Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Human Services (Senator Payne) and Minister for Employment (Senator Abetz) to questions without notice asked by Senators Carr and Dastyari and the Leader of the Opposition in the Senate (Senator Wong) today relating to schools funding.

Today we heard further attempts by this government to explain its backflips on the schools-funding regime, a funding regime which is in complete contrast to what the government said, prior to the election, that it would have. Prior to the election, we were told that there would be no gap between Labor and Liberal when it came to schools funding. Since the election, we have had four separate iterations of the government's position. But nothing can take away from the fact that Labor's program was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to secure genuine schools-funding reform for the 3½ million Australian students currently in schools and for subsequent generations. Labor's program involved a $14.5 billion contribution, of which $9.4 billion would come from the Commonwealth. What we have heard proposed from this new government is a fraction of that amount of money. Less than a third of that amount of money is being proposed.

Under Labor's requirements, there would be conditions applied to the states to ensure that they would not do what they have done for generations, which is to shift costs to the Commonwealth. Labor's conditions would prevent that happening. Under the Labor government's program there was a requirement for three per cent indexation on the co-contributions, whereby, for every dollar the states put in—and they had to actually put extra money in—$2 would be put in from the Commonwealth. We also saw under Labor's program a commitment to a new system of needs based funding, in which money would flow to those most in need: the disabled, the Indigenous, students from working-class and poorer backgrounds, those with limited education, those in remote areas and those who, as a result of no circumstances other than their postcode, were suffering quite massive disadvantage. All of those things this government has walked away from.

Yesterday we heard the Minister for Education say—and this is reflected in the answers given today—that there would not be conditions applied to Western Australia, Queensland and the Northern Territory and, 'We would expect the signatory states to keep the promises they've made.' They would expect! What generosity of spirit! We have heard today about grown-ups. We know the history of education funding in the Commonwealth of Australia. We know the long-established pattern of cost-shifting and the way in which the states have taken money away while at the same time accepted additional money from the Commonwealth. What Mr Pyne said yesterday was that they would expect the states to keep their promises, 'but at the end of the day that is a matter for those sovereign jurisdictions'. So there again we have a situation where this government has walked away from its pre-election commitment, to ensure that there is additional funding provided by the states—not just by the Commonwealth but by the states as well. What we know is very clear, and Senator Abetz has reinforced this point today: there is no way, under this government's new arrangements, that there can be any guarantee that schools will not be worse off. That is crystal clear and it is a broken promise.

We heard much about the South Australian government today. What we do not get told is that the South Australian department of education and schools will increase their funding by $1.87 billion over the next five years. That is a direct result of the agreements that were entered into with the Commonwealth Labor government to ensure increased expenditure by the state government in South Australia. There is nothing that can be construed from any statements that have been made by the education minister today about anything that the South Australian government is doing which will have any negative impact on schools, on teacher numbers or on services, yet we heard this wild allegation being put by Mr Pyne that somehow or other the government in South Australia has walked away from its commitments under the terms of the Better Schools program.

What we have is a coherent package of reform proposed by Labor and a gutting of that program by this government: only one-third of the money delivered, walking away from the equity provisions, walking away from the governance provisions. There is no doubt whatsoever that this is a government that cannot keep its word. This is a government that has reneged on its commitments to the Australian people. (Time expired)

Simon Birmingham (SA, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for the Environment) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Deputy President, he doth protest too much, does Senator Carr. From what we hear, over there Senator Carr howls and he yells and he squeals and he screams. What he is so upset about is that this government has done what his government could not. This government has set about and achieved delivery of funding across every state and territory of the Commonwealth for schools, which his government failed to do. This government will ensure, as promised, that, firstly, there is no need for any school to be worse off and also, as Senator Abetz said today, that, secondly, no school will be worse off. The money is on the table and flowing not just to four states and one territory but to all six states and to both territories to ensure that every student around Australia will be treated equitably under our school funding arrangement.

Senator Carr comes in here, as do other Labor senators, and talks about the potential for schools to be worse off, for children to be worse off, for parents to be worse off. You know who was going to be worse off under the Labor Party had they remained in office? The schools, the students, the parents, the families in Queensland; the schools, the students, the parents, the families in the Northern Territory; and the schools, the students, the parents, the families in Western Australia. Labor was providing no future funding for students, parents, schools and families in those jurisdictions. Labor went into the last election having stripped $1.2 billion out of the budget so that it had nothing left to provide to those jurisdictions. The coalition in government have set about rectifying Labor's problems. We are ensuring that no student will be worse off because we are ensuring that every state, every territory and therefore every Australian family and school student will be treated equitably regardless of where they live. They will be guaranteed of getting the funding they deserve for their schools because every jurisdiction will receive the funding that they deserve.

Mr Shorten has history when it comes to axing things. He may have in the pre-election context axed $1.2 billion of school funding, but that was on top of his track record of having axed two prime ministers during their squalid term in office. How can the Labor Party can come into this chamber and talk about fairness of funding when they got it so wrong—how can they talk about proper process when they ran such a chaotic and shambolic government; how can they talk about any of those things—when they are led by a leader who was the one who left three jurisdictions in the lurch, who failed to properly sign up other jurisdictions to his much vaunted model? Let us be very clear in what we understand here: the school funding package Labor took up was just an attempt to mask all of the failures of government at the last minute running into the election campaign. Mr Shorten ran around the country attempting to stitch together at the eleventh hour of a chaotic government a deal which did not have equity at its heart because he could not get everybody onto the same funding page, a deal that left virtually half of Australia in the lurch, a deal that was clearly and demonstrably unfair in its approach.

Senator Carr comes in here and talks about shifting costs. The truth is that Mr Shorten shifted costs all right. In trying to claim that all money in the world was being provided to schools, he shifted costs outside of the forward estimates. It is very easy to promise things that you do not have to budget for. That is not the style of this government. We are promising what we know we can budget for and deliver over the four-year budget cycle, not what might happen beyond that. What might happen beyond that has to be the subject of future proper budgeting. Mr Shorten also then shifted costs right outside of the budget when he stripped that $1.2 billion away. So be under no illusion: this government stand proud of their education record because they are delivering the equity, the service and the money to all Australian students. (Time expired)

Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It has become so clear over the last weeks and months that those opposite simply do not understand what education is; they really just do not get education at all. However, quite cynically, they do understand the value that Australians put on education. Australian people do get education, they do know what a valuable thing education is. That is why the Australian community embraced the review of school funding and education in this country and they embraced the outcomes of that review that became known as the Gonski report. The Australian people know that the most valuable thing we can do with our time and efforts in this country is make sure that every one of our children has the opportunity to have their full potential realised. They are our future and that is something that the Australian people know. That is why those opposite could not afford to go to the election threatening to undermine all that work and its endpoint, the Better Schools plan. They knew they could not do it. What happened? Our Gonski became their 'conski'. It is absolutely shameful.

The coalition went into the last election saying 'every single school in Australia will receive dollar for dollar the same federal funding over four years whether there is a Liberal or Labor government'. This was a cynical exercise designed to comfort voters that, whatever election decisions they make on any other issue, that very important issue, the most important issue of all, the education of our children, was one issue on which they could say, 'It doesn't really matter whether I vote Labor or Liberal, I'm going to get the same outcome.'

Honestly, what a backflip! Was it a Nadia Comaneci? It is a backflip of those proportions. I think it is probably the second perfect 10 of a backflip. That promise became a commitment to the overall envelope and quantum of funding and then it moved from honouring the signed commitments to honouring the deals for a year prior to the introduction of a new funding model. Those opposite are even trying to say that there was no deal negotiated with my home state of Tasmania, which is completely and utterly untrue. The leader of the government knows that to be a fact, because he knows that that agreement was made between the state Labor government and the then government. Of the weasel word backflips that I have heard from the Prime Minister, this must be the best one of the lot.

We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought we made or the promise some people would have liked us to make. It is quite unbelievable. 'Stupid Labor, stupid journalists, stupid voters: you should have listened more closely because without forensically looking at every slippery word we said you could not really understand what we meant.' The now Prime Minister may as well have stood up and said, 'Sucked in, because you actually believed us.' But unfortunately—unfortunately for the kids of Australia—the uproar has been too great, and the Prime Minister has already had to step in, reinstate the agreements with the signed-up states and territories and come up with some hastily put together agreements with the couple of states and the territory that had not signed up. As for those 'sucked in' states, who thought that hanging around for a new government might get them better money, how wrong they were. Now, the coalition has found the lost $1.2 billion they claim we had removed from the education budget and they are still in very hot water.

Let no-one be in any doubt about this: the current government has abandoned the Better Schools Plan. They want to revert to a broken model that was examined forensically through a very thorough school review of planning, programs and funding that demonstrated that it treated schools differently and it treated well-off schools too well. They have not even made sure that the states that have most recently signed on cannot use the money that they will receive to prop up their own budgets. How appalling is that when we had this wonderful opportunity to really transform the nature of education in this country? It is absolutely appalling and an absolute waste of time and opportunity. (Time expired)

Scott Ryan (Victoria, Liberal Party, Parliamentary Secretary to the Minister for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Isn't today just extraordinary! Yesterday, I sort of expected that the opposition would come in and not be able to understand the announcement that the Prime Minister and Minister Pyne made yesterday afternoon before question time. But I thought that, after they had had a day for it to settle in, they might have a sense of shame in that it has taken the coalition to deliver on the promises that both the opposition and the government at the time made to the Australian people. Labor will not be allowed to run away from the fact that in the dying days of their government and in the shadows of the election campaign—hoping they would get away with it—it was revealed, only due to the Charter of Budget Honesty, that they had cut $1.2 billion from education in this country. The previous few years were nothing but a series of bumper stickers and a sham they were trying to pull over the eyes of the Australian people, just like they did with the carbon tax and the litany of other broken promises.

I almost laughed earlier when I heard Senator Carr talk about a six-year plan—I thought he was more enamoured with five-year plans. He comes in here and talks about a plan where people were expected to believe the Labor Party for three elections away in 2018, 2019 and 2020. They could not even be trusted to deliver year 1 of the funding commitments that the Better Schools Plan required. The students in the jurisdictions of Western Australia, the Northern Territory and Queensland were not going to get a needs based funding arrangement; they were going to be funded and penalised on the basis of the states they came from. This is despite the fact that Western Australia funds its students above the levels the federal government wanted.

Now, we have them fall back on the pathetic excuse that somehow, because Canberra will not dictate to the states the micromanagement of their schools, we are not living up to our promises as to education. Labor cannot be trusted to live up to promises it makes months earlier, but this betrays Labor's constant view. As a party of centralism, and as a party that has spent every waking day of its history trying to undermine our federation, they have this view that all of the wisdom resides in this parliament and in this city. They always take the side against our communities, our towns and our cities as they want to be prescriptive about how things like schools are run. That is only because they want the power of patronage. They lack the humility to say, 'I believe these communities know how to run their schools better.' But when we go to the state level and see the Labor Party taking sides, it is always in favour of the AEU, the bureaucracy and the centralisation of schools but, again, against parents, families, students and communities, because Labor has no sense of its own limitations.

For members of the Labor Party—the party of school halls and pink batts—to come in here and say that they are somehow better placed to run our schools than the authorities responsible for them is nothing short of rank hypocrisy. The Labor Party rolled out the overpriced school halls program. If I had said to anyone in Australia in 2007 that they could have a once-off, once-in-a-generation $14 billion investment in schools, no-one would have come up with the idea of overpriced school halls as a solution to that. The Labor Party paid $2 billion more than was necessary and there were no strings attached then about getting value for money. So why on earth would people trust you managing schools and teachers' salaries in the states that know they are responsible to their electorates for managing our schools?

Only the Labor Party would not think that there is a difference between the requirements of a school in Brunswick and one in Broome and that maybe people in Belconnen are not best placed to make those decisions, that we should leave it to those local communities.

The Labor Party on this issue are shameless, but they will not be allowed to run away from their own history. Their own history is that in the dying days of their government, despite all the promises, political posturing, bumper stickers and green buses, they stripped $1.2 billion from school funding in this country. It is the coalition, as always, that cleans up Labor's mess. It is the coalition that actually delivers on the commitments that this parliament has made to the Australian people and to Australian families. The Labor Party will not be allowed to run away from that history.

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am pleased, at the start of this motion to take note of answers, to hear from Senator Ryan his point of view on the school halls program, a signature program of the previous Labor government.

Senator Kroger interjecting—

Senator Cash interjecting—

There are children sitting up there in the gallery who are from primary schools that, as a result the Labor government, had the good fortune of being successful in gaining a hall, a science centre or a library. Those opposite, when they were in opposition, condemned that policy, notwithstanding the fact that they turned up to every opening for a photo opportunity—smiling, being prepared to be there hand-in-hand with the duty senator or whoever was opening it. They condemned it and wanted to block that program of funding for school halls, science centres and libraries that those schoolchildren up in the gallery now enjoy. That would have been denied by the then opposition.

But that is not what we are here today to talk about; we are here today to talk about the backflips of the government in school funding—and what typical backflips we have seen. For the last two days in question time we have seen here firsthand the Minister representing the Minister for Education in this chamber not being able to answer questions as to why certain things have occurred. In a second supplementary question today she failed to answer why the government backflip on school funding was only discussed by cabinet after the Prime Minister's announcement. This is a typical sign of the disingenuousness of this government—the reason why people are not trusting them. That is the reason why this particular issue on school funding hit the social media like a rash to a—I will not say what I was thinking about. It hit social media over the weekend and led to the situation we are in today of exposing their broken promises.

It is a broken promise that continues into this week. You will hear it in their doorstops and you will hear it in the chambers—this humiliating backdown of Mr Tony Abbott and Minister Pyne. They have done absolutely nothing to fix the broken promise that no school would be worse off. I can remember when the previous education minister the Hon. Peter Garrett and I were involved in many forums discussing not only with students but also with teachers—going round the countryside explaining to people in their schools—maybe the schools that these children in the gallery attend—what the Better Schools Plan, better known as Gonski, meant. That was the consultative process that we went through as a government. This government now are loath to go out there and discuss these issues associated with their backflip, where they are going to cut people short in schools like in my state of Queensland.

What captured the whole issue was a cartoon I saw in the media today. It was a cartoon of Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne in a car swerving around a corner and Mr Abbott says, 'We will now honour our promise we didn't make but the public thought they heard'. That is typical of the media when it comes around to picking up issues that this government is doing in terms of backflips.

Stephen Conroy (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

They are honouring a promise they didn't make!

Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

That is right—a promise they didn't make. The public are a lot smarter than that and they realise what this government are up to. They realise the flaws in their argument and that is why they have had to come cap in hand and reach a settlement with regard to the mistakes they have made and stump up to the commitments that we made in government.

What concerns me is what is happening in my state when it comes to education. This is my concern about not having that commitment to have some say when you reach agreement with another party over what you are going to do with that money. In my state of Queensland the government there are actually closing schools down. They are selling off parts of those schools and school grounds. What is going to happen to the education of those children? At this stage there are some six schools that have closed down in Queensland and a further two that are being considered. This is a typical example of why you need, when you reach agreement with a party, to have some commitment, some trust, some accountability of how you are going to spend that money. But this government will hand over a blank cheque to those primary schools and secondary schools in how they are going to spend that money.

Senator Kroger interjecting—

They do not really care, as long as they just get that money and get that support that they wish to obtain in the future. Once again, the people do not trust you. They are wise to you, Senator Kroger. You have been found out. (Time expired)

Alan Ferguson (SA, Deputy-President) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The question is that the motion moved by Senator Carr be agreed to.

Question agreed to.