SANTA SABINA COLLEGE GOVERNMENT FUNDING TASKFORCE
POST ELECTION REPORT
It is timely in this period after the federal election to bring you up to date on the ‘state of play’ in our endeavours to bring some justice to the school funding anomalies which continue to be suffered by the Santa Sabina College community.
You will recall that in the lead up to the federal election, a concerted effort was made by our community to inform both the then Government and opposition of our concerns. Meetings were held in Canberra and Strathfield with relevant politicians. Our community especially targeted the incumbent members and their opponents in the seats of Reid, Watson and Grayndler. These 3 federal seats are where most of our community lives. A very successful ‘meet the candidate’ evening was held in the Santa Sabina hall on 15 July, with Liberal candidates Craig Laundy, Ron Delezio and Cedric Spencer attending. A similar evening was offered to the Labor candidates in these 3 seats but a suitable diary date could not be arranged. With the wonderful efforts of our community, both on 15 July and with the subsequent email campaign, all 6 candidates were well and truly ‘educated’ about the concerns of the Santa Sabina community with regards to our funding anomalies. Literally thousands of emails and letters of concerns were received by the 6 candidates.
The election saw a Liberal-National Coalition Government elected with Craig Laundy (Reid) Tony Burke (Watson) and Anthony Albanese (Grayndler) elected in our seats of interest. Craig Laundy is now a member of the Government, and whilst no commitments were forthcoming in the election period, Craig Laundy did express at the forum that if our community ‘filled his inbox with emails’ he would work even harder on the issue for us. Clearly our community has done its part. We look forward to a continuing strong relationship with not only Craig Laundy, but also with Tony Burke and Anthony Albanese.
Further, the Abbott Liberal-National Government has committed to the first 4 years of the former Government’s Better Schools (Gonski) reforms. The funding formula is extremely complex but as it stands it would appear that there is little joy for our community in Better Schools either. At this stage a small funding uplift is likely, but unfortunately the reforms do permanently entrench the Funding Maintained anomalies which have so badly affected our school.
We will continue the work of the Santa Sabina College Government Funding Taskforce, making representation both to parliamentarians, and to the Association of Independent Schools. We thank you wholeheartedly for the tremendous support shown throughout this most recent period.
Dr Maree Herrett
