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- 20 June 2000
Ku-ring-gai Electorate Schools Funding
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Page: 7154
Mr O'FARRELL (Ku-ring-gai—Deputy Leader of the Opposition) [5.21 p.m.]: Education is an important issue within my electorate, which is blessed by a number of good public and private schools. I believe in choice in education but there can be no choice without a proper commitment to public education. The public school system in my electorate is strongly supported, as evidenced by an increase in enrolments. Last Friday night I met with representatives of schools to which Ku-ring-gai families send their children. They are category one to category three schools and include Barker College, Abbotsleigh, Knox Grammar, Ravenswood, Roseville College, and Pymble Ladies College. The schools were represented by principals and parent bodies and we discussed their concerns at the recent decision of the Carr Government to slash $5 million in funding from those schools.
I am concerned about that action; I regard it as an attack upon the non-government school sector and a divisive and unfair policy pursued by the Carr Government. In the pursuit of this policy the Carr Government blames the actions of the Federal Government. The reality is, despite the rhetoric of the Minister for Education and Training, Commonwealth funding to New South Wales schools has increased every year that the Howard Government has been in office. In 1996 $528 million was provided for New South Wales government schools. This year the figure is $649 million—an increase in excess of 20 per cent. The enrolment benchmark agreement [EBA] is designed to ensure that State governments do not engage in cost-shifting to the Commonwealth, an important indicator.
Last year the New South Wales Government made a saving of approximately $44 million on the proportionate shift to the non-government sector. The EBA claimed $16.9 million of this saving to the Commonwealth. The New South Wales Government retains the balance, which it could use to invest in government schools if it chooses. I have two concerns with singling out category one to category three schools. First, it is a divisive policy based on the false assumption that only the wealthy, the affluent, the better-off in the community attend those schools. That is not the reality for the many hundreds of families not only in my electorate but across New South Wales who are battling. They send spouses out to work so that they can afford to send their children to private schools. Why do they do that? They do it because of the perception that the private schools offer a better quality of education than that provided by the public school system.
I am a strong supporter of the public school system, but the Government has failed to address the perception, the reality, that many public schools across the city and State are failing students and parents. As a result, many spouses go out to work to pay fees to get their children to private schools. Second, as often happens, the Government announced its policy late in the day and without warning, well after the school budgets were set. In essence, schools across New South Wales, including those in Maitland, Bathurst, Sutherland and Menai—which I would have thought the Government would have been sensitive about—have been hit with a fairly significant change to their budgets, after the school year commenced.
That change will be passed on to the parents. This once again underlines the Minister's hypocrisy. He comes into the Chamber to boost public education, to talk the talk but not to deliver the goods. He does not deliver on the outcomes of public education. It is a matter of public record that he does not send his children to public schools, unlike some of us who participate in these debates. I do not believe that there should be a division in education between private and public schools. I do not believe that private schools should be set against public schools. I do not believe that public schools should be set against public schools. The Government has a $830 million slush fund, as revealed in its last budget. If it wants to compensate it can well do that. The Government wastes $3 million a year on upgrading its annual reports to Vogue status; it wastes $1 million a year on employing additional press secretaries, which, before elected to office, it said it would not have; it wastes $1.2 million a year in renting Bligh House, which is unoccupied. This unfair Government issues unfair policies. [Time expired.]
Dr REFSHAUGE (Marrickville—Deputy Premier, Minister for Urban Affairs and Planning, Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, and Minister for Housing) [5.26 p.m.]: The Deputy Leader of the Opposition said, "I support public schools", which is like him saying, "I support Kerry Chikarovski as the Leader of the Opposition".
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