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SUBJECTS: Education funding E&OE............................... Christopher Pyne: Good Morning Fran. Fran Kelly: Is the Coalition really prepared to campaign against more money for schools in an election campaign? Pyne: Well the Government’s proposal is a mirage. In the fifth and sixth year from now the Government is promising rivers of gold in terms of billions and billions of dollars. But in the next four years, the Government is actually cutting school funding by $325 million. Now, therefore the Coalition is not campaigning against more funds for schools, it’s actually campaigning for higher funds for schools over the next four years and schools have got to pay their bills next year and 2015 and 16 and 17 as well as in five or six years from now. So the reason why the Government’s proposals are in disarray Fran, is because they are promising side deals and secret arrangements and sweetheart agreements with different States and Territories in order to have political wins, because they have an election policy not an education policy. Kelly: Well I mean I guess statistics can be thrown around. But the fact is the Better Schools Plan it has got a number against it of $14.5 billion over the six years. I would have thought the States and schools aren’t silly, I mean the Independent schools looked at the numbers very closely and they took some persuading but they’ve signed on because they accept that no school will be worse off, in fact they will be better off in the first few years and increasingly better off in the out years to the tune of $1billion. That is a lot of money. Pyne: Well there are two things I would say to that Fran. The first is that the Government can only rely on what’s in the budget. And the Independent schools, Catholic schools and State schools can only rely on what is in black and white in the budget for the next four years and that is a cut of $325 million in school funding and 4.7 billion in all education expenditure. Secondly, I would say that if an employer came to you and said, go out and take out another mortgage, get a second car because you are going to get rivers of gold in five or six years’ time from now but you are going to get a pay cut in the next four years, you would think he was joking, he or she was joking. Kelly: But it’s not a pay cut, I mean the Independent schools have come out quite clearly and said they’re convinced they will get more money, not enormous amounts more money but they will get more money every year under this plan and then they will get a lot more money and they like the model, that’s what they said. Pyne: Well the Auditor- General agrees with the Coalition’s figures and that was published in the Australian last week. That the Auditor- General wrote back to me agreeing that there was a cut to the national partnership to the targeted funding over the next four years, which meant that overall there wasn’t an increase in new money and the new money was flowing in the fifth and sixth years, that is the first thing. Secondly, the Independent Schools Council were repudiated on the same day that they signed this so called agreement with Bill Shorten by South Australian, Victorian and Western Australian Independent schools, saying that they don’t speak for us because the Government has to negotiate with each and every Independent school. ISCA has been first to sign up months ago, had another foe signing up this week with the Government. They believe they are in a weak bargaining position and that is disappointing. But I think that the Victorian, Western Australian and South Australian Independent Schools Councils are correct when they say that ISCA does not speak for them. Kelly: Well, ISCA does speak though and in theory it represents something like 562,000 students so if you add those to the states and territories that have signed up – it’s about half of school pupils in the country covered by the agreement that they’ve signed on to. How many would it take for the Coalition to say, ok we will support this? Pyne: Well we’ve said that we believe the current model is better. That it delivers more funds to schools in the next four years, that it’s certain; people know what they are dealing with and it doesn’t involve a massive new federal interference and a huge new federal bureaucracy and regulation. So, we’ve said we’ll keep the current model for a year and sort out Labor’s chaos. But, on the other hand, if an overwhelming majority of states sign up to this, and at the moment there are four out of eight – which isn’t even a majority. If an overwhelming majority signs up – we don’t want there to be more uncertainty in the education sector than the Government has already created because uncertainty is poison in planning for school budgets. So that if there is an overwhelming majority we’ll keep the model. Kelly: Are we talking about a majority of territories and states or a majority of pupils. What if the Catholic Education people come out now and say, yeah we’ll sign up? That I think will take it to something like over sixty per cent of school students covered. Pyne: Well the Government has created this new definition of percentages of schools students… Kelly: Is it fair enough? Pyne: There’s also a population; the current four jurisdictions that have signed up are only 43 per cent of the population. But rather than parsing these various definitions that the government is now trying to create as part of their mirage, the truth is a majority of states and territories means just that – a majority of states and territories. The ACT, South Australia and Tasmania all Labor jurisdictions, all predictably have signed up. New South Wales signed up early but Victoria, Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory have not. Unless an overwhelmingly majority of those do, the Coalition believes that we should keep the current system because this will be far from a National system. I should just point out too Fran that the government doesn’t have anything close to a National model anymore. They have a different arrangement with every state and territory; they’re offering side deals and extra money all over the place. None of that is budgeted for. The Government surplus has been blown on its own by its different arrangement with the different states and territories which they’ve used to try and purchase their agreement. Kelly: You’re listening to RN Breakfast, it’s 12 past 8. Our guest this morning is the Shadow Minister for Education Christopher Pyne. Christopher Pyne, the Coalition’s position will be if you win government more than likely, you will stick with the current model for another year and then see because you say the current model is better. But, I know you would have been spoken to by all the members of the Gonski review panel, many of whom come on this program and others to argue for their model because they are convinced the current model is broke. Do you not accept that finding? Pyne: Well I would agree that they had a point if the Government was introducing the Gonski model. But the Gonski model requires $6.5 billion every year of new spending. Over the next four years that’s $26 billion, Fran, of new spending. Instead the Government is cutting funding by $325 million. So the Government is not introducing anything that even closely resembles the Gonski model and that is what Denis Napthine has said, in fact the Prime Minister himself has said it and David Gonski has been strangely silent on this issue because I think he recognises that the Government is misusing his report and the only thing he’s had to say is that he deplores the fact that the Government is cutting university spending by $2.8 billion. So the Government isn’t introducing the Gonski model. Kelly: Well an Essential, well we’ll get some responses I suppose in response to what you just said there, but an Essential Poll out this week asked voters which Labor policies the new Prime Minister should dump and which ones he should keep. Forty four per cent said he should keep Gonski, only fifteen per cent wanted the plan abandoned. So when people vote in this election, I mean what you are saying to them is that a vote for the Coalition is a vote, for instance for people in New South Wales, to take money away extra money away from schools. Pyne: But to take that position, and I understand that the public are very confused about the Government’s policy on education because the Government has not explained it well at all, no one really knows what the new model supposedly does. To do that you have to suspend everything you know about the Labor Party and believe that they will deliver rivers of gold of billions of new dollars in five or six years from now which is three elections away. You have to believe that they will be stable and secure over the next three years, which over the last six years we’ve had three Prime Ministers, seven cabinet Ministers resigned a fortnight ago because they refused to serve with Kevin Rudd, Kevin Rudd on the one hand say that he is going to open up the windows and allow democracy in the Labor Party and then his national executive takes away rank and file pre-selections and imposes candidates in all seats in this Federal election. So you need to suspend everything you know about the Labor Party to believe they’ll actually deliver any of these policies in five or six years and we know that on their past record they don’t deliver any of their policies. Kelly: Christopher Pyne, thank you very much for joining us on Breakfast. Pyne: It’s always a pleasure. ENDS.