E&OE TRANSCRIPT
ABC 774 MELBOURNE
MORNINGS WITH JON FAINE
24 JULY 2013
JON FAINE: Bill Shorten, good morning to you.
BILL SHORTEN: Good morning Jon and just in light of the editorial comments you made, just so I can reassure people, I’m interested in making sure that we have better schools for all Victorian school children. That is my number one priority.
JON FAINE: We’ll come to the factional issues in a moment. How close to a deal with the Napthine Victorian Government are you?
BILL SHORTEN: Well, we’ve had positive discussions. I’ve spoken with the Premier directly twice now. The Prime Minister and I spoke with the Premier last night. What we’re interested in is to have better schools in Victoria. Our Better Schools plan is a commitment by Federal Labor, started by former Prime Minister Gillard and now continued by Prime Minister Rudd and myself, to see that children get extra resources so they can get the individual support they need to do well; greater empowerment of school communities and school principals.
We’ve managed to enlist all of the non-government schools in the last three weeks, so independent schools; Victorian Catholic Education Commission has put a press release yesterday welcoming the Better Schools plan.
So I am positive that we’ve got the best interests of children at heart. I know that Premier Napthine is interested in getting a good deal for Victorian schools.
JON FAINE: He’s on the record saying that he’s worried about a loss of authority for school councils and also what future role the State Government has in directing policy at the state level. Are you in some way diminishing the State Government’s role?
BILL SHORTEN: Oh well, it’s good you raised that issue because we can put it on the record on your show, on ABC. The Commonwealth Government does not want to run schools. That is appropriately a State Government responsibility or, indeed, in the case of non-government schools, the responsibility of the independent school or the Catholic Education Commission.
What we want to do is we know that Australian schools are falling behind, on average, in the outcomes which other parts of the world are accomplishing for their children. We know this is both the case for children who have high needs and also perhaps for our children who are doing better at school, that comparatively a 15 year old in Shanghai doing mathematics is two years ahead of where a 15 year old is in Australia.
So we’ve got a commitment because Labor loves education. Labor regards education as one of its core beliefs; the transformative value of giving kids a good start in life. So we’ve made room in our budget to prioritise education. That’s what you get with a Labor Government. You get a Labor Government who thinks education is important. But we also want to reassure the state administrators that we don’t want to run their schools. They’re Commonwealth taxpayer dollars. We’ve got a priority of reform so that children get funded according to need, including but not limited to disability, the amount of English they have at home, do they come from poorer parts of Victoria.
JON FAINE: Sure. Leaving the electioneering aside and trying to get back to what the deal is between the Commonwealth and the state over control.
BILL SHORTEN: We don’t want to run their schools, Jon, and we’ve made that clear.
JON FAINE: What conditions do you attach to the extra money?
BILL SHORTEN: Well, we want to have a funding formula based on need. We believe in recent work that we’ve done with the Victorian Government that their model’s very close to where we want to be. We want to make sure that we’ve created a new funding model.
The status quo isn’t working; just band-aid upon band-aid. For the last two and a half years the federal Labor Government’s saying that for the Commonwealth dollars we’ve put in we want to see priority given to children who have a disability, children who have low English level background, children from poorer suburbs, children in remote and regional areas, children in smaller schools.
These are the criteria we want to apply and we want to make sure that teachers get the best professional development. We want to make sure that there’s greater individual support for children in schools. Things like greater funding available for homework clubs, more specialist teachers.
JON FAINE: So you do want to try and direct where money gets spent and that’s where the State Government says, well hang on you can’t hand over this money and say you don’t want to run Victoria schools but tell us how the money has to be spent. That’s effectively trying to control.
BILL SHORTEN: There’s only a conflict, you know, if assume that the Victorian Government’s going on one direction and we’re going in another in terms of our perception of the educational needs of our children. In my discussions with senior Victorian officers and with representatives of the political part of the Victorian Government, there is not a great deal of daylight as we go through the detail between our positions.
Victoria has been running schools, government schools, since – I think 1872, the colony of Victoria passed its first Education Act. The Commonwealth and I do not want to run each school. We do have general principles which we want to see observed and I think these principles sit comfortably, not only with the Victorian Government, but sit comfortably with parents.
One thing which parents know in their DNA is that they just want to make sure they give their kids, after 13 years of school, the best start in life. We don’t expect all our children to be astronauts or physicists but we do expect our kids to leave the school system with a good skillset, they’re resilient and they have a degree of confidence with which they can approach the world because they’ve got good literacy and numeracy and that their imaginations and creativity have been expanded.
JON FAINE: What does it mean if Kevin Rudd personally negotiated with Dr Napthine? Does that mean either that he’s coming in at the end of the deal or is it that you’ve failed and he’s had to rescue the deal?
BILL SHORTEN: No, the Prime Minister has entrusted me to get a deal up. But let’s be also very clear, the first minister of each state, be it Premier Napthine or indeed the Prime Minister, this is their accomplishment. They’re committed to seeing this done.
So the Prime Minister has delegated to me the effort to close the gap between the Victorian position and the Commonwealth position in the best interests of children. He’s taking a personal interest and as is Premier Napthine.
Jon, I think people would like to know will there be more money for Victorian Government schools? Parents want to know that for their kids.
JON FAINE: Well, that’s undoubted. There’s no riddle to that. It’s a question of why it’s taking so long and what’s holding up the negotiations.
BILL SHORTEN: I’ve been doing this for the last three and a half weeks. I think we’ve made good progress.
JON FAINE: A deal today or tomorrow?
BILL SHORTEN: No, I can’t. I’m too wise; I’ve been around the block too long to just say there will be a deal today or tomorrow. But do I believe that the ingredients are there to bake the cake as a deal? Yes, I do. The devil is always in the detail and we’re going to have intense discussions over the next couple of days.
JON FAINE: Then you’ll be the cat that gets the cream and the icing on the cake. We can keep on going with that analogy. Just separately, Bill Shorten.
BILL SHORTEN: Just on that education proposition, we do believe that…
JON FAINE: I know you don’t want to deal with the other issues but I do and my time is tight.
BILL SHORTEN: No, but just on…
JON FAINE: We’ve covered a lot of ground on education.
BILL SHORTEN: It’s an important area. We’ll know this week, Jon, if we’re going to get a deal or not. That’s all I wanted to say.
JON FAINE: Thank you. The news out of the somewhat labyrinthine inner workings of the Labor Party is that you’ve lost a lot of skin over the latest round of pre-selections. Do you concede that?
BILL SHORTEN: No. I think Labor’s picked good candidates. Geoff Lake will do a great job in Hotham. Joanne Ryan will do a great job in Lalor.
JON FAINE: These are not candidates that you were backing.
BILL SHORTEN: In the case of all of these matters the party local membership’s had a say in the central panel. Again, as I said to you sort of informally, Jon, these days, once I become a Minister – that’s my day job and I haven’t taken an active…
JON FAINE: This is your power base. What’s called the Short-Con agreement on the right of the Victorian ALP. Is that now over? Have you fallen out with Senator Conroy?
BILL SHORTEN: We didn’t agree on the leadership change but no, we haven’t fallen out. People can disagree.
JON FAINE: Your preferred candidate, Kimberley Kitching, to replace Senator Feeney, got defeated by Mehmet Tillem with Senator Conroy’s backing. I’m told you’ve lost a lot of skin over this.
BILL SHORTEN: Jon, what I get up in the morning and think about is how do we make sure Tony Abbott doesn’t form a government in Australia? I get up in the morning and think what’s in the best interest of school kids. I love the Labor Party. We have robust processes. The processes have concluded. They’ve come up with good candidates and I’m certainly not going to make the Labor Party talking about itself the issue.
What Australians want and what Victorians want, is they want to know: are we going to have a National Disability Insurance Scheme? They want to know: will our superannuation keep increasing or will it get frozen by the Liberals? They want to know: can the Coalition flick the switch from negative to positive? They want to know will we be able to provide the same resources for children who go to government schools as we’re now able to do for children who go to Catholic schools.
The Labor Party’s got good candidates. I’m enthusiastic about their candidacy. We are all, in Labor, united by a vision which doesn’t see the Coalition with their backward looking policies on workplace relations, superannuation, and education.
JON FAINE: All right. I don’t want to go down the sloganeering path but I did give you an opportunity to deal with the internal ructions.
BILL SHORTEN: Jon, your point is about are the internal matters consuming? No, they’re not.
JON FAINE: Well, you’re at a disadvantage now. Senator Conroy doesn’t have a day job and you do. So he’s got more time than you have to interfere in these things, hasn’t he?
BILL SHORTEN: The priority for all Labor Members – Stephen Conroy, myself – is the re-election of a Labor Government. Everyone knows that in political parties you have processes.
When you’ve got the opportunity, the privilege to serve Australians as a candidate of the Labor Party, there will always be more people who want to do that than are eligible, than can actually end up the candidate. But what I know is the Labor Party’s had its processes. We are united. What I also know is that in the election in the next two or three months, there’s big choices about a positive view of Australia or a negative view.
JON FAINE: Just finally, one of those I spoke to overnight said that the decision to nominate Kimberley Kitching for a casual vacancy in the Senate united people in a way that nothing else ever could have achieved in trying to make sure she did not become a Senator.
BILL SHORTEN: Jon, you’ve got your anonymous sources. What I deal with every day is how do we improve the lives of people in my electorate of East Keilor or Moonee Ponds? I know every Labor candidate, including the new candidates for Lalor and in Hotham, are committed to getting the best deal possible for Victorians and Australians. Only Labor’s got a positive plan for the future.
JON FAINE: Alright.
BILL SHORTEN: Thanks.
JON FAINE: I thought I’d have to keep going to stop you, but you gave in. You conceded so readily there I’ll take advantage of that. Thank you for your time on all those issues this morning. Bill Shorten, Minister for Education and Workplace Relations, on his way to further negotiations with teachers and the State Government over the so-called Gonski or Better Schools reforms.
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