Transcript - MTR 1377 - 9 June 2011

SUBJECTS: Gonski Review; Parliamentary Behaviour; Malaysia Solution

Steve Vizard: Christopher thanks for your time.

Christopher Pyne: Thank you Steve.

Vizard: You heard what Peter Garrett had to say, that no school will lose a single dollar per student. Yet we have a review by David Gonski, the results of which are about to be announced, could be adopted as policy. Will a school lose a single dollar per student?

Pyne: Well, Peter Garrett is being very tricky because what he's really saying is the base level of funding to private schools would stay the same, and that might be true. But what he's not saying is that they'll be no indexation under a Labor Government into the next four years. And if there's no indexation, it means that schools in Victoria would be $1.1 billion short of base funding plus indexation and indexation is basically increasing with inflation. So what the Labor Party is planning to do is keep the base level of funding the same, but claw back money from the private school sector by not increasing it with inflation. And that will affect over 300,000 students that go to non-government schools and as you quite rightly said, the vast majority of those are in small Christian low fee schools and small low fee Catholic schools.

Vizard: If that happened, and you're talking cumulatively across a very large number of schools and over a period of time. But those sorts of figures, I mean who picks up the shortfall from that? And those schools are funded by government to a part, they a funded by the states to a part and substantially they're funded by parents, the fees as to a part. If the government, the federal government pulls out, who picks up the shortfall?

Pyne: Well, exactly. There's only two ways that schools could survive if they lost that amount of money. One would be to either increase their revenue, which means increasing school fees and on average we've worked out that would mean an increase of three and a half thousand on average per student across Victoria. So they could increase their fees by three and a half thousand per student or they could sack staff, because the most costly aspect of a school is its salaries. The equivalent of sacking staff would be 14,500 teachers in Victoria alone would have to be sacked to meet that shortfall.

Vizard: Give us a call if you'd like to talk to Christopher Pyne about this issue. Do you have a kid that goes to a private school, is it a Catholic school or do you work hard to send your kids to a private school? Do you think this is a matter of principal that you should be entitled to roughly what you're paying in taxes to support not some abstract thing. This is about the lifeblood of our nation; this is about the education of children. Should all children, by way of equity be entitled to an equal contribution or a roughly equal contribution by Government? This is at the heart of what I want to ask you Christopher. Do you have - Gonski is doing a review at the moment - but do you have a major philosophical difference in approach between schools, all schools, should be treated by the federal government currently?

Pyne: Sure we do. We have an absolute commitment, a concrete commitment that there should be funding per student or whether you're in a government school or a non-government school. Of course students who're in government schools should attract all their funding from government, whether it's state or whether its federal, but if you're in a non-government school you should also attract support from the federal government. And if you didn't, if every student, there's 1.2 million students in non-government schools, if every student pulled up stumps and said "we're going to go down the road to the local government school" it would cost the taxpayers of Australia $32 billion over four years.

Now, could you imagine where that money would be found? So certainly non-government schools do get funding from their parents, but there has to be some recognition that their parents are also taxpayers. And 50 per cent is the average that students in non-government schools get funded by the taxpayer and 50 per cent by their parents. It seems like a fair share to me.

Vizard: Helen's on the line. She's got a question for Christopher Pyne. Helen?

Caller 1: I see it as an equity issue. As Christopher just said, if we were to close our doors and send our children elsewhere it's not as if the Government is building more schools. Also going to school is not an optional extra. You have to be at school until 16.

Vizard: That's right. It's compulsory. You've got to go.

Pyne: That's true. There simply aren't enough government school in existence today to take all the students that are in the non-government schools sector. The other philosophical difference we have with the Labor Party over this is that we actually support choice for parents. We believe that if you wanted your child to go to a certain school for religious reasons or for any other reason then you should have that option available to you.

Vizard: The Prime Minister has said of this review and of educating children that there should be some sort of equity for educating all kids. Now that's fair enough, but her view of equity has been expressed in this phrase, "Demography should not equal destiny." So what she's saying there is where you happen to grow up, what suburb you're in, it shouldn't equal where you end up in life. Can I get your response? That's not an unfair proposition?

Pyne: It's not an unfair proposition, but neither is it at odds with the idea that students in non-government schools should get government support. What she's saying and what we'd all say I think is that every child in Australia should have an opportunity to reach their full potential; to go to university if they want to, to get an apprenticeship, a traineeship, go to work, whatever they want to do. And that their education should not be a barrier to that.

Now the Government school education is a solid education as in non-government education. But what Julia Gillard is trying to say there in a subliminal way to the public is that this is an anti non-government school position, that somehow kids in non-government schools are getting it better than kids in government schools and it's because their parents are well off. But actually the demographic breakdown in Catholic schools indicates that Catholics actually educate a lower economic background status student on average than the government schools sector.

So it is absurd to have these politics of envy debates entered into in terms of schooling. Sure there are a couple of dozen very elite highly expensive non-government schools. But there are 2700 non-government schools which means 2550 or whatever are straight down the line middle class schools servicing middle class suburbs.

Vizard: Tony's on the line. A question for Christopher Pyne.

Caller 2: Hi Christopher, I completely agree with you. My background is I'm from England. If you look at the system there, I think it's less than five per cent of children go to private schools and here I think we're up to 32/33 (per cent). And what that means is that a lot of parents are funding additional education costs here in Australia and that takes pressure off the system, takes pressure off the government and gives people choice and I think that's a good thing.

Pyne: Yeah, and what it says is that parents who scrimp and scrape to send their kids to a non-government school could get something for nothing. They could actually go to a government school and get it for free, but they obviously think it's valuable to them to put their children in non-government schools. They are taking a burden off the taxpayer to start with, but secondly they should have that choice. I mean, come on this is Australia. We're not interested in telling people where they have to go to school.

Vizard: Thanks for that Tony, appreciate your call. A couple of quick ones for you Christopher on unrelated topics; the question of political conduct, I hate it when you've got a shot of Parliament House and the interior and the debate going on, and often you'll see that wide shot and you see up in the gallery a whole lot of school kids sitting up there. There might be a visiting delegation from the Icelandic parliament or some ministers from Indonesia sitting up there and then the fun and games start. The name calling starts and only last week we had this incident...

GRAB

Vizard: What are your views about the standard of debate?

Pyne: I think Penny Wong can take care of herself. I think that she handled that incident exactly the way she wanted to handle it. I don't approve of insults in politics, but by the same token I'm not going to be lectured by the Labor Party about how to behave in parliament. I've been in parliament for 18 years. I was in parliament when Paul Keating was the Prime Minister and for the Labor Party to lecture the Liberal Party about political insults when I sit there every day hear Julia Gillard under her breath say the most extraordinary things to Tony Abbott because I sit right behind him. I think political discourse should rise above the gutter. I think the Prime Minister should lead by example in that. John Howard was not a person who engaged in political insults and he was Prime Minister for 11 and half years, but I'm certainly not going to be lectured by the Labor Party about it.

Vizard: Another quick one. The Malaysia solution, it looks like the people who go to Malaysia under the latest variation, the latest information about this proposed solution is that they're going to spend a smaller amount of time in Malaysia being processed and then released into the community. Your response to the details as it unfolds?

Pyne: Well, look, a month ago Steve this deal was apparently a done deal, it was all done and dusted and good enough for the Prime Minster to rush out and announce. Now it's changed from day to day so who would know what's going to happen to the 800 asylum seekers who are sent back to Malaysia. I can tell you one thing, if they were sent to Nauru, we'd know exactly what was going to happen to them. We'd send their children to school, we'd be responsible for their health, we'd process them with a UNHCR, it'd be owned by Australia, built by Australia and operated by Australians in concert with the Nauruan Government and we'd either send them back home to a third country or to Australia if they're accepted and we'd control the whole thing.

Vizard: Christopher Pyne, appreciate your time and hope to see you particularly when that Gonski report comes out and we get a greater feel for where the Government might go in respect to funding the education sector.

Pyne: Happy to come back any time you like.

ENDS