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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 04 Hansard (Tuesday, 30 March 2004) . . Page.. 1339 ..

factors, including any changes to schools funding on the part of the Commonwealth, as we have seen in recent months.

The funding formula is dependent on the territory’s resource capacity and the Australian government’s allocation of funds. Of course, as members would be aware, this government has strongly articulated the need for education funding to be based on equity and need, and we stand by that. Those are the paramount considerations in deciding the amount of public money that is available for all schools in the ACT and how that money is distributed. To have a blanket 25 per cent simply would not allow those equity and need decisions to be taken into account. The ACT government are a strong supporter of non-government schools, both financially and in other ways, and we will continue to be so. But the government will not accept an arbitrary figure set into this legislation. Mr Pratt says it is not a new concept. Well, it might not be in New South Wales, but it is certainly a new concept here—and not one that the government will support.

MS TUCKER (8.24): The Greens will not be supporting this amendment either. It is simply an exercise in posturing. If we are to compare government funding per student across systems, we have to compare all government funding rather than simply looking at state or Commonwealth funding. In order to deal with reality, we would also need to consider the level of fees that students contribute and also the level of need of those students. There was an interesting item in the newspaper today that highlighted an analysis that concludes that government schools and government school students are doing quite poorly out of the current funding arrangements—something that this amendment certainly would not address.

MS DUNDAS (8.25): This amendment raises two problems. Firstly, as the minister has already said, it is not appropriate to have funding levels set down in legislation. There may come a time when governments feel that it is no longer necessary to fund non-government schools or they might need to fund them even more than 25 per cent of what is being put through government schools. Setting a mark, not even as a maximum or a minimum, is quite overly prescriptive for legislation.

Secondly, the 25 per cent mark proposed by Mr Pratt is just outrageous. With Commonwealth and ACT government funding, non-government students in the ACT receive more government funding than do government school students. I think the amendment that Mr Pratt proposes would exacerbate the disadvantages that exist between some non-government and government schools and we should not be working to put that into legislation.

MR HARGREAVES (8.26): I thank the cross bench for being so sensible. This makes an enormous amount of sense. You do not put formula in the legislation; you put it in the regulations, in the directions, where it can be changed and be responsive to the values of the day. If you stick it in legislation, you have to come back and argue the point time and time again. That is really stupid and it just delays matters for those people who most need the money.

The other thing I just want to record is that in the lead-up to the 2001 election the opposition was asked to bump it up to 25 per cent by the private schools, by the Catholic schools—and they did nothing. Now they turn around and do this. They have a great big white line right up the road to Damascus—and it just does not wash.

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