Senator SANTORO (11:07 PM) —In view of the lateness of the hour and out of consideration for the welfare of my fellow senators, I seek leave to incorporate a significant contribution that I would have articulated upon should I have been otherwise disposed.

Leave granted.

The speech read as follows—

The last occasion was only this month, following the Queensland budget mid-year review, in which the state treasurer, Mr Mackenroth, was visibly active trying to find excuses for all the red ink that would sound plausible to the average observer for more than a nanosecond.

Further evidence of the Beattie Labor government's financial follies—not to mention fiscal foibles—is to be found in the attempt being made by the state education minister, Anna Bligh, to blame the federal government for cutting $3.8 million from her budget.

Minister Bligh would like it to be thought that she has to cut funding for pre-compulsory language programs in Queensland schools because the Commonwealth—and here I quote her verbatim-

`... last year decided to cease funding the National Asian Languages and Studies Strategy for Australian Schools (NALSAS) from the end of 2002.'

The verbatim quote is crucial, because what she says is completely and utterly wrong.

It is a lame excuse patently designed to hide a budgetary problem that has absolutely nothing to do with funding flows from the Commonwealth.

Ms Bligh, like every other education minister in the country, is very well aware that NALSAS was always a time-limited program.

It began in 1994 as a collaborative endeavour between the Commonwealth and the states and territories, initially for four years, with the states and territories providing matching funding.

Mr President—

I might digress just for a moment and make this point: the NALSAS program was very largely brought about by the strong interest and heavy lobbying of the former Goss Labor government in Queensland.

It was a creditable Queensland-fostered initiative—an incubator if you like.

I believe that fact deserves to be nationally recognised, particularly for the strong advocacy on the issue of the then premier, Wayne Goss.

The important thing in the present debate, however, is that even from the start, in 1994-95, when funding first flowed, everyone concerned knew that it was a program for which the states and territories would over time assume responsibility.

Perhaps Ms Bligh has failed to read her departmental briefs on the history of NALSAS.

In the 1999-2000 Budget the Commonwealth Government announced it would continue to fund its contribution to the strategy only for another three years—to the end of 2002.

Ms Bligh would surely remember that, even if she's conveniently forgotten the origins of the program, because by that time she was Queensland's education minister.

Can it be that the dog has eaten her homework yet again?

The fact is that the states and territories—and the non-government education authorities—have been aware since 1999 that NALSAS would end in 2002 and that they would have to meet their agreed obligation to fund it from their own resources.

That's four years Ms Bligh: One, Two, Three, Four.

In case there is anyone else on the Labor side who fails to understand what the situation has always been, this is what the 1999-2000 DETYA Portfolio Budget Papers state—it's on page 28:

`The measure provides $90 million from 1999-2000 to 2001-02, commencing 1 January 2000. This funding will mean that the Commonwealth will have provided funding under the Strategy for seven years, by which time it should have become self-sustaining.'

The Commonwealth has contributed more than $200 million to NALSAS since it began in 1994-95.

The role of NALSAS was to support four priority Asian languages—Japanese, Chinese, Indonesian and Korean—and studies of Asia across the curriculum in schools. The majority of NALSAS funding has in fact been used for teacher professional development and development of curriculum resources.

Over the past eight years the NALSAS strategy did have a positive impact in the numbers of students studying an Asian language and the number of schools teaching Asian languages.

In 2000, more than 750,000 Australian students were studying one of the four NALSAS languages—23.4 per cent of all students—and just under half of all schools were offering a NALSAS language program.

Primary schools in particular have seen a rapid increase in the take-up of languages. Yet the proportion of senior students studying a language fell slightly from a peak of 14.45 per cent in 1996 to 13.22 per cent in 2000.

And despite the original targets of 60 per cent of all Year 10 and 15 per cent of all Year 12 students participating in NALSAS by 2000, only 8.6 per cent of Year 10 and 4.5 per cent of Year 12 students were in fact doing so.

The Commonwealth continues to fund the Languages Other Than English (LOTE) program—at a cost of $20 million a year—as one of the eight key learning areas in the National Goals for Schooling in the Twenty-First Century.

Mr President—

It is interesting that the Queensland minister has seen fit to express her disappointment—I'm sure it is really a Thespian performance on her part— in the decision of the federal minister to end NALSAS in accordance with the plan everyone has known about since 1999.

What is even more interesting is that Ms Bligh, in her widely circulated letter, goes on to say this:

`Our government understands the importance of learning another language to the future of Queensland, our children and our ties with other countries and cultures.'

It has chosen a strange way to demonstrate this commitment.

It is a fact that since the middle of last year, when the Labor Party thought it had at last found an issue to run with, the ALP has been attempting to create confusion among parents by suggesting that Asian languages will no longer be taught in schools.

But the fact is the teaching of languages, as with other subjects taught in state government schools, is primarily managed and funded by state governments.

Primarily is the key word—this budget year alone, the Commonwealth is providing $2.4 billion as supplementary funding to the states' $18.3 billion—that's a supplement of more than 13 per cent.

The real issue—certainly in Queensland's case, where the state treasurer has clearly run out of envelopes on the back of which he can do his budget calculations—is financial responsibility and prudent budgeting.

Ms Bligh says she's short by $3.8 million. That's only 13 per cent of the final—doubled: they can't even get that right—cost of the Goodwill Bridge that her bread-and-circuses premier insisted should be built for pedestrians across the Brisbane River.

It's not even icing on the cake when compared with the $280 million-plus Lang Park redevelopment sponsored by the state treasurer who is also minister for sport.

And it pales even further into insignificance when the $404 million extra Queensland can expect to get from the new Grants Commission relativities, illustrative estimates of which were released last month, pumps into the system. It's only 0.9 per cent of that additional funding.

And the specific language program that has raised her desire to find someone else to blame should anyway have been factored into the education budget forward estimates long ago.

Ms Bligh's problem isn't that the Commonwealth has gone out there and monstered her.

It is that she can't manage the education budget.

It is that she apparently can't win a budget review argument with the treasurer—if she's that short.

It is that she has a lot of angry and underpaid and under-resourced teachers on her hands.

And it is that their pay claim is going to the state industrial commission for arbitration and an outcome that will blow yet another hole in the Beattie Labor government's shredded budgetary credibility.