ABC News 24

SUBJECTS: Gonski funding

E&OE……………

Lyndal Curtis: Christopher Pyne, welcome to ABC News 24.

Christopher Pyne: Thanks Lyndal.

Curtis: What is wrong with the Prime Minister’s aspiration with getting Australia into the top five schooling nations in 2025?

Pyne: Well there is nothing wrong with an aspiration, but it isn’t a policy.  The problem with the government’s speech today is that is a non-response to the Gonski review.  They have had this review since last December and it is now September and all they have announced today is a preparedness to speak to the states and territories about a funding model.  What have they been doing for the entire year and the latter part of last year?

Curtis: But your leader has aspirations for disability insurance, more flexible childcare, aspirations for universal funding of dental, are they not policies?

Pyne: We are not the government, Lyndal.  The government had built up today’s speech as a response to the Gonski review.  Everybody expected there to be some meat on the bones and all we got is feathers and no meat.  This is a great disappointing response for the sector and for the states and territories and the parents.

Curtis: But if the government had come up with something and had said we are going to spend this amount of money and expect the states to contribute this much, don’t you think you would have said that the government should be consulting with the states?

Pyne: Well the government should be consulting with the states.  Ted Baillieu said this afternoon that there has been no consultation with Victoria about the Gonski review and yet the government has had it since last December.  Now if they had come up with a policy today and put money on the table and they had announced the indexation rate which we need to know - which all schools need to know - going forward. The Coalition would have said we will look at what the government has come up and consider it.  And instead we have a blancmange from the government and have got absolutely no detail.

Curtis: But you haven’t, you have said you don’t want what Gonski has offered so you won’t consider whatever they come up with.

Pyne: No, we will consider anything the government comes up with as any good opposition should.  But we will also hold them to account and we need to hold them to account for the fact hat the Prime Minister has given a speech about her early girl days at Unley High School and trying to tug on the heart strings of Australians but people expect real policy.  Parents need to know how much funds will be going to their local schools.  Parents of non-government schools need to know what the fees they are going to pay are going to be in the next four years.  And the government has left the cupboard bare today.  They have created more uncertainty and not certainty, and schools abhor uncertainty.

Curtis: Do you believe the system needs to be changed? 

Pyne: Well the Gonski review has come up with a more complex system that costs $113 billion over twelve years.  It is indexed out between now and when the system is supposed to finish under Mr Gonski’s suggestions.  I think the current SES funding model works.  It is a needs based system.  It rewards private investment, i.e. in school fees and it gets the money to where it needs to go, i.e. for those disadvantaged schools that have low SES scores.

Curtis: But under the current system as David Gonski pointed out in his report, Australia’s school ranking has been falling and the gap between the best students and the worst students, the students doing the least well has been growing. So doesn’t that point to a system that isn’t doing what it should do?

Pyne: Well there is something for everything in Mr Gonski’s review.  Mr Gonski also said there should be a greater focus on parental engagement - Coalition policy…

Curtis: Also Labor party policy, isn’t it?

Pyne: Well they are copying our policy.  There should be focus on principal autonomy, on teacher quality and on a robust school curriculum.  He said those were the four more important determinants for the outcomes of students at school than funding.

Curtis: And is that to say that the Labor party have on all of those?

Pyne: Not on all of them.  They have nebulous policies in some of those areas.  They refuse to actually say what they are going to do about teacher quality.  They don’t have a genuine principal autonomy policy.  Western Australian has a genuine principal autonomy policy.  And I will say something about Western Australia.  They have 50% of their students in government schools, independent public schools.  They are the only state that is reversing the trend of government school parents taking their children out of government schools. They are actually going the other way.  That is the model that the federal government should be investing in.

Curtis: You just said that a Labor government doesn’t have any policy on teacher quality but the Prime Minister outlined a number of things today to get the best and brightest into teaching including supporting new teachers for two years after they move from education into the workforce?

Pyne: Well where is the money for it?  This is another one of the Prime Minister’s Never Never policies.  I mean they have the NDIS at $10.8 billion, the dental scheme is $4 billion and now they said they will fund the Gonski review.  The cheapest the Gonski review could be done is $26 billion over four years.

Curtis: But the states would share some of that won’t they?

Pyne: Well the states have said the government should fund it. The Commonwealth government should fund it.

Curtis: Well the Commonwealth government doesn’t fund all schooling at the moment, why should the states absolve themselves of responsibility for some of that funding?

Pyne: Well the Commonwealth does fund all schools.  We fund all non-government schools, that is our principal responsibility.  And we fund 10% of the AGSRC for all government schools.  But the states do run the schools and they should have a big say in the funding for those schools yet the Commonwealth is yet to talk to the states.  Now how could the Prime Minister come out today, this is an election policy, not an education policy Lyndal.  She came out today and said we have a preparedness to talk to these states. But where is the detail, and where is the money coming from and what is the indexation?  Aspirations are all very well but parents expect to know what governments are going to do today and tomorrow, not in 2025.

Curtis: You mentioned in your press conference that Australia should be benchmarking itself against countries like Canada.  Why Canada and not Asia, the region in which Australia is?

Pyne: Well Canada is a country more like Australia. It has a multicultural population, it has a significant indigenous population and it has a large land mass with far flung geographical locations.  You can’t compare Australia to a city-state like Singapore, or Hong Kong or Shanghai and come up with a genuine comparison.

Curtis: But it wasn’t so long ago that Joe Hockey was saying if we talk about the Asian century in Australia and if the government talks about the Asian century then the Asian countries are our competition and our children’s competition and we should be comparing ourselves with countries like Singapore, Korea, Vietnam and Indonesia.

Pyne: Well we should be comparing ourselves to whole systems.  So rather than comparing ourselves to Shanghai or Hong Kong, we should be looking at the whole of the educational outcomes for China.  It is not fair to simply take one city and compare Australia to one city.  It just isn’t logical and parents will know that the Prime Minister talking about Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai is not comparing apples with apples.  A country like Canada is much more like Australia and a much better comparison.

Curtis: And where will the Coalition find the $4.2 billion over four years that you have committed, the Coalition have, as increased school funding?

Pyne: We have committed $4.2 billion at 6% indexation over the forward estimates – that’s in our budget.  But the full detail of course of all our plans will be released before the election.  The Coalition is committed to $4.2 billion, it is absolutely certain.  We are going to have a ruthless focus on teacher quality, on principal autonomy, and on a robust school curriculum and on ending the disparity of funding with children with disabilities in schools which at the moment is a scandal.

Curtis: Christopher Pyne, thank you very much for your time.

Pyne: Pleasure Lyndal, thank you.

ENDS