Page 1473 - Week 05 - Wednesday, 4 May 2016
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$224 million of cuts in 2016-17, will be at an all-time low of 0.22 per cent of Australia’s gross national product. Comparing that to the global goals that are in place, Australia is already well below where it should be. What we have seen last night is a further cut in global aid through our foreign aid budget. If anyone thinks that is not relevant here in the ACT, it is. Australia’s spending overseas has far-reaching ramifications. It is an important long-term contribution to stability in our region, to helping our neighbours, to being a decent developed nation, and we have seen further cuts last night.
Of course, we saw the $160 million provisioned for a marriage equality plebiscite. If ever we wanted to talk about where money might come from for more important causes, let us talk about that. We know what the Australian community thinks. It is time the Australian parliament stood up and acted and did not provide that sort of money for something that, frankly, the parliament should be taking a decision on.
Let me take a moment to focus on education specifically. I am concerned by what we have seen last night. It has been framed as a boost to the education sector, but what we know is that it is in fact a wind-down from money that had been stated for education into the future. The reality is that an increase on a cut is still a cut.
We are still in a position where the ACT will be worse-off than what had previously been identified under the full Gonski funding package by the previous government. Mr Hanson has come in here today and said, “It is all about allocated dollars in the budget.” But what we know is there was a clear indication that that is the money that would be made available over the six-year funding arrangement of the Gonski package to fund schools in Australia.
Mr Hanson says, “It is not allocated dollars in the budget.” I could stand here and make the same comment about the small business package that was delivered in last night’s budget. If you want to play it that way, let us be honest, and let us compare apples with apples. If it is apples with apples, that education funding was there just as those small business cuts are there. Let us make sure that if we are going to try to cherrypick in this debate we do it with some degree of integrity. It is quite clear that that money was allocated for schools under a funding package that, if I recall correctly, at the last election, actually was—what was the term that Mr Hanson used today?—a unity ticket.
There was a unity ticket on that funding. Yet it is gone; it is gone. We have seen a little bit clawed back in this budget, and that is a welcome thing. But let us not come here crowing about it, because it is still a shameful exercise in winding back the most serious commitment we have seen to education funding in this country, particularly in the context of having made a breakthrough.
I think the most attractive thing about the Gonski funding approach, and the thing that was commonly accepted in our community, was that it got us out of that debate about who got what, the constant bickering about who got which bits of the pie. It actually got us to a genuine needs-based education funding system, which was in the interests of students. That is the thing we should be focused on.
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