HANSARD EXTRACT
|
Schools Assistance (Learning Together-Achievement Through
Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2006: Second Reading |
| 1 March 2006 |
Mr HAYES
(Werriwa)
(11.40
a.m.)—One
of the most significant institutions in our local communities is our
schools. Let me make it clear from the outset of my contribution on
the
Schools Assistance (Learning
Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill
2006 that I am—and, I would imagine, every other member
in this place would be—a supporter of our education system. I
genuinely believe that my electorate has some of the best schools
and certainly the best school administrators and educators in the
country.
In making these comments about local schools, I would like to take
the opportunity to welcome the new Campbelltown School Education
Director,
Mr
Hedley Mooney, to our region. Prior to taking up this appointment,
Mr Mooney was a teacher at Miller High School. He will now have the
opportunity to work at both ends of my electorate. I would also like
to take this opportunity early in my contribution on the bill to
record my thanks for the exceptional work done over many years by Mr
Greg Whitby, the former Chief Executive Officer of the Catholic
Education Office, Diocese of Wollongong. Mr Whitby’s area of
responsibility, apart from the South Coast, covered Macarthur—a
large slab of my electorate. I know that he is a very well respected
and well regarded educator and education administrator. I was very
disappointed to hear that Greg had decided to move on to the Diocese
of Parramatta later this year. I am sure that he will continue his
excellent work there for the benefit of the local schools and the
students now under his charge.
I will not be opposing this bill, but I will be strongly supporting
Labor’s second reading amendment, which points to some serious
maladministration in the Investing in Our Schools program. The
Investing in Our Schools program has become the smaller, school
based version of the regional rorts scheme. It has become yet
another manifestation of the government’s decade-long addiction to
heaping largesse on places where they believe it is needed as
opposed to assisting those who need it most.
When the minister says how important this program is to the
government, there is no doubt in my mind that she is referring not
to an overwhelming desire to improve schools as a matter of good
public policy but rather to the government’s desire to use schools
funding to pick up where other pork-barrelling efforts have left
off. I can only presume that, when the government came up with the
program, they thought that the members of the opposition would be a
little too scared to criticise it, because it is dealing with
federal grants to schools. When it comes to schools funding, I am
not going to be slow in getting off the mark to make a criticism,
particularly when I see so many schools in my electorate where this
criticism is well deserved.
I refer to the funding information that has recently come to light
following answers to questions on notice received by the member for
Gorton.
The extent to which this government is willing to go when it comes
to pork-barrelling quite frankly knows no bounds. A decade of this
addiction to garnering support through pork-barrelling has now
extended, as I said earlier, to our local schools. This is the same
government whose Prime Minister warned in the party room on Tuesday
to avoid giving a sense of arrogance or hubris. You could just see
the Prime Minister saying, ‘If the Australian people get a whiff of
the fact that we have tickets on ourselves, we’re dead.’ With
respect, a whiff of tickets is going to be a little hard to smell
under the wads of cash that this government has been splashing
around the place.
I return to the detail of the answers that were given to the member
for
Gorton.
I would like to go through some details of their key elements. In
round 1 of the Investing in Our Schools program some $69 million of
the total $105 million was spent in coalition seats. Despite having
less than 60 per cent of seats in this chamber, the electorates of
government members received 66 per cent of the funding under round
1. Of itself, this is not a particularly damning statistic, but
there is more. As always, you tend to find when dealing with this
government that the devil is in the detail. There are a few more
facts about the round 1 grants that are worthy of noting in this
debate: 19 of the 20 electorates receiving the highest funding were
coalition seats. The average fund per Nationals electorate was more
than $1.3 million, the average fund per Liberal electorate was more
than $700,000, the average fund per coalition electorate was more
than $790,000 and the average grant per coalition marginal seat was
more than $830,000. There was only one Labor held electorate in the
list of the top 10 electorates when ranked by the average grant per
school. But the most interesting thing is that the average Labor
electorate received a mere $549,303.
When it comes to the same statistics in New South Wales, which is
probably a little closer to my focal point in this debate, the story
does not change all that much. On average, Nationals electorates
received more than $1.2 million each, Liberal electorates received
more than $661,000 each and coalition electorates received more than
$780,000 each, while the average Labor held electorate received a
little over $489,000. Quite frankly, the statistics are at least
revealing.
In addition to the financial rorting of the program, it is
interesting that in the lead-up to the announcement of the
successful applications, successful schools were in some instances
informed prior to any official announcement. Naturally, that sort of
stuff occurring in electorates is of concern and, as a consequence,
I had cause to investigate what was going on and why I was hearing
that some schools had been receiving calls saying that their
applications were going to be successful while others were not
hearing anything. I found out that, in the true fashion of this
government, the reason why some government members were able to
inform the schools in their electorates earlier than anyone else was
that some of them were going away at the time that the official
announcement would be made. I cannot help but think that this
approach was designed by the same people who came up with the idea
that schools who were receiving money for flagpoles had to invite
members of the government to be at the official raising of the flag.
I am not going to deny that my electorate benefited from the
scheme—obviously not to the same extent as coalition electorates,
but it did receive $624,522 in funding grants. Some 22 schools in
the electorate submitted applications for 17 projects, and the
applications of 14 schools were approved. It was not the 100 per
cent success rate that some other electorates experienced, but the
average amount granted in my electorate was $44,000. Local schools
in the electorate were awarded funds for a range of projects
including airconditioning of classrooms, computer upgrades, shade
structures and sporting and fitness equipment upgrades. These will
be welcome additions to local schools when the government finally
gets around to handing over the cheque.
The problem and the most disappointing thing about this program is
that, despite the obvious bias in the awarding of funds to
particular electorates, the government does not yet have its house
in order when it comes to actually handing over the cash. The
government knew all this was coming. The government promised all
these schools would receive additional funding for capital works
during the last election campaign. Yet schools in my electorate are
still waiting for their cheques, and they are schools which have
already been told that they are successful. They have applied and
been informed, but they are going to be sitting by the mailbox
waiting to see when the money comes through so they can plan the
commencement of this new work.
There is no reasonable excuse that the government can come up with
for not being prepared to handle the number of applications they
received. It is simply not good enough to use the excuse that they
were overwhelmed. It comes as no surprise that there was always
going to be a rush of applications. All schools were promised the
money during the last election campaign. Everybody knows that every
school has a list of work that is waiting to be commenced should
money become available. So why would it come as any surprise that
the schools which were asking for funds, quite frankly, were not in
need of those things and were not in need of having this work
commenced as quickly as possible?
Unlike other programs that hand out grants, schools need a lead time
to manage any capital works project. Not only is there a need to
consider the time needed to complete the work but also any
disruption that such work might cause to the day-to-day management
of a school also has to be taken into account. I know that when some
schools have experienced delays in the past, they have had to delay
the commencement of projects for up to a year, as the works to be
undertaken may have been considered to be unsafe while the school
was still in session. As everyone knows, the longest period that
schools have available to them to complete projects, particularly
physical projects, is in the Christmas break. These schools need
their money and they need it now.
The bill before us today will grant the minister the ability to move
funds around within a funding quadrennium. I have to say that, on
the face of it, this is seen as a reasonable measure that will,
hopefully, allow for better management of the administration of the
program in the future. Hopefully, granting the minister greater
flexibility will not result in a repeat of schools waiting for their
money. Hopefully, it will result on this occasion in the Department
of Education, Science and Training being more adept at processing
applications in a more timely fashion and also assisting schools in
their endeavour to complete the tasks which are subject to the
grant.
As I said, I broadly support these measures, but I must express a
certain reservation. I do not know whether it is just me—sadly, it
probably is not—but it is a bit rough to simply say, ‘You can trust
this government when it comes to handing out money.’ It is for this
reason I am somewhat reservedly supporting the granting of increased
flexibility to the minister, as I am fearful that the flexibility
will simply be used as a means by which the minister can manipulate
this program for purely political purposes. I hope I am shown to be
wrong on that. If I am not shown to be incorrect and the minister
manipulates the program for political purposes, the program will be
further discredited—and the statistics for round 1 of the grants
have proved this to be the case.
The government has set about casting itself as the saviour of
schools by splashing out $1 billion on capital works. It hopes to
make itself look better than its state counterparts by contrasting
their willingness to spend on school infrastructure. With the
difficulty that state governments sometimes encounter, they
certainly do have to manage within their budgets, particularly when
they seem to be starved continually of federal government funds. No
doubt if the
New South Wales government received all of its GST collected in New
South Wales, it would be spending more money on schools. Sadly,
under the twisted arrangements—which this place has been steeped in
for a little time—the New South Wales government receives only $10
billion in GST revenue, whilst at the same time it collects, on
behalf of the Commonwealth, $13 billion from its residents in New
South Wales.
However, instead of becoming the great saviour of school
communities, the government has created an administrative nightmare
for itself and one, it has been shown, it is now struggling to
control. School communities, parents, teachers and, in many
instances, students have come together in good faith to apply for
grants under the Investing in Our Schools program. They have all
worked together for the benefit of their local schools to determine
priorities for work and to complete their respective applications.
It is about time this government stopped dithering and completed
round 1 of this program in
New South Wales,
while ensuring that the cheques are in the hands of the schools and
not sitting on someone’s desk waiting to be put under the minister’s
nose for signature.
Hot on the heels of that, I would like to see the announcement of a
round 2 grant for
New South Wales that many schools, particularly in my area, are
currently waiting on. I can only think that the delay in announcing
these grants, despite the public spin, is because the government has
been caught out pork-barrelling again and it wants to—at least this
time—make sure that it has the balance right. I will continue to
encourage schools in my area to apply for grants under the next
round of Investing in Our Schools program, which I expect will be
open in New South Wales in a matter of days. I will continue to tell
local principals, parents and citizens organisations and anyone who
has a direct interest in the wellbeing of schools in my area that,
quite frankly, they should get an application in so that the schools
can actually benefit from this program.
Given the increased flexibility afforded by this bill, I hope the
government will improve the administration of the program. I hope
that the increased flexibility will not be used to further
manipulate or exacerbate the maladministration that has come to
characterise this program. I hope it does not result in an absolute
politicisation of an already highly politically motivated program.
We have a new minister overseeing the program now, and I can only
hope that she brings with her a new approach to the management of
this important program.
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