2016-06-21
Ms PENNICUIK (Southern Metropolitan) — I am happy to make a small contribution this evening on the budget papers, having already spent many hours looking at them in detail through the budget estimates process as a member of the Public Accounts and Estimates Committee. I note that another member of the committee, Ms Shing, is in the chamber too.
Ms Shing interjected.
Ms PENNICUIK — Yes, I know Ms Shing is very pleased to hear about the estimates process. Certainly through that process I raised many questions across all areas of the budget and across all portfolio areas of the ministers who appeared before us. Just in terms of the budget — —
The ACTING PRESIDENT (Mr Finn) — Order! I am sorry, Ms Pennicuik. There are a number of conversations going on in the house. We could do without at least three of them. Ms Pennicuik continuing without assistance from those who would like to have a chat would be a marvellous thing.
Ms PENNICUIK — On the revenue side of the budget, as Mr Barber pointed out in his contribution, the government has a large revenue stream on the taxation side of it, made up of increased stamp duty revenue not only now but into the future. As he pointed out, unless things go according to the projections, future budgets may not look quite as rosy. So a significant proportion of the budget is based on that. Of course around half of the budget revenue is, as always, made up from federal grants to the various large portfolios, particularly health, education et cetera.
It is fair to say that this budget has some spending in areas that we think are very good. A couple of things that I would like to point out are things under the equality portfolio, such as the appointment of the gender and sexuality commissioner and the introduction of LGBTI grants under that portfolio. There is more funding in the budget for Parks Victoria, funding for which was drastically cut by the last government. But more is needed there to undo the vast amount of damage that was done. There is also a fairly significant increase in funding in the creative industries area, which is also very welcome.
My Greens colleagues have already spent quite a bit of time raising issues on some of the big portfolios such as transport. There is a lot of money in the transport portfolio, but much of it is on big-ticket items and some of it, for example, the Melbourne Metro rail project, are way into the future. That project will not be completed for at least a decade so it will not make much difference to people's lives now. In terms of public transport, we still need much more investment in trams, trains, buses, cycling and of course in high-capacity signalling. During the budget estimates process I did raise the issue of high-capacity signalling. I asked the minister about the high-capacity signalling trial on the Sandringham line. To my surprise, and that of everyone else there, it has in fact been abandoned even though significant funds had been poured into it in the previous budget. Now that funding has been transferred to the South Morang line, in between three stations.
In terms of high-capacity signalling, I think I have mentioned before in this place that it is one of the areas in the transport system that is going to make a big difference across the system as to the number of trains that can be run per hour across lines and particularly through the loop.
Without that, we are still limited by the old signalling system that we have in place. If people listen to the radio traffic reports every morning, pretty well four out of five mornings you will hear about delays on particular railway lines, and the cause will be signalling problems on those lines. In fact, of the amount of money that is allocated for maintenance of the system, a very large majority of it is devoted to patching up those sorts of problems.
My colleagues also raised the issue of there being very little spending in the budget in the area of climate change in terms of actual spending on initiatives and renewables. In fact searching through the budget I could only find about $40 million at most in actual spending on projects to do with taking action on climate change. Also, as was mentioned earlier today in proceedings, the revenue from coal is set to continue at the same level over the forward estimates, so the budget actually factors no fall or reduction in the burning of coal and therefore no reduction in emissions from coal over the forward estimates.
Ms Hartland mentioned problems with health, in particular Footscray Hospital, or the Western general hospital, which I also followed up on during the budget estimates with regard to the state of that hospital and of course the problems with the withdrawal of federal funding, which is an issue in many other areas of the budget as well.
In the time I have remaining I would like to talk about funding for schools. There has been a significant amount of money allocated to schools — more than under the previous government — and I will acknowledge that, but we do have a problem. Just recently it has been reported that 361 of Victoria's 1528 government schools are in deficit — that is, 23 per cent of schools — and that 66 schools had to call in the department to help pay staffing costs. My response to that, of course, is that it is in fact absurd for a government school that is funded from the Department of Education and Training's budget — that is, funded from the appropriation budget that we are talking about today — to actually be in deficit. In terms of schools, the problem is that schools are not funded for the actual costs that they have in terms of delivering the programs, the subjects and the staffing costs that are needed for each school.
Many times in this place I have raised the issue of a lack of transparency of school funding, and in fact even the government itself has commissioned a report, the Bracks report, which pointed out the same thing — that there needs to be a change in the funding arrangements for government schools. The Minister for Education and the Premier himself mentioned this in the budget estimates process, but I have seen no evidence of it actually proceeding anywhere. Whether that will happen in the next financial year I am not sure, but it is certainly something that is sorely needed. If we have a situation where we are saying that almost one-quarter of government schools are somehow being deemed to be in deficit, we certainly do have a problem in school funding.
If schools are not topped up with funding from the department — and many of them are regional schools, schools in the outer suburban areas or schools in disadvantaged areas — then they are actually axing classes and programs that are needed for their students or are having to let staff go. They are not able to run additional literacy support or music programs; those sorts of programs are the first to go. We know that music programs in fact are going across our government schools as we speak, and this is something that has been raised with me by the Victorian Music Teachers Association — that there is no funding from school budgets anymore to deliver those music programs in schools. So many government schools now — more and more of them — are not running music.
That is just one of the examples that comes out of not funding schools in their recurrent budgets to the extent that they actually need, and we still have Victorian public schools receiving $2253 less than the national average. Even with the government saying that it is pouring more and more money into schools, and more than the previous government did, we are still in that situation.
There was a lot of fanfare made by the Minister for Education about capital spending on government schools and how much more money has been allocated in this budget to capital works in schools, but if you actually look at the budget papers under the previous government, the number of new projects that were about specifics was 5 per cent. In last year's budget under this government it was 4.6 per cent and in this budget it is 5.6 per cent, so it is generally around the same number of schools. An average of around 5 per cent of schools get funding for new projects. In the last three years that is only 15 per cent of schools, so 85 per cent of schools are not getting anything.
The major problem is the lack of transparency about which schools receive money for upgrades and for maintenance. We know that schools do receive information from the department about a maintenance audit of their own school which is pretty transparent to that school. They are placed in certain categories which are not open and transparent to the public, so the public is not provided with information about what schools need what maintenance or what schools have the most urgent needs. The government says it is funding the most urgent, but we do not know how many of our 1500-odd government schools are in the most urgent category, in the second category or in the next category. All of this is not transparent, and I believe it should be more transparent so that the public can see why certain funds are going to certain schools.
The other analysis you can do is to look at which schools are receiving which funds, and you will find, as Ms Hartland mentioned with regard to health expenditure, that those funds are often targeted towards marginal seats or government-held seats. So in terms of equity, transparency and accountability, as I have said before, the education department in its allocation of capital expenditure and recurrent expenditure just needs to be more transparent to the public.
The Auditor-General a couple of years ago made the same comments that the allocation of school funding in Victoria was basically mysterious to him and it took him quite a while to get to the bottom of it. He went to the trouble in one of his reports about particular aspects of school funding — about the maintenance audits — to actually include an appendix in that report explaining to the Victorian public as best he could how schools were funded in Victoria. We were in a situation where the detail of school funding was non-transparent, and we still have that situation. In terms of education spending and the allocation of money for capital works to schools, the government is very unaccountable to the public. We know that a large number of schools still require upgrades and maintenance. If we stick with the average of 5 per cent of schools every year, we are still going to be in the situation we have been in for a long time — of underinvestment in schools and of schools in disadvantaged areas not having the basic requirements.
We also know that the recent survey of school principals by the Australian Education Union, which it does every year, found that 65 per cent of principals believe their schools are underresourced, some significantly, and 70 per cent of principals consider they still have to fundraise. That is a very important part of their budget, and it is necessary just to provide the basics required in their schools. They are not fundraising for extras or luxuries but just to provide basic resources for their school and for their students.
Motion agreed to.