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Speech on underfunding in Queensland public schools

On Wednesday 4 July 2024, I delivered a speech to Federal Parliament on the chronic underfunding in Queensland public schools. You can watch the full speech here or read the transcript below.

 

Transcript:

Public schools in this country are in crisis. Only 1.3 per cent of public schools nationally receive their full schooling resource standard funding. Meanwhile, 98 per cent of private schools are currently overfunded. This federal government spends more money on private schools than on public. This underfunding of public schools is having real consequences for students across my electorate and across Australia. 

Ryan has a relatively high proportion of school students attending public schools, and these are excellent schools with fantastic teachers, but they're not being funded to keep up. We have the real numbers on the funding shortfall. We know how much each school falls short of the schooling resource standard: Ashgrove State School with a $1.7 million funding shortfall; Kenmore South State School with a $2.5 million funding shortfall; Ferny Grove State High School with a $5.3 million funding shortfall; The Gap State School with a $1.5 million shortfall; Mitchelton Special School with a $1 million funding shortfall, which is almost $12,000 per student; Ironside State School with a $2.3 million funding shortfall; and the biggest funding shortfall is at Indooroopilly State High School, which is underfunded by a whopping $6.3 million. This has had a drastic consequence on the school and the students. Students queue for the bathroom for their whole lunchbreak because there aren't enough toilets. Some students haven't even seen the inside of a science lab because there aren't enough specialised classrooms. They've lost their student support space, and huge parts of their oval have been lost to demountables. They almost had to forgo a library entirely to make room for more classrooms. Fortunately, we managed to stop the loss of the library thanks to the great work of the P&C, assisted by the state member for Maiwar, Michael Berkman, and my office. This achieved just a few extra demountables, a stopgap that will not last. 

The state Labor government has callously refused to commit to any new classrooms. It's beyond shameful that our community has had to beg for the bare minimum—somewhere for the kids to sit for class, extra temporary classrooms. Meanwhile, private schools are raking in cash from the government and building elaborate drama theatres, state-of-the-art science labs, Olympic swimming pools and the like. Private schools spend more than double the amount per student that public schools spend on infrastructure, and the government will hand out a further $2.7 billion over the next decade, while public schools will get nothing. 

The way we fund public schools in Australia is utterly broken. Every child deserves to have access to a good education, no matter their background. It's fundamental for their wellbeing, and it should be regarded as an investment in Australia's future, not a cost that governments try to weasel their way out of paying. And yet, this year in Queensland alone, public schools will be underfunded by $1.7 billion. That's $3,000 per child. That's not just a dollar amount for our communities; that's kids missing out on music classes, sport or a functioning library. It's not having enough classroom teachers and teacher aides. Our amazing teachers and teacher aides, already overworked, are picking up the slack and regularly working weekends. It means that children who need extra support to learn go without. In fact, public special schools are underfunded by a minimum of $11,000 per student, and, tragically, for some schools the figure is much higher. That's not to mention increasing out-of-pocket costs for parents for supposedly free public schools—thousands of dollars every year for each student for laptops and iPads, stationery, textbooks and excursions. It's unacceptable that parents are having to close this funding gap due to government failure.

This federal government refuses to increase its meagre investment in public schools, but the money is there. They're bragging about an $18 billion budget surplus. They're spending tens of billions of dollars every year on fossil fuel subsidies that make the climate crisis worse and on investor tax concessions that make the housing crisis worse. They're forecasting almost half a trillion dollars on nuclear submarines, and yet our children are forced to learn in overcrowded classrooms in overcrowded schools without access to basic facilities. It's utterly shameful.

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