21st Jun 2017, 12:23 PM – Senate Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017 - Second Reading - Criticism of Gonski 2.0

The majority voted against a motion introduced by Labor Senator Jacinta Collins (Vic), which means the motion failed.

Motion text

That the Senate notes that this bill:

(a) would result in a $22.3 billion cut from Australian schools compared with the existing arrangements;

(b) removes extra funding agreed with states and territories for 2018 and 2019 which would have been brought under resourced schools to their fair funding level;

(c) locks in sector-specific payments of 80 per cent of student resource standard for non-government schools and just 20 per cent for government schools, the very opposite of a sector-lined model;

(d) sees the Commonwealth government abandon all responsibility for ensuring that Australian students reach, at a minimum, 95 per cent of the schooling resource standard;

(e) reduces funding to some wealthy overfunded schools, which Labor supports, but it also increases funding for other overfunded schools while cutting funding to some of our most vulnerable school students;

(f) would particularly hurt public schools, which receive less than 50 per cent of funding under the government's proposal compared to 80 per cent of the extra funding in Labor's school funding plan—

(g) results in only one in seven public schools reaching their fair funding level after 10 years.