Mr SNOWDON (10:12 PM) —I listened with interest to the remarks of the member for Werriwa on the States Grants (Primary and Secondary Education Assistance) Bill 2000. Whilst I am not sure that I agree with everything he said, I think there is a great deal of substance in the general message he gave. I was particularly attracted by the view that what we should be doing in this parliament is providing resources based on the needs of students. I say that in the context of this legislation. I make reference to the Bills Digest and take a moment of the House's time to read two paragraphs from it. It says:

Hear, hear! The bill implements a number of decisions made in the 1999-2000 budget, and they are outlined in the Bills Digest. It refers particularly to the socioeconomic status based model, and it says that it is debatable how effectively the SES model will achieve its objectives of supposedly serving the needs of the neediest schools in the community. It says further:

about which my colleague the member for Werriwa spoke. It continues:

I was not privy to the deal about which my colleague spoke, but I would say that he raises some very significant questions about the level of funding going to needy Catholic schools in the private school system.

I want to make an observation about remarks made on this legislation by Ian Morgan. In an article in the Age on Wednesday, 30 August, Morgan writes:

This is a reference to the content of the bill. The article continues:

And I say: hear, hear! I might point out that, in the case of the Northern Territory, we are, without doubt, statistically the most disadvantaged of all Australians in relation to this bill because the highest proportion of our students are in government schools. In 1999, 77.5 per cent of the 36,000-plus students were in government schools, against a national average of 69.7 per cent. This figure is the highest of any state or territory—the next highest being Tasmania at 75.1 per cent. That rings alarm bells for me. I analyse the performance results of students in the schools and I look at the benchmark used in this place and elsewhere in the community for year 12 retention rates. In 1999, the Northern Territory had the lowest year 12 retention rates at 48.2 per cent for male students and 57.8 per cent for females, which were against a national average of 68.4 per cent for males and 79.5 per cent for females—the Northern Territory was 20 percentage points less in performance for both males and females. Of course, if you look in more detail at those figures, you discover that in the case of the split between indigenous and non-indigenous students, the figures are even more dramatic. I have figures for 1997—because I do not have the figures for 1999—and they indicate that the retention rate for indigenous students in year 12 in the Northern Territory was 9.4 per cent against 54.5 per cent for non-indigenous students. I think that there would not be a person in this House who would not believe that those figures are damning—and they are. We are seeing here an approach to funding of schools which will provide the richest families and the richest schools in Australia with pocketfuls of money out of the public purse, the purpose of which we are not sure of but it is supposed to provide some sort of equity.

I note in a press release from the shadow education minister that in fact the disparities are very obvious. What I am concerned about, not least of which is the argument presented by my friend the member for Werriwa, is the impact that this will have on the community. I have lived and worked in Northern Australia for 25 years. For some of that time I was a schoolteacher. I have been chair of a school council. Three of my children attend public schools and another of my children attends a private school. All the private schools in the Northern Territory, bar one, are categories 10 and 12 schools, so they are at the bottom end of the spectrum. They are unlikely to benefit from this legislation to the same degree as Carey Grammar or other great private schools. What is of concern to me is that we are not going to get the outcomes that we require for public education and the bulk of our community's students by moving money out of the public education system directly into the private education system—as is being done here through this legislation.

We hear in this place a lot about practical reconciliation. These are, in my view, government weasel words that somehow try to elevate the fact that they are barely carrying out their basic responsibility to all citizens to the level of special measures for indigenous Australians. In the Northern Territory, the government does not even bother with this subterfuge. It has a continuing history of shifting funds away from the most disadvantaged sector—remote area Aboriginal schools—and propping up urban schools in Darwin, Katherine and Tennant Creek. That could be justified if, in fact, you thought the funds were coming from another source to those schools in the bush. We need to understand that, if you move outside the spine of the Stuart Highway, away from the major mining towns, there are no high schools in any of the Aboriginal communities out there—and we wonder why the educational outcomes for indigenous students are as they are. We know that the public schools in remote communities in the Northern Territory do not have anything near the equivalent degree or quality of resources that their urban counterparts have, let alone as compared to Carey Grammar or Kings School in Parramatta or Geelong Grammar. Each of those schools will get something around $800,000 out of this exercise. The poor bush schools will get $4,000 apiece. I say that that is neither fair nor equitable, but most of all it goes well beyond the criteria elucidated by my friend the member for Werriwa on the allocation of funds on the basis of need. It is very clear that if we are to improve the educational outcomes for indigenous and other Australians who live in remote communities and in the bush we need to dedicate substantially more resources to them. I fear that this is not going to happen whilst we have this government in office.

What we know in the Northern Territory is that they have been cutting funds to government schools. The current minister for education in the Northern Territory could be more aptly described as the `minister for slash and burn'. He is holding back 20 per cent of school budgets and he has left 50 school teacher vacancies unfilled. In one area of north-east Arnhem Land they are 27 teachers short.

We need to understand that we are not now talking about Carey Grammar School or Geelong Grammar School; we are talking about remote bush schools where there are not only shortages of teacher resources but also shortages of capital. We do not have high schools. There is a shortage of infrastructure. The sorts of outcomes that we would want these children to achieve are simply not possible because the resources are just not available. Yet we have the Northern Territory government on the one hand, and now the federal government on the other, effectively denying them access to the resources that the taxpayer makes available to us in the form of revenue to this government and to the governments generally for the purpose of public education. What we are doing instead is shifting bucket loads of this money into the pockets of the wealthier schools in Australia.

I noted with interest the comments made by Justice Vincent from Victoria which were read out today in the parliament by the shadow minister for education. I will not repeat them here. What we also need to know is that, if we want to get effective educational outcomes in these remote community schools, we need to provide teachers with the resources that they require. And part of those resources is that they also require are decent living conditions, decent housing. We know that absolutely no effort has been made by this government or by the Northern Territory government to provide them with appropriate housing, so that many teachers live in demountables. They live in demountables, which I am sure you and I would not care to live in, Mr Deputy Speaker, and which would be regarded as a health hazard if they were in a major urban community. You certainly would not see them on the grounds of Carey Grammar. What we know about these places is that the roofs leak, the plumbing and the wiring breaks down, and people's furniture and other belongings get covered in mould. This does not happen at Carey Grammar. The contrast could not be starker.

I feel for the students in these communities, because they aspire to decent educational outcomes. Their parents aspire to decent educational outcomes. Most of these communities, certainly most remote Aboriginal communities in the Northern Territory, rely on CDEP as the form of income support for the community. They are not wealthy communities. In the past I have spoken at length in this place about the comparative disadvantage that such communities suffer as a result of their isolation, higher costs and lower income levels when compared with urban communities such as Sydney and Melbourne. It becomes very obvious when you look at schools such as I described earlier: Carey Grammar, Geelong Grammar, Kings School at Parramatta, Scotch College in Melbourne and Adelaide, Knox Grammar, Presbyterian Ladies College and Brighton Grammar School. Just look at the contrast and ask: how can this government justify shifting the public resources that they are seeking to shift in this legislation into those schools as opposed to putting them directly where they are most required—the needier students in Australia, these students who live in these very remote Aboriginal communities?

I thought that, when I came to this place, what I would be doing would be sitting around with others of like mind, not necessarily agreeing on points of principle but at least having a reasonable go at coming to an agreement about what is best for the community. I have heard no argument coming from the government that could convince me—or anyone I know—of the validity of the course of action which the government is seeking to take in this legislation. It will not add to educational outcomes for those people most in need. It will not improve the year 12 retention levels for Aboriginal students in the Northern Territory or the wider Northern Territory school proportion because of the very large proportion of the Northern Territory's school population that goes to public schools. In any event, as I pointed out, not one of the private schools in the Northern Territory is a category 1 school—not one.

It seems to me that, if it is the purpose of members in this place to develop good policy and make good legislation for the people of Australia, then this sadly misses the mark. I am happy to enter into dialogue with members of the government on the best way to achieve and improve educational attainment levels for people in remote Australia. But I have not seen them want to engage in such dialogue. What we have seen here is an ideological fix trumped-up by Minister Kemp 10 years ago, paraded now as government policy and exhibited here in the form of this pernicious piece of legislation that will just create further division within our community. That is not good for us: it is not good for this parliament and it is not good for Australia. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.