Mr BARTLETT (10:39 PM) —In recent weeks, I have received a number of letters from schools, P&C associations and teachers expressing their concerns about school funding—in particular, the inadequacy of resources in many of our government schools. They are finding it difficult to keep up with the growing expectations of what their schools need to deliver and the inadequacy of resources to deliver on those expectations. Their anxiety about this is being exacerbated by a steady drift of students from the public to the non-government sector—at least in New South Wales schools. This has led, understandably, to a growing sense of frustration, anxiety and anger amongst our teachers, P&C associations and parents within some of our New South Wales schools. Unfortunately, it has led them to misdirect their feelings of anger against the federal government, sadly, because of what has been a deliberate campaign of misinformation and distortion by many who have got a vested interest in this issue.

I would like to make three main points on this issue. The first is to clearly state the coalition's strong commitment to public education. This is particularly important to me; as someone who has taught in both the public and the non-government sector, I am particularly keen to see that the government steadily increases its funding for public schools in New South Wales—and the coalition has done this. In the last four years, the Commonwealth government has increased spending for public schools from $1.5 billion to $1.96 billion. In the last four years, this government has increased direct Commonwealth funding to New South Wales public schools from $528.4 million to $649 million. That is an increase of 25 per cent in just the last four years, with forward estimates over the next four years of a further 21 per cent increase in direct funding for our public schools.

The second point is that the coalition government is committed to not only providing the funding but seeing that it is used appropriately and effectively, and that standards are raised. As part of that, we have introduced the national literacy and numeracy standards, benchmarking and testing in years 3 and 5 to make sure that by the time our children leave primary school they are literate and numerate. If our school system cannot guarantee that our children on leaving school have basic acceptable standards of literacy and numeracy, it has failed badly. After some reluctance from state and territory ministers, we have managed to achieve the agreement of all of them to this level of benchmarking.

The third point I want to make is that the state government in New South Wales has failed badly the public education system. In New South Wales, we have seen the most rapid drift of students from the public sector to the non-government sector—in fact, the rate is several times higher than in the other states. This is because the New South Wales government is badly failing students in its public schools. The state government's lack of commitment is obvious when you look at the funding figures. As I have said, over the past four years the Commonwealth government has increased direct funding by 25 per cent. The New South Wales government has failed to even come close to matching this in its funding for its own schools. Last year, it increased funding by a miserable 1.7 per cent; this year by a pathetic 1.9 per cent—nowhere near the growth that the Commonwealth government has delivered. The state government in New South Wales has not even managed to keep up the appropriate share—the proportion of the financial assistance grants that it gets from the Commonwealth government—to fund its own school system.

In recent years, we have been increasing financial assistance grants, general revenue grants, to the New South Wales government by around five per cent per annum. They are not even maintaining an appropriate or constant proportion of that to their own schools, having raised funding by less than two per cent in each of the last two years. The New South Wales government has failed abysmally to adequately support its own public education system. It is not helpful for those involved in the debate to create animosity between our school systems. I am saddened, in fact, to see growing division between our public and our non-government school systems; but, worse, I am angry that the New South Wales government has failed our students. (Time expired)