Mr LEE (12:58 PM) —The government moved the gag as soon as the enrolment benchmark adjustment was mentioned. We are not surprised that the government is embarrassed by any debate about the impact of the enrolment benchmark adjustment—the unfair EBA—on government schools. We are dealing with amendments 7 to 10, which provide funding for non-government schools across the country under the new funding mechanisms. The point we make here is that the little information that we have on the funding scheme as proposed in these amendments suggests that it is a very unfair allocation of funding to schools across the country. If you look at the funding that is provided in the schedules for SES 119, which is the average SES level for the category 1 schools—the 62 wealthiest schools in the country—you will see that they receive substantial increases.

Basically, in summary, it is an average increase of $820,000 a year for the 62 wealthiest category 1 schools in the country—an average $60,000 a year increase for the Catholic schools and only $4,000 a year for government schools after you have allowed for cost indexation. That is why we believe that the scheme that is implemented with these amendments by the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs is unfair. Our problem is that we do not have the final figures—the scores for each school. We do not know how much of an increase will be going to the various non-government schools throughout the country. The minister expects the parliament to rubberstamp this before we have that information and that is something which we argue is untenable and we will continue to argue as untenable. When this debate resumes in the Senate, when it passes this chamber, Labor will be seeking the support of other parties in the Senate to adjourn debate until the figures are provided by the government and the minister. They have advised us that this information—the final SES scores for every non-government school in the country—will be provided by late September or early October. That should give the parliament plenty of time to have a detailed and a necessary debate about the impact of the changes this minister is making to funding for non-government schools.

Earlier in the debate in the House we had some focus on what was the real level of funding for the category 1 schools. If you look at schedule 4 part 1 for primary education and part 2 for secondary education, you can see that schools that have an SES ranking of 119 under the new funding mechanism will receive 27.5 per cent of the average costs of government schools. On Radio National this morning the minister was claiming that the wealthier 62 schools, the wealthiest schools in the country, would receive only 13, 14, 15 or 16 per cent of average government school costs. We argue on this side of the House that the minister, in those comments this morning, clearly misled the Australian people. The minister, in the comments he made earlier in the debate, also raised many questions because the schedule before the House makes it clear that schools that have a score of 119 will receive 27.5 per cent, hence our arguments that the average increase for schools having a ranking of 119 will be hundreds of thousands of dollars—more than half a million dollars a year in 2004.

The reason we have these concerns is that we know there are needy government schools. There are needy non-government schools—Catholic, non-Catholic—that could do a great deal to help kids in their schools if they got a decent, fair allocation of federal funding. Our complaints about this schedule and this legislation are that the richer schools get the most money. We believe that the schedule should be withdrawn and redone to ensure that there is a fairer allocation of funding to the needy government and the needy non-government schools. That is what this debate is all about.