THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 

SENATOR CAROL BROWN
SHADOW MINISTER FOR DISABILITY SERVICES AND CARERS
SENATOR FOR TASMANIA 

 

MALCOLM TURNBULL CAUGHT LYING TO PARENTS ABOUT DISABILITY FUNDING FOR SCHOOLS

 

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THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 

E&OE TRANSCRIPT
TELEVISION INTERVIEW
ABC NEWS
THURSDAY, 8 JUNE 2017

SUBJECTS: Labor’s plan for renewable energy; Malcolm Turnbull’s $22 billion cut to schools; support for students with a disability.

 

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THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

 

ADDRESS TO THE SYDNEY INSTITUTE

LOW WAGE GROWTH RISKS AUSTRALIA'S FUTURE PROSPERITY

THURSDAY, 8 JUNE 2017

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

 

I acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land on which we meet, the Gadigal people of the Eora nation, and pay my respects to their elders past and present.

I’m a person who is pretty big on new experiences.

I like trying new places to eat, reading new authors, listening to new music.

But I found myself a little surprised - and maybe a little alarmed - by a new experience I had recently.

I agreed with Scott Morrison.

In February, the Treasurer said that the biggest challenge for the Australian economy at the moment is low wages growth.

I agree.

While there are plenty of challenges to choose from, low wages growth is right up there.

Of course it’s bad for individuals, but it’s also bad for our society and our economy.

Low wages growth, and the increasing inequality that comes with it, is creating a society in which too many people feel like outsiders…

…let down by our democracy.

And an economy saddled with sluggish wages will struggle to create demand and to grow.

It’s one thing to identify a problem.

It’s another to fix it in a way that is fair and efficient.

I’d say there are two very different strategies being promoted at the moment.

The government is sticking with trickle-down economics. 

The one card trick of a big business tax cut.

Labor, on the other hand, is working towards inclusive prosperity.

A strong and growing economy where the benefits of growth are more equally distributed – underpinning further growth.

A virtuous circle.

Some commentators like to say Labor believes in redistribution but not growth.

Inevitably, they talk about growing pies and cutting them up.

This misunderstands our position.

For Labor, fairer distribution is part of our growth strategy.

Full employment, decent pay and conditions, money in your pocket and the confidence to spend it – these aren’t nostalgic throw backs…

….they are necessary preconditions for a strong growing economy.

What is happening to wages?

In Australia right now we have lowest wages growth since records began.

Over the last year wages rose by just 1.9 per cent: below the level of the consumer price index.

Real wages are contracting.

This is, incidentally, the opposite of the prediction made at this very lectern by then Employment Minister Eric Abetz when he addressed you in 2014 and warned of an “imminent wages explosion”.

He stood here, lit the fuse, put his fingers in his ears…and he’s still waiting.

This week the Fair Work Commission announced an increase in the minimum wage of 3.3 per cent.

A full time worker on the minimum wage will earn about $36,134 per year.

This was met with predictable howls of outrage from the business lobby.

Justice Ross acknowledged that the panel’s past assessments of what a “modest” wage increase looked like might have been overly cautious.

I would have to agree - when the minimum wage and the awards that depend on it have grown by just 4.3 per cent in real terms over the last five years – less than half the rate of labour productivity growth.

Why is low wage growth a problem?

Why should we care about low wage growth?

Well obviously if you’re someone watching the bills race ahead of your pay packet – you know and you care.

But I believe this is an issue for all Australians – even the high income earners who are bucking the trend and continuing to see their own incomes grow.

We all want to see Australian businesses succeed, to earn export dollars and generate jobs.

Business needs stable government, they need good governance, simple and fit for purpose regulation, low levels of corruption.

They need a healthy, educated, Asia-literate, multi-lingual, high productivity workforce.

The ‘human capital’ produced by world-class schools, TAFEs and universities.

A workforce that graduates with the knowledge to succeed now – but also the capacity to adapt to a working world defined by rapid change.

Businesses  need quality modern infrastructure: road, rail, ports, airports…

…and digital infrastructure - high speed broadband.

If we get these things right, we are a fair way along the road to creating the environment in which businesses can thrive.

But unless the customers are there - with money in their pockets and the confidence to spend it - businesses will struggle.

Endemic low wage growth, and the low consumer confidence that partners it, is increasingly recognised as a handbrake on growth.

Business profits in Australia are at an all-time high and increased by     40 per cent last year.

That’s good news.

I want Australian businesses to be profitable.

But businesses won’t stay profitable if potential customers hang onto their hard-earned.

Short-term profit that comes off the back of low wages or a shrinking workforce might help the CEO or CFO’s bonus this year…

…but it damages our broader economy in the long run.

Low wages and growing inequality - and the drag on growth that they represent - are on the radar of the OECD and the IMF.

They have found that economies with more equal distributions of income and wealth have stronger and more stable growth than those with greater inequality and that redistributive policies which reduce inequality have a positive impact on growth.

Increasing wages at the bottom supports spending.

People on low incomes tend to spend a larger proportion of their income than those at the top.

An economy where real wages are contracting faces declining living standards for households around the country, higher levels of inequality and insecurity and consequent lower economic growth.

Even Scott Morrison gets that.

Why is this happening?

It’s a fact that wages are stagnant or falling.

But why?

Judith Sloan writing in May spoke for the Treasury and the Reserve Bank as well as most domestic and international economists when she said: “The truth is we really don’t understand why wages are growing so slowly”.

A paper in March of this year by the Reserve Bank entitled “Insights into Low Wage Growth in Australia” attempted to understand the situation better.

In particular the Bank looked at two aspects of low wage growth, its puzzling relationship to the unemployment rate and the possibility of it being affected by structural changes to the labour market.

The Bank looked at unemployment because the orthodox model suggests that wages should be rising with unemployment at current levels.

In Australia unemployment currently sits at 5.7 per cent, around GFC levels.

It has been stable at roughly this level for about 18 months.

However, the headline rate masks the true nature of unemployment particularly hidden unemployment - those who have given up looking for work…

…and under-employment - those who are working but wish for more hours.

The part-time share of employment currently sits at just 31.9 per cent -

0.1 per cent below its historic high set in November last year.

This is one of the highest part-time rates of any developed country.

Around one-third of part time workers say they want more hours.

That is 1.1 million people.

The under-utilisation of labour means that increased demand for labour is first absorbed by those looking for more work or those re-entering the job market instead of increasing the price of labour.

The Reserve Board paper also noted that international literature has argued that “low wage growth may reflect a decline in workers’ bargaining power.”

You don’t say.

I would go further and argue that there is a clear link between the fall in union membership, the lowering of workers’ bargaining power and today’s low wage growth.

This is not a radical position.

The IMF - historically no great supporter of labour unions - has acknowledged the links between low levels of unionisation on the one hand and low wages, inequality and increasing incomes for those at the top on the other.

Australia shows the truth of that.

We’ve moved from centralised wage fixing – to workplace agreements underpinned by a safety net of minimum conditions.

Union membership has fallen from 40 per cent of the workforce to around 15.

And yet inequality is at a 75-year high.

If we’re going to get wages going in the right direction, we need a new look at old assumptions.

Take productivity.

The assumption has always been that increased labour productivity is shared by businesses with their workforce through higher wages.

John Fraser, Secretary to the Treasury, is among those who’ve pointed out recently that there has been a shift from wages to profits.

Productivity is improving – but the dividend isn’t being shared with the employees. 

The link between hard work and reward has been severed.

So with:

-       unemployment around GFC levels,

-       historically high underemployment,

-       low rates of unionisation,

-       big structural shifts in the labour market, such as the decline in mining sector and manufacturing jobs

-       tech disruption…

The result is reduced bargaining power for employees – and smaller pay-packets for workers.

It’s particularly true of wages at the bottom end.

Real wages for the top 10 per cent of income earners have grown by    72 per cent over the last four decades…

….that’s more than three times the rate of increase for incomes for the bottom 10 per cent of income earners.

What is the answer?

If low wages growth is the problem – what’s the solution?

The Liberals think it’s a tax cut for multinationals, a tax cut for millionaires and a tax hike for working class and middle class people.

It’s a tax and spend plan – but they’re taxing working people and spending it on the top end of town.

We take a different view.

We believe in a strong growing economy creating well-paid secure work:

-       a tax and transfer system that supports growth and fairness,

-       a strong social safety net,

-       growth which is environmentally and socially sustainable.

We support investment in productivity enhancing infrastructure, selected on the basis of sensible business plans – not where the marginal seats are, or where a dart lands when Barnaby Joyce throws it at a map on his wall.

The choice before us is as stark as it has ever been, and the challenge is, in many ways, as large.

The Hawke-Keating Government inherited a stale and sluggish economy, locked in a vicious wage-inflation spiral where the pathway to continuing growth was uncertain.

Wayne Swan, Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard fought off a global shock that saw Australia as almost the only developed nation to continue to grow during the global financial crisis.

As the successors of these reforming governments we are ready to rise to the challenge once more.

But I’m not sure the Coalition is.

Let’s talk about the 2017 Budget.

If the deficit levy paid by those on incomes over $180,000 was designed to help address the deficit, now is not the time to get rid of it.

The deficit is ten times greater now than when the levy was first introduced in 2014 and net debt is headed for three quarters of a trillion dollars.

In its last Budget the government also announced an increase in the Medicare levy.

The smokescreen for this is the so-called ‘NDIS emergency’.

Labor fully funded the National Disability Insurance Scheme when we were in government.

In reality, the new Medicare levy increase is to help pay for the Liberals big business tax cut…

…now revealed to cost $65 billion over ten years.

The tax increases – combined with other changes such as the lowering of the repayment threshold for university debt to $42,000 – will impact hardest on those on the lowest incomes.

Analysis quoted by Peter Martin in the Sydney Morning Herald shows that for a couple renting, where one partner has left uni and the other is still studying, the effective marginal tax rate is over 97 per cent once they clear an income of $37,000 a year.

And it stays in the high nineties until $50,000.

Budget analysis from the National Foundation for Australian Women found that women on around $50,000 a year could face an effective marginal tax rate of more than 100 per cent.

A woman graduate, working and relying on child care, earning $51,000 a year and receiving family payments will actually have less disposable income than a man earning $32,000 a year.

Under Malcolm Turnbull’s plan – a millionaire gets a tax cut of $16,400 while someone earning $60,000 a year pays $300 more tax.

If wages growth for low and middle income earners is the issue – it’s hard to see how a tax cut for those earning over $180,000 and a tax increase for everyone else does anything but make the problem worse.

Because the government is not only relying on wage growth for economic growth but also for fiscal consolidation and to meet budget projections.

The 2017 budget depends on a bracket creep led recovery.

The Budget forecast of a return to surplus in 2021 is based on the somewhat heroic assumption that wage growth will nearly double over the next four years from 1.9 per cent per annum to 3.75 per cent, resulting a 16 per cent increase in income tax receipts over two years.

I am yet to read an economic commentator outside Treasury who regards those numbers as credible…

…especially as the government is doing everything it can to depress wages growth with its support for low increases to the minimum wage and cuts to penalty rates.

It’s the same story with the $65 billion company tax cut.

Treasury's own modelling shows an employment increase of just 0.1 per cent by 2026-27.

And the $2 a day wage increase Treasury predicts – again, a decade down the track - depends on that old, frayed link between productivity and wages.

As for the idea that Australia’s current rate puts us out of step with the global pack…

…well few companies in Australia are currently paying the 30 per cent statutory rate.

The average tax rate is 24 per cent for public companies and 19 per cent for private companies.

One in three private companies and one in four public companies pay no tax at all. 

Australian companies also have a history of high dividend payments – in 2015, 81 per cent of earnings were paid in dividends, an historic high.

The outcome of a lower business tax rate will be increased profits and dividend payments, particularly to foreign shareholders.

When I was Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, I spent a lot of time saying the Government should increase the amount of money it spends on Foreign Aid.

But billion-dollar giveaways to international companies and overseas shareholders isn’t what I had in mind.

So the government is giving up $65 billion in corporate tax revenue and $19.4 billion in the deficit levy and partially replacing it with an increase to the Medicare Levy…

…which hits every working Australian earning more than $21,335.

Labor’s Plan

Our alternative focusses on inclusive economic growth.

A modern tax policy - a foundation for strong growth - keeps tax rates as low as possible, but ensures that businesses and individuals pay their fair share.

We took policies to the last election to wind back negative gearing on existing housing and halve capital gains tax discounts.

Since the election, we have promised to cap deductions for managing tax affairs to $3,000 per annum and we’ve made a number of announcements designed to minimise corporate tax avoidance….

….because the tax system shouldn’t redistribute from the bottom and middle to the top.

It should ensure a low rate, fairly spread.

In his Budget reply, Bill announced that we will protect 80 per cent of Australian taxpayers from the government’s Medicare Levy increase.

Our alternative tax policy raises more money more fairly - by retaining the deficit levy and by applying the increased Medicare Levy only on those in the top two tax brackets.

By taking a progressive approach which protects Australians on low and middle incomes we protect the spending power of those most likely to spend.

In three weeks’ time, 700,000 people in retail, hospitality, pharmacy and fast food will begin to have their penalty rates cut.

The Fair Work Commission announced this week that the cuts will be phased in over time however people will be asked to do the same work for less pay, for four years in a row.

The industries affected are already low paid, and have had very slow wage growth in recent years.

Aside from the unfairness of asking workers to do the same work for less money, the effect of taking these wages away from low and middle income earners - who are likely to spend them - comes at just the wrong time in our economic cycle.

The combined effect of higher taxes and lower wages for low and middle income earners is likely to further contract demand.

Especially in regional centres, where more people rely on penalty rates and more small businesses rely on their spending.

A fair go at work begins with being paid fairly for your time.

But it’s broader than that – it always has been. 

The Fair Work Act was introduced into Parliament in 2008.

In 2008 there was no Uber, Airtasker or Airbnb.

Today we see widespread evidence of systematic exploitation of workers in examples like 7-Eleven, Domino’s and Caltex.

The labour market of today is very different to that of 2008 – and that of 2028 will be different again.

We have to ensure that our workplace relations system provides workers and their unions sufficient bargaining power and that they are – at the very least - able to restore what seems to be the broken link between labour productivity and wages.

Labor’s Shadow Minister Brendan O’Connor has started the process of making sure our industrial relations environment is modern and fit for purpose, with policy announcements on:

-       the regulation of labour hire companies,

-       cracking down on dodgy directors who engage in ‘phoenix activity’, where they deliberately burn companies in an attempt to avoid their obligations to employees,

-       preventing the exploitation of vulnerable workers and modern slavery,

-       examining the use of casual and insecure work, and

-       preventing companies forcing employees back on substandard Awards during enterprise bargaining negotiations.

But the big changes in the labour market have only just begun.

And fairness in the workplace also depends on creating jobs in the future.

Right now, manufacturing and mining are shedding jobs.

Policy uncertainty around climate change and the talking-down of renewable energy is creating a missed opportunity for investment that will create jobs and reduce energy prices.

The National Disability Insurance Scheme is another great reform for our society.

The NDIS is good social policy.

It’s also good economic policy.

Of course the NDIS is critical in achieving what Australians with a disability have been demanding – helping them fully participate in the workforce and our community life.

It helps family members who are carers return to paid work too.

But the NDIS is also one of the biggest source of new jobs in this country right now.

It will create more than 70,000 new jobs in every part of Australia by 2019.

We have a choice as to what kind of jobs these new jobs will be.

The default position – typical for feminised caring work – is that they will be marginal, insecure, low paid jobs.

We cannot let this happen.

We must ensure that these are good, well paid jobs with a career path and job security.

There should be a pathway into the sector for the long term unemployed while skilled, experienced carers have the opportunity to progress their careers through more complex work.

The creation of good jobs ensures that these workers are part of our growth story.

Conclusion

Whilst we’re all proud that our economy has been growing for such a long time we would all like to see that current rate of growth higher.

We cannot fall into the trap of just patting ourselves on the back every time we get a positive quarterly number and assuming everything is ticking along nicely.

If we duck the hard questions or gloss over the real story…then we’ll be handing on bigger problems and harder challenges to those who come next.

The choices we make today will shape the lives and living standards of the next generation.

So we need to be able to answer these questions:

Do we have the policy settings right for our rapidly changing labour market?

Are we ensuring that our tax policies encourage growth where it’s needed?

Is our workplace relations system fit for purpose?

And do we have a plan to reward people for their time – to re-build the link between hard work and fair pay?

These aren’t diversions from the economic story – they are the economic story.

These aren’t the dividends of economic growth – they are the preconditions for it.

I started tonight by talking about new experiences.

After four years of the Liberals, I think Australians need some new experiences:

-       a decent pay rise,

-       a fairer tax system,

-       real action on climate change, and

-       proper investment in schools, skills and universities.

New experiences – built on the oldest Australian idea of them all.

A fair go all round.

Thank you very much.

ENDS

THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

 

ADDRESS TO THE Australian Council of State School Organisations

MONDAY, 5 JUNE 2017 

***CHECK AGAINST DELIVERY***

 

Thank you for the opportunity to speak to your board meeting.

Labor’s key objective in our schools reform has always been to ensure that Australia’s public schools are properly and fairly funded.

We understand that this is where the funding is needed most. The public sector educates most of Australia’s disadvantaged kids. We also know that the Commonwealth hadn’t pulled its weight in funding public schools in the past.

Labor’s policy was about getting the most money to the neediest kids.

It’s not just about the dollars, but what the dollars represent in those kids lives.

That funding means extra help in the early years, speech pathology and occupational therapy so kids are ready to learn, and more support for teaching literacy and numeracy.

Labor values the role of public education in ensuring every child in Australia can grow up with the skills they need to access a lifetime of opportunity.

That’s why when we introduced the Australian Education Act, Labor enshrined our values upfront, setting clear objectives and targets. That:

-       All students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education.

-       That the quality of a student’s education should not be limited by where they live, the income of their family, or the school they attend.

-       The first object of our Act was to ‘ensure that the Australian schooling system provides a high quality and highly equitable education for all students’.

You won’t be able to find those objects in the Government’s Bill.

Because they’re not there.

 

Recommendations from the Gonski review

The original Review of Funding for Schooling found:

-       “Australia needs effective arrangements for funding schools across all levels of government – arrangements that ensure resources are being provided where they are needed… and where the Australian Government and state and territory governments work in partnership to meet the schooling needs of all Australian children.”

The Review also acknowledged that “not all states and systems have the same capacity to fund their school systems adequately”.

The Commonwealth needed to work together with states to make sure that all students received the Schooling Resource Standard – the amount, based on evidence, needed for a student to get a high quality education.

That’s what we did.

Our fundamental principle was that every student, no matter where they lived in Australia, got the resources they needed for a high quality education – a fair proportion of the Schooling Resource Standard.

That’s why Labor’s school funding package ensured that all underfunded schools would receive 95 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard by 2019 (by 2022 for Victorian schools).

What matters most for kids in public schools is their total public resourcing.

Parents aren’t concerned about how much of their school’s funding comes from the state government and how much comes from the Commonwealth, because they know that what really matters, is how much their school gets and what they can deliver with those dollars.

The Turnbull Government’s plan is a fundamental departure from the principles driving the original Gonski review.

Labor’s plan guaranteed that all schools would be funded to their fair share of the SRS. The Liberals’ plan does not.

At the Senate Inquiry on Friday, ACSSO said we need to lock in states and territories to increase their funding and choose a level of total SRS funding that states and territories can afford and make sure we can get there.

That’s what Labor’s plan did.

We locked in states and territories to increase their funding.

We set a target level of funding at 95 per cent of the SRS and ensured all states and territories were on track to get there.

It is the Government that has scrapped those requirements.

And the schools that are most likely to miss out are public schools.

The end point of the Labor model was that all underfunded schools would receive their fair SRS share from total public funding by 2019.

The new end point is for underfunded public schools to receive just 20 per cent of the Schooling Resource Standard in Commonwealth funding, with no guarantee of their state or territory government making up the difference.

Public schools won’t even reach this 20 per cent until 2027.

Meanwhile, the Commonwealth will provide 80 per cent of the SRS to private schools.

Even Minister Birmingham gave evidence at Senate Estimates on Thursday that the Government’s plan to provide 80 per cent of the SRS to private schools and 20 per cent to public schools is in no way a recommendation of the original Gonski review.

The 80:20 shares are arbitrary figures decided on by the Government, which reflect the Commonwealth’s historic high funding of non-government schools and significantly lower funding share for public schools.

This contradicts the Gonski review recommendation that the Commonwealth Government assume a greater role in funding government schools and states in relation to non-government schools.

The Government’s proposal will firmly lock into legislation that the Commonwealth will provide 80 per cent of the SRS to private schools.

And just 20 per cent to public schools.

Some people in your organisation have welcomed the Government’s move to cut funding from 24 over-funded private schools.

Labor will support that move and support any measures that improve transparency.

But what this really means is that there are only 24 private schools in the country who will get negative funding growth. Other private schools will maintain their funding level or get even more because of the Government’s commitment that all private schools will receive 80 per cent of the SRS from Commonwealth funding alone.

There are a number of elite private schools who already receive well above the Schooling Resource Standard – they’re over-funded – who will receive windfalls under the government’s package.

Christ Church Grammar School, an elite private school in WA, currently gets total public funded equal to 141 per cent of the SRS, but only 75 per cent comes from the Commonwealth. So to meet the Government’s plan to provide 80 per cent Commonwealth funding to private schools, they’ll receive a funding increase of $6.8 million.

To make matters worse, the Government’s policy enshrines a $22 billion cut to the current legislation and arrangements in place.

This is not political spin.

This is what the Government’s own briefings said.

And I quote, in a confidential document mistakenly given to journalists by the Prime Minister’s office – this is what they don’t want to admit to you – “compared to Labor’s arrangements, this represents a savings of…$22.3 billion…”

Public school providers around the country agree.

-       New South Wales confirmed their public schools will lose $846 million in 2018 and 2019.

-       Victorian public schools $630 million

-       $265 million from South Australian schools

-       $730 million from Queensland public schools

-       $20 million from the ACT

The 2014 Budget papers show the Government’s $30 billion cut to schools funding.

Now they want a pat on the back for not cutting quite as much.

The money they cut?  80 per cent of it was going to public schools.

The smaller amount of money that they’re now putting back in – less than half goes to the public sector.

The means public school students lose.

Public school students are the losers in this equation.

ACSSO’s media release from 2 May said ‘Government funding of education must go where there is true need.’

The elite Lauriston Girls School charges fees of more than $25,000 a year. They’ll get a funding increase of $4,085 per student over ten years.

Tennant Creek High School, which has three quarters of its students in the bottom SES quartile will get an increase of just $1,300 per student over ten years.

That’s not funding true need.

Wanguri Primary School, with around one quarter Indigenous kids, gets an increase of just $565 per student, yet Geelong Grammar with 70 per cent of its kids in the upper quartile, gets an increase of $2,309 per student.

That’s not funding true need.

The two school systems that have the highest concentration of educational disadvantage, the Northern Territory Government sector and Tasmanian Government sector – will receive the lowest level of funding growth under the government’s plan.

That’s not funding true need.

Evidence provided by the Grattan Institute to the Senate Inquiry into the proposed Bill showed that by 2027, public schools in New South Wales, Victoria, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania and the Northern Territory will all still be underfunded.

85 per cent of public schools will still be funded below the SRS in ten years’ time.

Whereas pretty much all private schools will be at or above their SRS.

The Government has abdicated responsibility for making sure all students get the SRS and instead, we’ll see a return to the blame game between the Commonwealth and the states. Meanwhile, students – particularly students in public schools – will miss out.

When Labor negotiated our schools funding package, we had to deal with 24 different school systems across Australia which all had different levels of educational achievement and disadvantage, different starting points, and different capacity to fund their schools.

We consulted and worked with stakeholders to build a needs-based, sector blind funding model that placed student need at its centre.

It was a hard-fought, hard-won consensus.

But this doesn’t detract from the fact that the highest priority, the fundamental principle of our model, was that every student, in every school, no matter which state or sector, should receive their fair level of SRS funding so they could have an education that opened up a life of opportunity.

Instead of fairness, the Government has chosen consistency. Consistently funding public schools at just a fifth of the level needed for a child to get a high quality education.

Not only does the Government’s package strip $22 billion from schools…

… it distributes that money in a way that entrenches inequality between the public and private systems.

Some claim the Government’s model is ‘sector blind’.

How is it sector blind when you fund the non-government sector to 80 per cent of the SRS and public schools to just 20 per cent?

How is it sector blind when your model means that after 10 years, 85 per cent of public schools will still be underfunded and virtually every non-government school will have reached the SRS or be over funded?

It is beyond me how anyone can think that this is a fair and good deal for public school students.

Some might be pleased on ideological grounds that 24 elite private schools will lose some funding. But under the Government’s model there are other elite private schools that get millions of dollars in extra funding.

And none of that changes the fact that public schools students will lose much, much more.

I know public school parents and students around the country care about that.

All Australian students have the right to a quality education. We must do everything we can to defend it.

ENDS

THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 

STATE GOVERNMENTS BANNED FROM SENATE'S SCHOOLS FUNDING INQUIRY

 

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DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

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DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

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DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY 

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SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR PREVENTING FAMILY VIOLENCE
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR UNIVERSITIES
SHADOW ASSISTANT MINISTER FOR EQUALITY
MEMBER FOR GRIFFITH

 

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DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

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SHADOW MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND MEDICARE
MEMBER FOR BALLARAT

HEALTHY HAROLD DEBACLE SHOWS TURNBULL'S TRUE SPOTS

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THE HON TANYA PLIBERSEK MP
DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR EDUCATION
SHADOW MINISTER FOR WOMEN
MEMBER FOR SYDNEY

MALCOLM TURNBULL SAYS 100% MARGINAL TAX RATES FOR WOMEN ARE "FAIR" AND "EQUITABLE"

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