Page 3546 - Week 08 - Wednesday, 18 August 2010
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not believe that we can micromanage the lives of Canberrans. We do not have the mandate to do so. Furthermore, it would violate the civil liberties of Canberrans.
Education, the reason why all of us here can read and write, is a fundamental human right. As taxpayers, parents have the right to send their children to public or private schools. And the government should fund both to an appropriate level. The Greens’ proposed policy intends to rip approximately $60 million from ACT private schools by diminishing commonwealth government funding to 2003-04 levels.
In addition to that, the Greens’ policy on education will reduce the level of government funding to non-government schools by taking into account moneys raised locally via school fees, fetes, philanthropic support and decoupling it from public school spending. It will take away the freedom of religion by forcing faith-based schools to employ people who do not share their values, in effect making it mandatory that Christian, Muslim and other religious schools must hire non-believers. It will treat non-government school students as pariahs not worthy of government funding, and stop the development of new non-government schools if they endanger the viability and diversity of existing public schools.
All in all, there are approximately 16 sections and subsections that have a negative impact on non-government school communities and the overall ACT school system at large. Leadership, true leadership, is about doing what is good for the community, living up to our fiduciary responsibilities, not following some personal agenda and forcing people to kowtow to it.
The facts in the ACT are these: the ACT currently has the highest proportion of non-government school students in any jurisdiction, at approximately 40 per cent and that to remove or reduce funding of non-government schools into the Greens’ image will destabilise the present school system in the ACT.
At the moment, at only 17.2 per cent, non-government schools are already receiving government funding at levels well below the national average of 25 per cent. Seen as a glass-full proposition, this means every non-government school student technically saves the government 82.8 per cent of funding for a public school student. According to an ACT independent school organisation, private ACT schools save the government more than $100 million a year.
The real upshot of what the Greens are proposing, in truth, will be a handful of non-government schools that will become more elite. The Greens will drive up the cost of non-government school education beyond what most Canberra families can afford, leaving the choice of a private school education something only accessible to the upper middle class and the rich. This, I find, un-Australian; and the Greens’ policy regarding non-government schools, draconian.
Already we see the possible effects of their policy in other jurisdictions. In a 15 August Sydney Morning Herald article, the Melbourne Director for Catholic Education estimated that the Greens’ funding policy would cut $427 million from Catholic schools, including more than $110 million taken from Victorian Catholic schools, to serve the neediest in the community.
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