Wednesday, 13 May 2026

 Michael GALEA (South-Eastern Metropolitan) (17:57): I rise to speak on yet another inquiry report. Today I would like to speak on the Legislative Council Legal and Social Issues Committee’s inquiry into public school funding report, which was tabled just yesterday. I will acknowledge again our chair Mr McCracken, who I see in the room with us, which is very exciting. It is a very important issue as we look at how we resource schools in this state. In the state where we have the strongest NAPLAN results in the country and the lowest student-to-teacher ratios there is always more that can be done, and that is why it is so important that we had this place-in-time inquiry to look at our progress towards this work. I would like to acknowledge the witnesses that gave up their time to appear before us to tell us about their concerns. We heard, most gratefully for us, from a lot of teachers, who shared their experiences. On that note, pay and conditions for teachers do count towards the SRS, the schooling resource standard, and that is something that I am very hopeful to see some further progress on soon as we work towards giving a very substantial pay increase – a well-deserved pay increase – to our teachers.

It was an important inquiry, despite the fact that we only had one member of the Liberal Party attend the committee hearings all throughout the days of hearings, which was disappointing. Perhaps we did not see the same level of interest or importance from that side. We did nevertheless, those of us who were there, benefit from hearing from those witnesses, learning more about the schooling resource standard, the student resource package, the ongoing work towards a permanent bilateral agreement between the Victorian government and the Commonwealth, many of the finer points dissecting the SRS and some of the issues with fluctuation of what is actually a moving target throughout the year. Certainly we heard some advocacy about the SRS target for the year being locked in place by at least the end of term 1 rather than having the target move up and down, which – we received evidence – in many years it has done, in some cases by quite large degrees. In one such year the SRS target for the state jumped up by several hundred million dollars in early December. There is not a great deal that you can do to resource schools come December, when schools are packing down and preparing for the next year. To get the most value out of the investment that you are making it is not just a question of the amount but whether you are spending it as wisely as you can. There is certainly room for further discussion and engagement with the Commonwealth on that issue of target fluctuation.

Indeed the report is mostly unanimous in most of its areas, except for a few sections. One that I will note in reference is recommendation 2, where we saw, a bit out of the blue, Liberal Party members and Greens support a recommendation that would commit the government or any future government to funding an undetermined amount of money, so, once we have achieved the SRS, to then going back and doing some sort of bizarre back pay arrangement, even though it is not quite clear what that would actually look like or what direct benefit you would actually be seeking to achieve with that money. Nevertheless it was interesting to see the Liberal members of the committee commit their party to deepening the black hole that they are diving into with their various budget fiasco promises and indeed a further uncosted policy, which would certainly make that job even harder.

One recommendation that I think we can all get behind, though, is recommendation 5, which is to advocate for Commonwealth funding for capital for schools. Capital is not counted towards the SRS, which does indeed place Victoria at quite a disadvantage, given we are the state that invests more than any other one into new schools and into existing schools too, if you look at total capital spend and also if you look at the fact that one in every two new schools built in this country is built here in Victoria. So when you are seeing that and the growth in Victoria’s enrolment, especially when compared to other states, it is quite a drastic comparison. On the investment, if you were to incorporate capital spend as part of the SRS calculation, you would certainly see a much closer figure to that target. That being said, we are not here to advocate that capital should be part of the SRS; it should be kept separate so the SRS can focus on direct educational outcomes. But we do need to see the Commonwealth step up and put the same level of investment into the public school system capital that it does into non-government schools. There is also lots of interesting demographic data that we received and confirmation that there are tens of thousands of capacity vacancies in inner-city suburbs where the Liberals are trying to push people out of having housing, but that is a discussion for another day.