Doorstop interview: Liberals’ school funding cuts

LINDA BURNEY, MEMBER FOR BARTON: Good morning everyone thank you for coming. I am absolutely delighted as the Member for Barton to have the Deputy Leader of our Party Tanya Plibersek in the electorate this morning.  We are here at Kogarah Public School. This is one of the most outstanding schools in this neighbourhood. This is the second highest performing school out of all of the schools in the network.  Its outcomes in terms of all the testing, all the evaluations are absolutely exemplary. It’s also a school that is a representative school of this electorate; the multicultural nature, the enthusiasm and the passion in this school is extraordinary. I'm absolute thrilled to have Tanya Plibersek here this morning and I'll hand over to her. 

TANYA PLIBERSEK, DEPUTY LEADER OF THE OPPOSITION: Thank you so much Linda. It’s always a real pleasure to visit the electorate of Barton with Linda Burney because she knows her local community so well. We've received a wonderful welcome here at Kogarah this morning, and we've all been shown around the school by the principal and the incoming school leaders and they've taken us to class where we have sat in on a maths lesson – maths lessons are a lot more fun these days than they were when I was a kid. It is a wonderful thing to be able to visit a school like this and see excellent quality of education [inaudible]. This school alone would have been $400,000 better off in 2018 and 2019 if Labor's original funding agreements had been honoured by the Federal Government. $400,000 for a school like this is a lot of cake stalls, it’s a lot of sausage sizzles.  Parents in schools right around Australia work their guts out to fundraise for their local schools and they know what it would take to fundraise $400,000 to fill the gap caused by Federal Government funding cuts. 

But of course it is not just this school. Across the electorate of Barton, Linda's schools will lose $21 million because of Federal Government funding cuts. And across the state of NSW, when you combine cuts to public schools and cuts to Catholic schools you will see $960 million less flowing into our schools in 2018 and 2019 because of these cuts. Let me say that again, $960 million difference to our schools over the next two years alone. Now we were in the classroom this morning having a look at a maths lesson - what that extra funding can do is provide more one on one attention, earlier diagnosis for kids who are falling behind in their maths, or their reading, their writing, or their other subjects. It can provide more extension activities to kids who are gifted and talented, more resources, more training to make sure that our teachers are continuing their professional development throughout their working lives. And more support for children with a disability and special learning needs. That extra funding makes all the difference in our classrooms, and why is Malcolm Turnbull cutting these funds? So he can give big business and millionaires a tax cut. The choice is very clear - $17 billion of school education funding cuts over the decade from the Liberals or every single dollar of that $17 billion restored under Labor. Any questions? 

JOURNALIST: Does it concern you that Kevin Rudd knew potential risks associated with the home insulation scheme before it proceeded according to Cabinet documents? 

PLIBERSEK: The home insulation scheme has been the subject of eight inquiries and I'm not sure that I can add much more that wasn't said in those eight inquiries. It is true that four young people died and any deaths on a building site or in the workplace are a tragedy, an absolute tragedy. But there have been eight independent inquiries and I don’t think I can add anything more.

JOURNALIST: You've spent nearly two years as health minister what did you do specifically in that time that brought premiums down? 

PLIBERSEK: For a start when the health insurance companies came to me with much higher premium requests I sent back their requests for higher profits and said no. I demanded lower increases for premium holders. But several years on I think the problem really for ordinary families is they're paying about $1,000 more for their private health insurance under the Liberals than they were when Labor left government. And also out of pocket expenses from that part of the health care system - Medicare - that used to be free are going up and up.  More families are paying to visit the GP, more families are paying more to visit their local GP and more families are paying when they have to see a specialist. The Government's also tried to put up the price of medicines. We've certainly seen cuts to hospitals, putting pressure on hospital emergency departments. In fact there was a story a couple of days ago about the number of people who are turning up to hospital emergency departments who should be seen by their local GP. Why are they doing that? It's because more and more GPs are being forced to charge a co-payment because of the Medicare funding freeze implemented by this Government.

So yes we think that premium holders in private health insurance deserve better value for money. The big private health insurance companies made $1.8 billion profit last year before tax. They’re more profitable than the big banks, they get billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidy every year, and they continue to jack up premium increases at twice the rate of inflation and much higher than the rate of wages growth so we need to do something about private health insurance and make sure that people feel like they are getting value for money. Many people are dropping their private health insurance because they don't feel like they're getting value for money and I think you would really struggle to find someone to put their hand up and say yeah I'm delighted to pay the premiums I am because I feel like I'm really getting great value for money every year. You'd really struggle to find that family. But it's not just about making sure that private health insurance is good value for money. We also have to keep our public health system, our Medicare strong, and this Government has dropped the ball right across the board.

JOURNALIST: Bill Shorten highlighted the high return on equity of health funds. Does this need to be somehow limited and if so, how?

PLIBERSEK: I think we certainly need to talk to the health funds about the fact that a lot of their customers are pretty unhappy with the quality of the products on offer and the number of exclusions that are there in the fine print. The fact that the profits are so extraordinarily high - about a 20 per cent return on equity - higher than the big banks, much, much higher than average businesses and all of this done with really very substantial, billions of dollars of taxpayer subsidies, I think it’s about $6 billion a year of taxpayer subsidy. Now if you're getting huge amounts of taxpayer subsidy, you've got both the carrot and the stick, the 30 per cent rebate and a tax penalty if you don’t have private health insurance. So you’ve got public subsidy, you’ve got Government policy that encourages membership and you’ve got these enormous profits. Surely they can provide a better deal to ordinary policy holders than they’re getting at the moment.

JOURNALIST: And just one final one. Will workers being able to strike more easily help the economy?

PLIBERSEK: I can tell you what won't help the economy and that's the absolute flat lining of wages. You know, the fact that wages are stalled in the way they have and then the Government piles in on top of that with attacks on penalty rates for 700,000 workers. If people don't have money in their pocket they don't have the confidence to buy a cup of coffee on the way to work, they don't have the confidence to take their kids out for dinner on a Friday night. Decent wages growth underpins a successful economy and yes, as we increase wages we should also increase productivity. Employers and employees should work together to do that. But at the moment we don't have that. We see productivity increasing, we see profitability increasing, but we see wages flat lining. Unless we see increases in wages we won't have the confidence in our economy that drives economic growth.

Thanks everyone.