to get some of their kids some lunch money and with parents across the country increasingly paying for basic teaching tools in public schools because there's not enough money. It's not that there's not enough money; it's that the priorities are cooked. There are tax cuts for the wealthy and nuclear submarines to fund war, but where's the money for public education?

When we're looking forward over the next few months, we're looking at what the next national school reform agreement will put in place. Let's make it 100 per cent funding from day 1 of the agreement. Then the Greens will give it a tick.