Parmar ParmjeetDr PARMJEET PARMAR (National): Thank you for the opportunity to take this call on the Education (School Donations) Amendment Bill.The first point is that I don't understand why we are debating the first reading of this bill under urgency. The normal turn-around time for bills is up to five to six months. Yes there are exceptions like the euthanasia bill but to put under urgency the first reading of this bill—I don't understand what the need for this is because in this school year half of the school year has already finished and it's too late to implement this policy this year. So we will have to wait for this policy to be implemented in the next school year. Normally schools start in February. For that there is enough time for this bill to go through the normal process so I don't see any need for this first debate to be going through urgency.I think it is being done under urgency only because last year the Minister of Education failed to put forward this policy and now because of the pressure that we created a pressure has been put on them to deliver on their election promise. The Minister wants to look like yes he is doing something about it so we have this bill in front of us and we are debating the first reading of this bill under urgency.Schools would have already sent out letters at the start of this term to all the parents asking for their voluntary donations. I know that parents would have already made arrangements with their school if they haven't been able to pay that full amount to pay in instalments. It is going to be really messy if schools go back and say that they're going to return those donations and actually are going to take up this grant. It's going to actually create a very messy situation for those schools and I'm sure that schools don't want to opt for that.Now looking at this bill exactly decile 1 to 7 schools—that is what this bill is targeted at. Why? It's because the Government's policy that they campaigned on before the election was to make schools donation-free. They said that they would get rid of all donations. This is not going to get rid of donations from all schools only for schools that are in deciles 1 to 7. The basis of this policy as I understand it should be actually to address the hardship issue—the hardship issue. It's not like parents don't want to pay anything for their child's education or for the school to be able to deliver on their curricular or extracurricular activities. It's the hardship issue and that is not addressed. The Minister has completely failed to address that issue.Very quickly without taking too much time I would like to present two scenarios here. There are families and it is their choice where they want to live but they could be a family who because of their hardship issues could be living in a low socio-economic area but they have this desire and they choose to send their child to a school that is in a high-decile area. We know that schools run ballot systems so they'll put their child's name in that ballot to be drawn and if their child's name is drawn from that ballot the child gets admission into that school.What happens in that situation? That family is in a low socio-economic area because they're on a low income. They cannot afford to rent in a high socio-economic area or there are other circumstances but they'll have to pay this voluntary donation to their child's school. So how is this going to address that hardship issue? It doesn't. No it doesn't address that hardship issue. Yes I'll repeat that.Now let me go on to my second scenario. So this family if they think that they really want their child to be in that school that they have picked for their child and their name is not drawn from the ballot the family could push their financial circumstances and move into that area so that they are in that zone so that their child can get admission to the school that they have picked for their child. Now this family's already pushing themselves financially. This is a reality that yes rents differ from low socio-economic areas to high socio-economic areas. So this family will be paying a higher rent than what they would be usually paying in a low socio-economic area and that family will have to pay this voluntary donation for their child. Again this bill doesn't help this family that has that hardship issue.It's not like parents don't want to pay. There are parents who contribute to their community who contribute to their school not just for their own children but sometimes if there is any fundraising going on they make contributions for that too. In this bill I think what the Minister is doing is creating a lot of inequality amongst people. I'm really disappointed to see that the first line in this bill says [It's] intended to reduce the widespread expectation that parents should pay voluntary contributions". But their policy was actually to get rid of school donations. So where has that policy gone?I quickly want to finish by saying that we are supporting this bill only in the first reading so that the select committee will have the opportunity to work on this bill during the select committee process. I really hope that Government members will be willing to work on this. I'm on the Education and Workforce Committee which is a very busy committee a very hard-working committee. We look forward to receiving this bill and I hope that we will be able to hear from all schools—that is schools in different decile areas—from parents and from students as well on this bill. Thank you Mr Speaker."