Mr LEE (3:09 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Is the minister aware that a senior official of his department told the Senate inquiry into his new school funding formula that an extra $50 million to 62 category 1 schools was `probably a good estimate'? Is the minister also aware that his enrolment benchmark adjustment has already taken more than $60 million from government schools? Minister, how can you claim that your legislation is designed to restore equity and fairness to school funding, to use your words, when it takes $60 million from government schools and gives $50 million to the 62 wealthiest schools in Australia?

Dr KEMP (Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —It is hard to understand how someone can hold even a shadow portfolio and understand so little about the basis of education policy. Everything that the shadow minister says is completely misconceived. The government, for a start, has increased funding for government schools, not reduced funding for government schools. The enrolment benchmark adjustment is a federal-state financial transaction; it does not constitute a school funding policy. Therefore your statement that it has taken $60 million from government schools is incorrect.

Let us come to the last point. Your reliance on category 1, the old Labor funding formula for non-government schools, puts you at odds with the entire non-government sector. It is a funding formula which has been completely discredited and which does not represent a listing of the 62 wealthiest schools in Australia. Let us go right through this very slowly so, hopefully, you will understand it next time and we will not get this misrepresentation.

Mr SPEAKER —The minister will address his remarks through the chair.

Dr KEMP —You have claimed that the 62 wealthiest schools in Australia will be receiving an average of around 30 per cent of average government school recurrent costs under the government's new funding arrangements.

Dr KEMP —You called them the 62 wealthiest schools in Australia. There is a very clear understanding that the government's SES funding mechanism is a much more accurate measure of need than the Labor Party's now discredited funding system, which the shadow minister continues to support, contrary to the views of everybody else in the non-government sector. I have had the government's measure applied to the simulation project data that we carried out over the last couple of years. It shows that, under the government's SES funding formula, none of the schools serving the 62 wealthiest communities in Australia will be funded at the levels that you have indicated.

Mr Lee —No, you are wrong.

Dr KEMP —You are totally and completely wrong. You have claimed that an average level of funding will be applied, but no individual school will be funded at that average level amongst the 62 wealthiest schools in Australia, identified by an accurate measure of the wealth of the schools' communities. So your whole assumption about the allocation of that money is completely fallacious. Read the transcript of this if you are not following me, because it is very clear to other members of the House. This funding formula will allocate funding amongst schools according to need.

Let me conclude on one point: there will be some schools amongst the 62 wealthiest schools that will receive funding at a higher level only because we have funding-maintained those schools. They will receive that funding only because you have funded them at that level. We have frozen their levels of funding. The only schools that will be funded at the levels you are talking about will be the schools that you have funded—at your level of funding—and we have taken a fair decision not to take their funding away from them. Every school funded under our formula will be funded at a lower level amongst those 62 schools than what you claim is the average level; in other words, you are totally and utterly incorrect and you are totally and utterly offside with the entire non-government sector. You are the last voice in Australia claiming that the Labor Party's discredited funding system has any merit whatever.

It is not surprising that the last party to stand for the wholesale sales tax system is also the last party to stand for the ERI funding formula for non-government schools. You are totally isolated. Not only do those opposite say that our system is a bad system, but they are going to vote for it. They are going to keep our funding system when they are in office. It is so bad that they are going to keep it.