Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I wish to speak to the second reading of the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007. This is another one of those newspeak, Brave New World titled bills. It has a particularly charlatan ring to it from the very beginning—namely, the title.

This bill amends the provisions relating to the Investing in Our Schools program as well as providing funds for two other school programs: capital grants for non-government schools and the Literacy, Numeracy and Special Learning Needs Program. Investing in Our Schools provides small targeted capital grants directly to government and non-government schools. In her second reading speech on this bill, the Minister for Education, Science and Training, Ms Bishop, noted that the Investing in Our Schools program had proved to be very popular. She said that this was one of the reasons that additional funds were to be appropriated.

What struck me as odd about her remarks was that she failed to mention that, for government schools—but not for non-government schools—a new lower cap has been placed on the grants that any individual school may receive. As is normal in these questions, the opposition supports in principle any move to provide additional funding for schools. This bill does that, so we are supporting it. However, we will not go along quietly with the nonsense that the government promotes when it talks about these issues. Accordingly, I move:

At the end of the motion, add:

                 “whilst the Senate welcomes the additional funding for the Investing in our Schools program, it notes that when making the announcement the Minister was silent on the change of criteria for government schools halfway through the life of the program and condemns the Government for:

             (a)    leaving many government schools ineligible to apply for additional funds by reducing the funding cap from $150,000 to $100,000; and

             (b)    failing to guarantee the future of the Investing in our Schools program beyond the current funding round”.

What we have is a clear position in terms of the respective views in this parliament. The Labor Party takes the view that there can be no higher priority than the education of our kids and young people. Education is about the future prosperity of the nation. Education is about our continued security. It is about social cohesion and social harmony. It is therefore unfortunate that what the minister fails to mention in her second reading speech that the effect of this bill is to actually lower the amount of the grants that are available for government schools in the Investing in Our Schools program. As I said in the second reading amendment, the ceiling for grants will be lowered from $150,000 to $100,000. In other words, what this government is doing is shifting the goalposts mid-program. It has suddenly told government schools that they can just scrap the applications they have prepared for the $150,000 grants—throw it out and write another one—because there is now a reduction by one-third of the amount of money available.

When the program was announced as part of the coalition’s 2004 election commitments, the then Minister for Education, Science and Training, Brendan Nelson, indicated in a letter to all school principals:

… the maximum amount an individual school community will receive is $150,000 over the next four years.

The same amount was included in the guidelines for previous rounds of the program, and the advice issued on the Department of Education, Science and Training’s website at the time said that schools could apply for several projects up to a $150,000 limit over the life of the program. The guidelines for the latest round, however, which were released on 19 February this year, indicate that government schools are now only eligible for $100,000 in funding.

The government has reneged on its commitment as far as government schools are concerned. It has pulled the rug out from under their feet. Even those government schools that have already received a grant of less than $100,000 will only be able to receive a grand total of $100,000. Only the schools that have been lucky enough to have received $150,000 to date will benefit from the more generous level of funding. On the other hand, non-government schools are eligible for grants that are completely uncapped. The sky is the limit. In the most recent round of funding, I understand that 12 non-government schools received more than $1 million each. While a third of the funding available to the non-government sector is capped at grants of $75,000 per school, I stress that there is no absolute cap for the remaining two-thirds of the funding for the non-government school sector. We have two sets of rules operating. Isn’t this the way this government approaches much of public policy? Government schools have had their maximum grant level slashed by one-third to just $100,000, while non-government schools are able to apply for over $1 million.

As the minister herself said, this has proved a popular program. Many schools have decided to take advantage of it. But in the face of it, there is no reason why different rules should apply to schools in the two sectors. There is no reason at all, and I look forward to the minister’s explanation as to why it is that these double standards apply. If the government’s schools policies were based on fairness and need then surely the rules for this program would be exactly the same across government and non-government sectors. Government schools would be able to apply for $1 million just as non-government schools can. You would expect that that would be a fair and open approach to this matter. That is not the way this government operates. As I understand it, for the non-government sector funds are targeted at the neediest schools, but there are at least as many needy schools in the government sector that might benefit from the generous amounts available through this program to some of the non-government schools.

The government is far from even-handed in its policy approach to school funding. It fails dismally the fairness test. It fails to fund all schools on the basis of need. Labor is committed to funding schools on the basis of fairness and need. My colleague Stephen Smith has made that very clear. Yesterday Mr Smith, the shadow minister for education, made four very clear and unequivocal points about Labor’s new policy for schools. This policy is yet to be worked out in the finer details, but Mr Smith and Mr Rudd have made it clear to the Australian voters that Labor’s policy approach will be based on the following four points. Firstly, Labor believes that a greater investment should be made at all levels of education, including in schools and schooling. Secondly, Labor will fund all schools on the basis of need and fairness. Thirdly, Labor will not cut funding to any school. Fourthly, we will not disturb the current AGSRC indexation arrangements for schools funding.

Those are the four clear commitments on schools funding that Labor has made. These four principles underlie Labor’s schools policy. The voters of Australia can be confident that we mean every single word of those four principles and we will not deviate from them. We are not going to this year’s election with the policy we took last time; we have a new policy. The new policy is yet to be worked out in detail but Labor has said that we will work together with the stakeholders in the school sector on the details of that policy. I know that my colleague Mr Smith looks forward to doing exactly that. Our new policy will be fair to non-government schools; it will also be fair to government schools because it is a principle based on need. That is the fundamental underlying principle of Labor’s policy. We cannot be clearer than that.

I note that, on the subject of Labor’s schools policy, the Prime Minister has taken my name in vain in the House. I notice that he was trying to put words in my mouth yet again. On Tuesday the Prime Minister quoted me as saying, in a debate of a few years ago, that Labor believed that private schools were an addition, not an alternative, in terms of providing reasonable access to quality government schooling. If it is in Hansard, I probably did say that, but the Prime Minister—our rattled, nervous Prime Minister—was trying to make out that I meant that Labor did not support the existence or the establishment of private schools. Nothing could be further from the truth, and my words, as quoted, make that perfectly clear. My remarks were about choice in schooling. I said that private schooling represented an additional choice for parents, on top of the choice—a choice that must be available to all parents—to send their kids to a quality government school. The genuine choice of a government school must be available to all families, rich or poor, in the country and in the city.

Many parents in fact exercise their choice to send their children to a non-government school. That is their right and Labor supports them in that choice. That is the point I was making. I was not saying, and I was not implying, that Labor did not support that choice. And I was certainly not saying that private schools ought to be closed down, or ought not to be established. Mr Howard was completely wrong in the way in which he presented my remarks. Mr Howard might be clever, but he sometimes gets things very wrong.

Mr Howard is right, however, if he thinks Labor accords high policy priority to public schools. We always have and we always will. That is the case if for no other reason than the majority of Australian students—almost 70 per cent—attend government schools. There is an underlying matter of principle at stake. It is the principle I referred to in passing a moment ago. It is the principle that high-quality government schooling—public schooling—must be available to all kids in Australia, no matter who they are and no matter where they live. Your life chances should not be determined by postcode. It is a right of all Australians to have genuine equality of opportunity.

That principle is not worth the paper it is written on when it comes to this government’s approach, because it is not backed up by sound, fair policies based on the principles of funding according to need. While supporting families in their choice of schooling, Labor recognise that most Australian students attend government schools, and we are committed to ensuring that those children in government schools get an education of the highest quality. It is the responsibility of any government to guarantee that all children have access to high-quality public schooling. In government, Labor will work together with the states and territories to ensure that this is exactly what happens in Australia. Our children should be getting the best education in the world. Our children are entitled to that, and that is what Mr Rudd’s education revolution is all about. It is about ensuring that the national education system, at all levels, is up there with the best in the world. Our public schools must be up there with the best in the world.

I now turn to the particulars of this bill. I noted in my remarks at the outset that this bill fails the fairness test and fails to allocate funds based solely on need. Labor supports the bill on the basis that it provides additional funding to schools, especially to needy schools. We are concerned, however, that the bill reduces the amount of funding available to individual government schools through the Investing in Our Schools program. It shifts the goalposts for government schools. It shifts the goalposts of public education in Australia. That is simply not fair. I note further that the program finishes up in 2008. This year, 2007, is the final year for applications under this program. The needs that this program were designed to address will not disappear in 2008; there will continue to be needy schools. I look forward to the government announcing what its intentions are in terms of the replacement for this program.

The government is open to the charge that this program—this essentially ephemeral program—was no more than a political stunt designed in the last election. It was not a cheap stunt—we have to assert that—because it has now cost $1.2 billion all up over four years. It is another one of Mr Howard’s clever stunts. Because of Labor’s concerns about the unfairness of the bill, the opposition has moved a second reading amendment in the terms that I have outlined. I trust that that position will be carried by the Senate.

Kerry Nettle (NSW, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Greens are proud supporters of public education and we believe that governments at all levels must prioritise the needs of government schools. This is a principle that is held dear by the Greens, because it springs from one of our four founding principles: pursuing social and economic justice. It is sad that this basic principle—this appeal to the Australian sense of a fair go—has been so forgotten in the current education debate. It appears to have been usurped by the argument for individual entitlement and choice. This view is the one that the government embraces and, from its recent announcements, to a large extent the opposition does too.

The individual entitlement position is this: schooling is about parental choice and opportunity. Hence the bill that we are dealing with, which outlines that. This is how the government argument goes: schooling is about choice and it is the government’s responsibility to facilitate parental choice, and to do so fairly government funding should be distributed on a per child basis as their individual entitlement, irrespective of educational outcome. That is the key point to understand about the individual entitlement or choice argument. It says nothing about education outcomes. It is not about making Australia smarter. It is not about the education interests of the whole community. The government is not interested in arguments about future wellbeing; it is only about the individual interests of those rich enough to exercise choice in schooling.

The principle that the Greens believe in is that schooling is about education outcomes. It is the responsibility of government to ensure that all Australian children get the very best education that they possibly can in this country. By any measure, the most effective way of achieving this is by providing the very best public education system we possibly can. Private education cannot do the same job. By definition, private schools are about exclusion and they do not want to educate all Australians. If we are true to this principle of education outcomes, we must ensure that all Australian children get access to the best quality public education that our community can afford—no exceptions and no excuses.

The Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007 is the latest in a string of schools bills from this government which fly in the face of this principle. It is all about the exceptions and excuses that riddle the special interest driven federal school funding policies we see in this country. This bill deals with a number of school funding programs: the Investing in Our Schools program, the capital grants program and the Literacy, Numeracy and Special Learning Needs Program. To the extent that these programs deliver much-needed cash to public schools, the Greens are not going to oppose them. We do, however, register our objection to the continuing unfair and, frankly, irresponsible diversion of federal education dollars into the private sector, a diversion which continues in this bill.

This bill delivers an additional $181 million for the second round of applications under the Investing in Our Schools program. This $181 million is divided into $127 million for public schools and another $54 million for private schools, thereby reflecting the 70-30 split intended in the original announcement that promises $1 billion for the Investing in Our Schools program, with $700 million for public schools and $300 million to private schools. The Greens are not fans of the Investing in Our Schools program. We are critical of its design and we are critical of its implementation. In terms of design and implementation, which this bill is concerned with, the scheme is demonstrably unfair.

Going back to the principle of education outcomes, one would have thought that the best way to get value for taxpayers’ money would be to assess what capital works schools needed, which ones had the most acute need and which projects would bring the most benefit and then fund them accordingly. This scheme does not do that. The government has decided, before seeing any applications or making any investigations into the needs of schools, that 30 per cent of all funds will be spent in the private school sector—reflecting the 30 per cent of enrolments that are in that sector—and that 70 per cent will be spent in the public school sector. It has made this choice to put 30 per cent of the funding into the private school sector despite knowing better than anyone else that the private schooling sector has enjoyed more capital investment than the public school sector over at least the past couple of decades and so it already possesses many more and better quality capital assets than the public school sector, thanks to this funding and other funding that they receive.

The design of the Investing in Our Schools program is predetermined to, at the very least, maintain current inequities between private and public schools. The government has predetermined to spend taxpayer dollars on added extras in private schools that could have been spent on basic essentials in public schools. This decision boils down to the minister deciding to subsidise a rifle range at a private school rather than a toilet block at a public school.

Let us think about that for a minute. How can it be rational, how can it be sensible, to spend scarce education dollars on subsidising rifle ranges in the wealthiest of private schools while some Australian children do not have access to proper toilet facilities? That is the irrational outcome of the individual entitlement philosophy that has captured the current schools funding debate.

But the inequities do not end there. The Investing in Our Schools program also includes caps on the amounts that schools can request. Originally, public schools could apply for up to $150,000, so they were planning to apply for projects up to that amount. But now the government has reneged on that promise and brought down the cap to $100,000, thereby upsetting the plans of scores of public schools that had plans up to the previous cap. The explanation for this is that it will allow more schools to get funding. Why has there been no equivalent process for private schools? Indeed, why is $200 million of the $300 million set aside for private schools uncapped? Some private schools have been awarded grants under this program in excess of $1 million. That is 10 times the proposed cap for public schools. There is no defensible explanation for these inequities. They are simply the product of the powerful special interests within the private school sector that have so captured federal education funding in this area.

But the Greens have a more fundamental objection to the Investing in Our Schools program—that is, that the program should be unnecessary. The fact that we have such a program at all is an admission that we as a community have allowed the capital infrastructure of our schools to deteriorate to alarming levels. What should happen is that a rational, needs based funding model should distribute ample capital funds to schools managed by departments of education with input from individual schools. And the capital assets of those schools should be well maintained and upgraded when necessary. Instead, we get this politically motivated program that is about giving desperate public school communities a few crumbs in the lead-up to elections whilst allowing grateful private schools to get yet more public subsidies to maintain their exclusive facilities.

This bill also continues funding to the capital grants program that delivers top-up capital funding to private schools to make up the perceived losses to target capital works programs that were scrapped by the Howard government in 1996. To the extent that it can be shown that this funding is justified on a needs basis we would support it. For example, if it were targeted to assist remote Indigenous education in the private sector, we could support it. But it is not. It appears that the $10 million just goes to the general pot of money to further subsidise private schools’ capital grants. The Greens cannot support this kind of sloppy funding policy and will move to amend this bill to redirect those funds to the public sector, where they are desperately needed. We know this because a lot of research has been done into the state of our public schools. This is a feature of public sector services—they are open to scrutiny. We know what we are paying for and what is needed. It is not so in the private sector.

Of course, both the government and the opposition tell us that to be concerned about the inequities between public and private schools is a debate that, to quote the shadow minister, is ‘very much behind us’. This is a declaration of surrender, a surrender of rational policy making to the bullying of special interests. There clearly is a tension in government funding between public and private. To suggest there is not is simply to deny reality. There is a concern about fairness, because one school system is allowed to pick and choose its students and charge fees whilst the other is not. There is a justified debate about how to resolve these problems, and the Greens will continuing to play a leading role in this debate.

The Labor Party, however, are hoping to avoid the intractable problem of public school/private school funding inequities by introducing a pilot policy that they are calling Local Schools Working Together whilst also announcing that no private school, no matter how wealthy, will have any government funding cut under Labor. These policies will fail to resolve the tensions I have talked about. First of all, the decision not to cut funding to even the very wealthiest of private schools is a decision to prioritise subsidising luxury add-ons for private schools instead of spending this money on essential basics for public schools. You cannot escape this logic. Under the Labor Party’s policy, the only way to provide genuine needs based funding is if your boost to public school funding is so great that it makes all public schools as well resourced as the King’s School in Parramatta or Geelong Grammar. But I do not think that is the kind of funding for public schools that the Labor Party is talking about in this proposal.

Even if you did give that level of boost to public schools—and the Greens would think that was fantastic—the formula that is set up, which the government supports and the opposition has not indicated that it does not support, ensures that you continue to give money to the very wealthiest of the private schools ahead of spending it on public education. You have to get to a system where the King’s School is considered the most needy in order for it to get funding in a needs based funding model. Until you get to that point you cannot describe the model of funding you are putting forward as a needs based funding model. If you are going to give more money to the the King’s School under a needs based funding model then you need to prove to us that the King’s School needs that money more than a small local public school in the west of Sydney. I think you would be pushing it to do that.

The Local Schools Working Together program may make a good headline, but it is very limited in scope and will simply not have much of an impact on the overwhelming majority of Australian students. The policy suggests that we can make resources go further if schools share them. To facilitate this economy of scale, the Labor Party say they will subsidise capital works which will be shared between public and private schools. But this policy raises more questions. Why prioritise resources sharing between public and private schools? Why not target the $62.5 million earmarked in this announcement for public schools at building new facilities in public schools? That is surely just as feasible. Why cannot the Labor Party increase funding to public schools without feeling compelled to include private schools in the scheme?

Funding is supposed to be needs based—and we all know which schools need funding; it happens to be public schools, which have had their funding taken away by state and federal governments to feed the wealthiest of private schools in this country—but it cannot be needs based if you do not fund the needy schools and, instead, continue to fund and say that you will increase the funding of private schools, as the Leader of the Opposition, Kevin Rudd, has done in the last few days.

The Greens are also concerned that, because the scheme is particularly aimed at new schools, it will further increase the establishment of small, new private schools. I have spoken about this previously. The abolition of the new schools policy in 1996, which previously limited the establishment of private schools and which set up somewhat of a planned system, has been one of the most damaging policies to the integrity of the public school system that we have seen in recent times. The new Labor policy could in fact exacerbate this problem. The Greens believe that the expansion of the private schools system in this way is a problem for Australia, which I have addressed many times previously. Because of the impact that it has on enrolments of local public schools where you provide a funding model which says: ‘We will give you this funding if you set up a new, local private school that does not need to meet the same regulations in terms of quality in educational standards,’ we see these new schools pop up taking students away and out of our public system. But they do not have the same requirements to provide the same quality of education. Overall, this damages the quality of education which is available in schools in Australia, most particularly in public schools but right across the board.

This bill is a symptom of the concept of applying individual entitlement arguments to national education policies—and it is one that, sadly, has won the support of both the opposition and the government—rather than ensuring we have a quality public education system. What is needed in the education funding debate is the courage to stand up and be proud of public schools in this country, to invest in them and to say, ‘That’s the priority; it’s the responsibility of government to ensure that children in this country can access the best quality education that the government can afford to put in place.’ That is the government’s job. It is like government 101: ‘We provide services, we provide the best quality education that we can.’ In the public system, it is the government’s job to provide that quality of education. That is what we need to see, but it is not what we see. Every year, every funding round, every election, we see both the major parties reneging on that core responsibility to provide and fund public schools in this country.

We see successive governments, at state and federal level, take away funding from our public schools in this country and instead put it into already wealthy private schools. That is what we see every time. How can people in here stand up and say, ‘We are the government, we want to be the government, we are going to look after people’s services.’ You cannot do that unless you invest in those public services that all Australian children can access, regardless of their capacity to pay, their religion, their gender or any other bias. That is the great value of our public education system, and governments of all persuasions should stand up and be proud of quality public education systems that they invest in.

You cannot do that with the existing funding models. You cannot do that with the system of funding we have which says, ‘Every time we increase any funding to public schools, we’ll also increase it to private schools.’ You cannot have needs based funding when you are increasing the funding of schools such as the King’s School in Parramatta. You cannot have a needs based funding model where you say, ‘The King’s School in Parramatta really needs that money, so we’ll take it away from the Mount Druitt Public School. We’ll take that money out of the package of government funding for public schools’—public schools are government responsibility—‘and we’ll divert it to the King’s School in Parramatta.’ You cannot do that and call it needs based funding. It is not needs based funding. When you bring Mount Druitt Public School’s funding up to the level of funding for the King’s School at Parramatta then let us have the debate, but that is not what you do. (Time expired)

Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this evening to provide some contribution to this debate on the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006 before us. I just want to place on record my appreciation of Senator Nettle’s contribution, because I think she started to hit the mark there. I know the Senate is sitting at a late hour and we are being broadcast, and I am probably competing with the avid fans of Tony Delroy on the ABC, but it always gives me a good opportunity to talk about the real funding needs of this country. In the last 24 hours there has been much debate in the Northern Territory about the funding of education, particularly secondary education out bush. If we want to talk about the comparison between places such as Kings School in Sydney versus everywhere else, let us talk about your ordinary high school at the end of your street—Glen Waverley High School or Catholic secondary colleges around this country, and there is a place for those. I went to St Columba’s College in Essendon and it is a fantastic school, a grand school.

If only I knew then what I know now. Two weeks ago, I was standing at an outstation in the Northern Territory known as Garrthalala. Kids from that area actually catch a plane every Tuesday morning into this outstation. For those people who might be listening, that outstation is about 100 kilometres south of Gove, home of Mandawuy Yunupingu and Yothu Yindi, people who live near Blue Mud Bay in the Northern Territory and call that place their home. So these kids catch a plane from surrounding outstations into Garrthalala. They get there on a Tuesday morning. They stay there on Tuesday and Wednesday and they fly out on Thursday afternoon. Are they at a boarding school? No, they are certainly not. They pull up their swags on the school’s veranda every night, and they camp on the veranda of the school. So what do they do for meals three times a day? They are rostered on to cook their own meals. They are rostered on in the little kitchen between the two classrooms that has been set up. It provides meals for these kids, at least on a Tuesday and a Wednesday night. Why are there two rooms? Because they have a program running for the boys and a program running for the girls. If you know anything about Indigenous culture, you will know that is the best way for you to get through to these kids.

But I do have to say that they had in front of them half-a-dozen laptop computers. Mind you, they were operating extremely slowly. Not on broadband? No way. On dial-up? Absolutely. By satellite? Well, when the weather is pretty good. So I want you to picture that. Picture that as you also look at the local secondary school or high school that your kid might be going to, and you will then have some appreciation of why in this place we are pretty passionate about defending public schools and why we are very avid in campaigning to make sure that every kid in this country gets not only the best chance at life but a chance at life—to be able to attend some secondary school.

I am aware of the debate from Tracker Tilmouth and people in the Territory in the last 24 hours. I do digress a bit here tonight, I know, but you have to remember that, in the Northern Territory, Aboriginal communities like Garrthalala existed for 27 years under the coalition of the Liberal, National and Country parties with absolutely no—zero—provision of secondary education in their communities. There was none in little communities like outstations—no way—let alone communities like Maningrida or Wadeye. There are now 3,000 people in that community, so it certainly would warrant a secondary school of some sort.

There have been criticisms that the Northern Territory government are not delivering. I strongly object to those criticisms. If you have followed the funding of Indigenous education as I have done for the last 25 years of my life, you would know that each and every year, despite the rhetoric from this government, for the last 11 years, funding to Aboriginal education has in fact declined. It has been rolled up and rerolled into different programs so that the deckchairs on the Titanic look more numerous than they actually are. But, if you roll it back and analyse it and have the knowledge that I and some of the staff I have worked with have, you would know that the funding has in fact declined, and it has been harder and harder to gain. The changes to the ASSPA program and the PSPI program that I have talked about so many times in this place are examples of that.

Let us look at the Northern Territory government. We find that, in the last five years of the Clare Martin Labor government, at least 63 children who live in places like Garrthalala have now reached year 12—have now obtained what you and I, as non-Indigenous persons in this country, want for each and every one of our kids. Let me tell you: Aboriginal people are absolutely no different here. There is a belief out there that somehow they do not value education. They do, but they want an education system that delivers curriculum that is relevant to their kids. The Martin Labor government in the Northern Territory have been able to at least get 63 kids—and each year that number increases—to pass year 12.

And more and more, each year, we find that they are providing funding to open secondary education provision in remote communities. Are they doing it with any extra support or a leg-up from the federal government? No, they are not. They have to do it with the funds that are given to them from the federal government. How is that funding based? Of course, it is based on the number of kids that attend the school, so it is a bit like a dog chasing its tail, really. There is no assistance whatsoever to say the Northern Territory government, ‘Here’s a couple of million dollars extra this year over and above the IESIP funds we give you to attend to attendance and to set up more secondary schools in the Northern Territory.’ So it is being done out of the existing budget, trying to capture kids who do not come to school at the moment. They have to do it out of funds that they currently get.

I think they have made some amazing gains in the short five years that they have been in power, when you think about the fact that the Country Liberal Party was there for 27 years, and not one secondary lesson in any Aboriginal community was delivered in a classroom in a school in that period of time. When I worked at Yirrkala back in the early eighties, we tried to set up a secondary program for kids there instead of them doing the postprimary program that was around, and we were flatly forbidden by the Country Liberal Party government at the time to do that. They were not going to and refused to fund and resource that outcome.

So, when we talk about the resourcing of public education in this country and we have the debate about whether it should be public or private schools, my debate is about what public schools are going to get this assistance. In particular, in all of this rhetoric and all of this discussion about who is going to get what out of the education bucket, let us have a really long, hard look at what Indigenous children in this country do not get and what they would need in order to survive and prosper in this country as well as any other person that I am aware of ought to.

The bill before us tonight provides funding to the states and territories for government and non-government schools for the next three to four years, mainly through the Investing in Our Schools Program. It revises the capital amounts for infrastructure grants for government schools in 2007 and for non-government schools in 2007-08. The Investing in Our Schools program was a 2004 election promise made by the federal government. It is a $1 billion promise under which, until recently, schools could apply for up to $150,000 over the four-year term of the program.

But wait—there is more! With this government—tricky, mean and clearly out of touch when it comes to Indigenous people—the goalposts have quite recently been moved. But that is only for public schools, not for private schools. Private schools can still apply for grants of up to $75,000. The amount for government school grants has been reduced to a maximum of $100,000, down from $150,000. The amount that government schools can now apply for has been reduced by a third. I understand that Minister Julie Bishop has defended the move, saying that the government never intended to give all schools $150,000. I see: so you say one thing before the election in 2004 and another thing afterwards. The minister went on to say that an extra $181 million had been provided to the program and that government schools that had received less than $100,000 would be helped. What about those who want to apply for more than $100,000? What about the toilet blocks that Senator Nettle was talking about, for example? What about the schools in remote and Indigenous communities that might want to apply for more than $100,000 and were hoping to get $150,000 under this grant? They can no longer do it.

The government are so inflexible and so blind to the needs of Indigenous communities in this country that they do not say: ‘We’ll move the goalposts even further and perhaps those little, struggling Indigenous schools in remote communities can apply for $200,000. We are so in touch with Indigenous Australia and remote Australia as a federal government that we know that to build a toilet block in downtown Pascoe Vale or in Belconnen, here in Canberra, is half the price of building it somewhere in the Northern Territory that might be 400 kilometres west of the Stuart Highway.’ They do not recognise that in their funding.

Even schools that are struggling in the Northern Territory, out bush, in remote Australia, who would get $100,000 if they were lucky enough, cannot buy the same amount of equipment. The same capital infrastructure will not go as far in a remote community for $100,000 as it will in downtown Sydney. It just will not do that. Transport costs, freight costs and the costs of labour for erecting capital infrastructure are two to three times the amount in remote communities. This government does not even recognise that. You may as well say that $100,000 to a school at, say, Yuendumu or Kintore is, in reality, more like $50,000 or $60,000, because the additional costs they incur trying to bring in those services, those goods and that equipment are two to three times the amount.

It is really disappointing to see that the goalposts have moved for government schools around this country but that they have not moved enough to recognise that Indigenous schools might need double that amount of money. Those schools are in a remote part of this country, so their dollar will not go as far as it would in some other schools. It is disappointing to notice that once again Indigenous kids in this country will not get the additional assistance that will be needed in the coming years.

This bill will offer more funding to schools. The Labor Party will support the bill because some crumbs from this government are better than nothing. This government has, for 11 years, dragged its feet on the proper funding of public education as a whole. We are the only OECD country to have greatly reduced public education funding. What a reputation that is. In the lead-up to the election, the Prime Minister, Mr Howard, might say, ‘Vote for me. I have a record on public education funding.’ You certainly do. You are the only Prime Minister of an OECD country who has actually reduced funding to public education over your 11 years in office.

Both the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education, Science and Training conceded in question time on 13 February this year that we could be doing a lot better in education. This is a perfect example of that. Both of those elected members of parliament went on to claim that the problems were nothing to do with them but rather the fault of the states or territories or—wait for it—even the education unions. It was the usual old blame game, rather than acknowledging and accepting the fact that the problem lies with their blinkered ideology, which sees education as an expense rather than an investment. They see it as an expense to be borne by the users as much as possible.

So, no, we will not be spending $150,000 on each government school that might want to apply for a grant. That would cost us way too much. We would not want to invest in the future of this country. We would not want to invest in the future economy of this country by skilling up our kids at this point in time and providing them with proper infrastructure and capital needs at their schools. But what we will do is shrink the budget even more and outlay the money in other areas where we do not get such a good return for our investment.

Private schools have enormous incomes from parents’ fees and they have luxurious facilities. I have heard tonight of archery ranges and pony riding schools. If you could just picture that, standing in the middle of Arnhem Land as I do sometimes. It is a joke. These schools will still be funded by the taxpayer to make their facilities even better. I want to emphasise that we certainly believe that education facilities should be of a high quality. There is no doubt about that. But while this is going on, many small schools in the remote areas that I represent and which I have described at length to you tonight cannot even get their school painted or get a few computers fixed.

The blame game has really gone on long enough. Under this government, our national productivity growth has declined over the past 10 years. This government has been able to ride on the coat-tails of a world economic boom, claiming massive credit which is absolutely not warranted or deserved. This government has been happy to attack teacher training, teachers’ abilities and education outcomes. This government has decided that civics is a must and that schools should have active flagpoles which can only be pronounced open by a government member. That is democracy for you. I know that a new flagpole was launched at Karama Primary School in the last 10 days.

Debate interrupted.