Dr KEMP (Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) (6:01 PM) —I move:

The States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 2000 as it stands simplifies the administrative arrangements for funding students with disabilities. It is a very considerable improvement on the existing position for students with disabilities when they attend schools that are serving the neediest communities. The bill also removes the current arbitrary differences in funding between primary and secondary students and is considered to be a very significant improvement in that regard. Also, it removes the inequitable differences in allocations under current arrangements where the most disadvantaged non-government schools receive no additional funds for students with disabilities. The amendments require additional funding which Labor proposes to obtain by taking funding out of the general recurrent grants from some non-government schools. The government cannot accept amendments that are going to remove funding from schools, because all schools, government and non-government, benefit from the arrangements in this bill. Even those schools that are funding maintained will benefit.

There is no cut in funding for students with disabilities in government secondary schools, as has been claimed by the Labor Party. State governments will receive the same amount of special education funding as they receive now. For non-government schools, the bill resolves the inequitable differences in allocations under current arrangements whereas, as I have said, the most disadvantaged non-government schools receive no additional funds for students with disabilities. Under the formula for allocating funds to students with disabilities that the Labor Party put in place, I believe at the start of the 1990s, schools serving the most disadvantaged students receive no additional money. Category 12 schools with students with a disability did not get one additional dollar from the Labor Party. By providing a flat per capita grant rate to all schools, this bill will provide an extra $527 for each student in such non-government schools.

As I have said, the opposition proposes to fund this additional money for students with disabilities by taking money away from a significant number of schools. It proposes to create a list of schools in the legislation which are excluded from the SES funding arrangements. There is great danger in this. One of the dangers is that, if such a list were ever to be created, this could mean in future other schools from other categories could be added to this list with little or no justification. The opposition cannot stand behind these amendments on the basis that certain schools should be categorised according to a blatantly broken ERI system while others can access the new SES arrangement.

Let me illustrate the anomaly that arises from the way in which the opposition in the Senate proposes to treat the schools. The anomaly in the opposition's position is that former category 1 schools, such as Mentone Grammar School in Victoria in the marginal Labor electorate of Isaacs with an SES score of 110, would have its funding frozen but former category 2 schools, such as Meriden School in New South Wales with an identical SES score of 110, would receive a $3 million increase. That is the consequence of the Labor Party's reliance on the blatantly broken ERI. The Penbank School, a former category 6 school with an SES score of 110—an identical score as Mentone Grammar School and Meriden School—would receive an extra $418 per student in 2004. So we have a proposal to fund an increase in funding to some students by taking money away from other schools on a completely inequitable and dangerous basis.