Page 1750 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2011
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So, again, congratulations to all of those Catholic schools and I hope they have a wonderful week of celebration.
MR SMYTH (Brindabella) (10.42): If the Catholic school community were looking for a quick, clear and unequivocal commitment to improved funding, or at least maintaining the existing level of funding for Catholic schools, they will get it from one party today, and one party only, and that is the Liberal Party. There is nothing in Mr Barr’s amendment, or in Ms Hunter’s support for that amendment, that will give any certainty to those groups. And I think that is a shame.
In some ways it is hypocritical to get up and say, “Yes, we support you but we won’t give you the funding to allow your good deeds to be done, and to be done even better.” That is the genesis or the nub of the amendment moved by Mr Barr.
Ms Hunter started by saying that the Greens support educational choice. What she did not go on to say was that they would support that with funding. You only have to go back to some of the Greens’ commitments at the federal election in their national policy to see that, for instance, one of the goals that the Australian Greens want is:
Schools funding to be placed on an equitable footing by reversing the excessive increases in Commonwealth funding to non-government schools in recent years.
The pejorative language is quite interesting because it assumes that the “excessive increases” means that they are now overfunded when the reality is that, for the majority of non-government schools—and that includes the Catholic schools—they still receive less government support than the government funded system. And there is your question.
So what do the Greens mean by saying “schools funding to be placed on an equitable footing”? Equitable, I would have thought, meant a fair distribution among all. But clearly that does not occur here. When you use words like “reversing the excessive increases to non-government schools in recent years”, it just seems to cast a slur. So it is easy to get up and say, “We support them,” but if you are genuine in your support then you will leave the motion as it is.
What is the effect of Mr Barr’s amendment? Mr Doszpot, in part (2)(a), calls on the Minister for Education and Training and the Treasurer to make representations to the commonwealth government to ensure that the funding for this sector does not decrease in real terms. He is not even asking for more; he is just saying, “Don’t take it away from a sector that is under pressure, that is struggling, because it isn’t funded to the same level as the government sector.”
It is interesting that, when you take into account the figures spent per student, particularly in Catholic schools, a large part of that contribution is from the parents. The parents pay taxes, both at the federal and at the state level, get less for their students in a Catholic school and then pay again by topping it up with fees. That is a choice that we make. But if you want to talk about equity, let us talk about equity and let us talk about the double standard implicit in that.
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