SCHOOLS ASSISTANCE (LEARNING TOGETHER-ACHIEVEMENT THROUGH CHOICE AND OPPORTUNITY) BILL 2004 and STATES GRANTS (PRIMARY AND SECONDARY EDUCATION ASSISTANCE) LEGISLATION AMENDMENT BILL 2004

4th Aug 04

Mr ORGAN (Cunningham) (6.20 p.m.) — In rising to speak to the Schools Assistance (Learning Together-Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Bill 2004 and the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Legislation Amendment Bill 2004, I must say at the outset that once again the Howard government has come out with another nasty piece of legislation which seeks to further undermine the nation's public education system, a fact not addressed by the previous government speaker who spoke often about choice and did not hold back in bagging the teachers unions. Unfortunately there was no mention by the previous speaker of what we are seeing out there in our communities, which is the running down of the public system. So many on the other side of this House are in denial about the crisis currently facing the public education system in this country. Many members in this House are quite aware of that crisis—they are made aware of it any time they visit their local public school.

Who can forget the Prime Minister's ill-founded swipe at the values—or apparent lack thereof—of the public education system earlier this year? Teachers and parents committed to the public system were stunned and outraged by the Prime Minister's audacity on that occasion. This bill must be clearly seen for what it is: another blatant attack on the public education system in this country. We heard the previous speaker talk about the increasing amounts of money being put into the education system by this government, but the whole problem is that a lot of it is going into the private system while the public education system is missing out increasingly as time goes on.

We have seen that the Prime Minister's agenda is also being imposed on the public education system. For example, in order to qualify for the government's 2004 budget funding package, schools have been told that they must embrace apparent values based conditions, including each school flying the Australian flag. The Prime Minister told Australian schools that they would not receive federal funding unless they had `a functioning flagpole and flew the Australian flag'. Surely most parents and teachers are much more concerned with resources and infrastructure, especially at the present time, than whether their school flies a flag. I would suggest that most schools already have the flag flying anyway.

I know that in my own electorate of Cunningham there are numerous schools facing leaking buildings, doors falling off school classrooms and students forced to go to class in cold, damp and wet conditions. We could just go on and on. The infrastructure in the public education system is being run down as we speak. The federal government have a role to play in addressing this real concern out there at the moment. The Prime Minister is usually misguided on the subject of values at school. He seems to want to try once again to force his outmoded social perspective upon the next generation. He said with the budget that he will not give schools any money unless they agree to this. This is typical coalition social engineering in full flight.

The federal government have been attempting to undermine the perceived quality of our public education system for some time now and this bill is further evidence of that. It is about their attempts to make the public education system a residue system in this country. Rather than representing honestly what public education stands for and what it delivers to students—that is, quality, diversity, tolerance and access—this government are trying to make out that public education is the poor sibling of private education and that they are simply doing their bit to give the public system a hand up. The schools assistance bill is about this government's inability to recognise our public education system as one of the nation's greatest assets, just like their failure to recognise our public health care system as a national asset and a world leader. They want to downgrade public providers to speed up the transition over to private education because this government are obsessed with privatisation and the principles of user pays. The government fundamentally believe that those who can afford to pay deserve higher standards and that those who cannot must work harder until they can break through to the supposedly superior private system.

What this government must realise is that Australians recognise that our nation's greatest social asset—our commitment to egalitarianism—will be fatally undermined by the government's twisted and misguided ideological agenda. There is no doubt that the government are determined to create a nation of haves and have-nots. Undermining the public education system is just one element of their unwavering support for and faith in the free market. They seem to believe that it is not the government's role to provide essential education and health services but, rather, it is the role of the market to do so. We heard the previous speaker talk about the $4 billion that is coming out of the pockets of ordinary Australians in supporting the education system at the moment. Under this government that cost is increasing every day.

This government are encouraging in any way they can the flight of Australians from the public system to the private system. This is something that we all need to be really concerned about. This bill represents a further effort by the government to achieve this goal. As the Prime Minister explained when he announced the changes contained within this bill, parents want to see better standards in primary and secondary schools. So, according to the Prime Minister, it seems that obviously the public system needs help to get it up to private system standards. I think that is rubbish. This is despite the fact that most states have indicated that they already have in place most of the programs that the Prime Minister has highlighted, including, for example, compulsory two-hour-per-week exercise programs. By the end of last month, for example, only 123 schools had applied for the $1,500 to buy a flagpole, so it seems that most already have a flagpole standing with the flag fluttering. Teachers unions across the country have highlighted how the Howard government's proposals have more to do with politics than educational outcomes.

The Greens oppose this bill because most of the conditions which have been tied to funding are either inappropriate or unnecessary. On top of this, the Greens are fundamentally opposed to the inequitable socioeconomic status or SES funding model which, under this bill, the government plan to further extend. A major change implemented by this bill is that all nongovernment schools will now be covered by the SES system which was introduced in 2001. The SES funding model allocates money to a school based on the socioeconomic status of its students, regardless of tuition fees. This means that this government rely on a funding formula which allows them to financially bolster those schools which they perceive to be the best schools—the nation's wealthiest private schools. This government appear to be under the false impression that the most gifted and talented students attend the nation's wealthiest schools. Rather than bolstering our wonderful public system and ensuring that students across the nation continue to have equality of opportunity, this government now blatantly favour the nation's wealthiest schools. That cannot be denied. As a report tabled by Associate Professor Louise Watson at the Senate inquiry into this issue says:

[Private] schools receive $368 million per year in government grants, which assist in raising their total average resources per student to more than 62% above average state school resources.

The Greens consider this funding model completely unacceptable.

The consideration of this bill takes place against the backdrop of continuing debate about Commonwealth funding for schools. It is also occurring at the same time as the Senate Employment, Workplace Relations and Education References Committee is conducting an inquiry into Commonwealth funding for schools. This committee is set to report on 11 August. Once again, we have a government showing disrespect to the parliamentary process by handing down relevant legislation into the House before a relevant committee hands down its own report. The committee is examining the principles of Commonwealth funding for schools with particular reference to efficiency, effectiveness and accountability. The Minister for Education, Science and Training, in his budget media release, announced that the government will provide $31.3 billion in funding for Australian schools from 2005 to 2008, representing an $8 billion increase over the current quadrennium of Commonwealth funding for schools in 2001 to 2004. That is $31.3 billion over that 2005-08 period. The bill gives effect to the budget provisions.

Over two-thirds of the $31.3 billion will be allocated to non-government schools, continuing a trend which has seen the non-government schools' share of Commonwealth specific purpose funding for schools grow from 55.6 per cent in 1995-96 to an estimated 68.9 per cent by 2007-08. That is an additional 13.3 per cent diverted away from the public sector. This allocation takes place in the context that the Australian government considers its school funding role as a supplementary one and that, under the Australian Constitution, government schools are the responsibility of state and territory governments. We have heard the previous speaker refer to that belief. Most of the $8 billion funding increase will be due to indexation and supplementation. From the various ministerial announcements regarding the funding arrangements for the next quadrennium, approximately $404.6 million, or five per cent of this increase, can be readily identified as new money. A major proportion of this money, amounting to $362 million, will finance the Catholic systemic schools' move into the socioeconomic status—SES—system of Commonwealth general recurrent funding for non-government schools.

There has been some confusion over the detail of the ALP school funding policy and its potential impacts. There can be no confusion over where the Greens stand on schools funding. As Senator Nettle, the Greens spokesperson on education, pointed out earlier this year, when a government choose whether to give money to the public school system or to further subsidise the private school system, the government are making a clear decision about the kind of society they want to be supporting. They are choosing between an inclusive, cohesive and high-performing society and a divided, elitist, and inefficient society. This is a choice the Greens are unafraid to make. We say loud and clear that public education must be the priority of all governments. We say that a free, universal, high-quality public education system is the best policy option for Australia. Such a system must enable lifelong learning and include preschool, primary, secondary, TAFE and university study.

The Greens recognise that there is a long history of private schooling in this country and that it fulfils a discrete role in the education spectrum. But the dominance of the public school system is a public good, and we believe that it should be recognised and defended as such. Only through a strong public school system that educates the overwhelming majority of our children can we guarantee an inclusive and cohesive education that knits our society together. An education system that allows wealth, religion, and snobbery to segregate kids at school is sowing the seeds for a divided and therefore poorer society. Sadly, this is the direction Australia is moving in as enrolments in public schools drop across the nation. Whilst this continues, governments and political parties cannot afford to stay silent about the shift in enrolments from public schools to private schools.

Support for public education is central to the political philosophy of the Greens. The benefits of education can only be distributed fairly if all children and all Australians have the right to access education free of charge. The Greens recognise that the process of learning is a continuum from birth to the end of our lives, so our commitment to social justice means that we support a free education system from early childhood through to university. No child should be denied the opportunity to learn and socialise with their peers because of financial barriers, in the same way that no student should be barred from going to university or TAFE because they cannot afford the fees.

The continuing trend of less federal money for public schools must therefore be reversed. Key to this reversal is the abolition of the outrageously inequitable SES funding system and the funding maintained status of wealthy independent schools and now of Catholic schools. The Greens have always been opposed to the SES system. We voted against it when it was first introduced and we will vote against it again in this debate. We have recognised from the outset that it would never deliver the advertised needs based funding but would entrench the advantage of the wealthiest private schools, and we are seeing that happen. By measuring needs via census districts rather than actual income or assets of parents, SES can never be an accurate model for measuring need, especially since it does not consider the millions of dollars that parents of private school children put into their children's schools. The government's continuing defence of such a model as equitable would be laughable if it did not have such a serious impact on the quality of education that future generations are receiving. The Greens are fundamentally opposed to the ideological thrust of the coalition's education policies and their implementation. They offend against our belief in social justice and they offend against our demand for responsible public policy.

You might ask: what is the Greens' vision of how to fund schools? This may be a controversial issue elsewhere, but there is unanimous support within the Greens and within the general community that I deal with for the need to prioritise the funding of public schools ahead of private schools. There is a limited bucket of money available from the public sector, and we feel that the public school sector should receive priority in that allocation. We reject the central argument put forward by advocates of private schooling that each taxpayer is entitled to a share of their education dollar. This is at the heart of the so-called choice argument constantly put by the government. This argument is peddled by the government despite the fact that this is not the way taxation works. Our taxes are not hypothecated—no-one can claim a personal share from their defence dollar or their welfare dollar, much as they may wish to. We all pay taxes, and services are provided for the whole of the community. The responsibility of government is to provide the best public education system they possibly can for the whole of the community.

The Greens vision for how this should occur is to abolish the Commonwealth government's inequitable schemes for funding private schools, including the socioeconomic status—SES—and funding maintained formulas; to immediately end public funding for the wealthiest private schools, the former category 1 schools; to phase out public funding of category 2 private schools; and to significantly reduce the funding of category 3 private schools as well. Our vision is to redirect this money into a national priority public schools funding program, previously the Disadvantaged Schools Program, to assist in improving educational outcomes in public schools that need additional support. There is no doubt that there are a lot of public schools out there at the moment that need that additional support. The Greens are calling for the funding to private schools to be frozen at 2003-04 levels pending the outcome of a full inquiry into the funding of non-government schools. The Greens are committed to these measures because they represent a significant first step in turning around the enrolment trend away from public schools and towards ensuring that our public education system is up with the world's best.

The Greens' policies would ensure that approximately $6 billion would be redirected from the private to the public system over the next quadrennium, and that is approximately $610 per student. This would go a long way to addressing chronic teacher shortages, problem class sizes and increases in teacher salaries. But it is not the end of our commitment. The Greens support a further increase in direct federal funding to public schools which would bring our spending on public education closer to the OECD's highest, as a proportion of GDP and per capita levels.

The Greens believe that accountability for public money is a basic prerequisite of good government. To that end, private schools receiving public funding must fulfil the same accountability requirements as public schools. The Greens support the introduction of standards for full financial disclosure, transparency, accountability and the achievement of core educational standards that must be met by all non-government schools receiving public funding and the introduction of accountability frameworks to apply to government funding to non-government schools to create the same minimum level of public accountability and transparency that applies to public schools.

We believe that funding, accountability and equity are the three corners of a responsible and equitable schools policy. What is needed is an overhaul of schools funding which delivers more to public schools and scraps the unfair SES funding model for the private sector. What is also needed is a commitment to accountability for all public funds going to schools and an end to discrimination in any schools for any reason.

These initiatives can be funded by redirecting the government's existing schools expenditure on a more equitable basis. Australians have consistently told the government in recent times that, when it comes to budget time, people want public money invested in services like health and education, not frittered away on vote buying tax cuts. The Greens believe that in times of prosperity it is the responsibility of government to invest in public works and services that will stand us in good stead in leaner times. This means investment in education and health, not tax cuts.

Our policy is designed to ensure that its implementation would reap dividends for all Australians for generations to come and to turn around enrolments, as parents see government backing for our public schools and watch public schools thriving on that support. Given the great work currently done by teachers in the public school system, an injection of funds would allow such work to be magnified so as to turn out more quality students ready to make a great contribution to the community. In this way we will all see the benefits of investing in and supporting our public schools. A great public education system, educating the overwhelming majority of the population to the highest quality, can only be of massive lasting benefit culturally, socially, academically and economically to the nation, and that is what the Greens are working for.