It’s a privilege to follow my friend, Mark Edwards, who is not only a distinguished pastor, but he, as he has told us, is the son of Sir Llew Edwards, a former Deputy Premier of Queensland. I have to say that it’s sad that Sir Llew had a bad experience with church leaders during his long and distinguished service.

My experience could not be more different from Sir Llew’s. Many of my faith leaders are on my speed dial. They regularly check in with me and encourage me in good times and hard times, too.

I think of my friend Dr Ted Boyce, who’s here today, is a particularly good example of that. Leadership can be lonely, and in some respects the role of the local Minister is not so different to the role of the local MP. Expectations are high, criticism is freely offered, and people don’t quite understand what the role is really like.

So, I have found deep friendships with many of my religious leaders, especially church leaders, and it is something for which I am very grateful in my service as a parliamentarian.

Vanessa Cheng and the leaders of the Australian Association of Christian Schools,

Principals, board members, teachers, and school leaders from across the country,

I want to start by commending the wonderful work of Vanessa and the AACS.

Long before I was Shadow Minister for Education, Vanessa was coming to see me to talk to me about challenges facing Christian Schools in Australia.

She is hugely respected in Canberra for her integrity, her plain speaking and her absolute commitment not only to Christian schools as institutions but to their staff and the students they are called to serve.

Thank you for your work, Vanessa. It is an honour and a privilege to address this summit.

I have often observed I am a Jew who was educated by Anglicans and worked in Catholic education and my best friend is a Muslim. Some have accused me of hedging my bets in the afterlife.

But I think what this does is give me a broad appreciation for faith-based education, and Christian education in particular.

Today I want to talk to you about the Coalition’s approach to Christian Schools.

STARTING BLOCKS

I start from the premise that Christian schools matter to Australia and that Christian schools are important to Australians.

They matter to the families you serve.

They matter to the communities you build.

They matter to the country we want to be.

They matter to the moral ecology of the nation.

And they matter to the Coalition.

The Australian Association of Christian Schools represents almost 100 schools and more than 45,000 students across every state and territory.

I have worked with the AACS for years.

I have met with the leaders.

I have spoken with the parents.

I believe Christian Schools have a particular role to play in the world in bringing meaning into people’s lives. The search for meaning has never been stronger than it is today.

Your schools call people to love God and their neighbour as themselves.

Your schools provide a sense of identity and a purpose in life that is larger and more enduring than fulfilling the needs of the material self.

They bring people together from different backgrounds, united by a common faith, and build a sense of community. 

When your religious freedom was under attack by Labor in the last Parliament, I went to the My Christian School rally that was held in Western Sydney in the electorate of the Federal Minister for Education, Jason Clare.

If you have never had a proper visit to a Christian school, you can’t truly appreciate its unique identity and mission.

A Christian school is one where Christianity infuses all that the school does. It is not a mere founding legacy but a living, breathing embodiment of faith in action.

In Christian schools, the Bible and Christian teaching are not confined to religious services and religious education but infuse everything about the school: from the interaction of staff, both academic and professional, and students, to the maths lessons, to the sporting fields and stage performances.

Christian schools are about creating Christian communities where a life of faith is modelled to all the students and families across the wider school community.

It’s about showing what it means to live in accordance with your faith, regardless of whether you’re the gardener, the technology teacher or the school principal.

It is about culture.

It is about ethos.

It is the marriage of faith and reason.

It is about a deep understanding that faith intersects with all aspects of life – not just the study of holy texts.

That is your unique offering.

Religious freedom, to the extent that your rights to create caring Christian community schools are protected at law, is about allowing schools not just to teach but to model the doctrines of their faith, without the threat of litigation.

Religious schools want to educate, not litigate.

They care deeply about their students.

They take a pastoral approach.

As a Jewish person who has worked in Christian education, I know that working in a Christian institution is deeply satisfying. The mission is clear. You are aware that you are working for a cause much bigger than yourself.

In my electorate is Pacific Hills Christian School, led by Dr Ted Boyce, an extraordinary Australian educational leader who has led his school for over 40 years.

I recently opened the new early learning centre at Pacific Hills, and I was speaking to a mother, who was an old girl and a current drama teacher.

Pacific Hills has produced some amazing performers over the years, and its standards in music and drama are exceptional. I asked this person how that had come to be.

She told me that “as a Christian school, we believe that God has given us gifts that we cannot completely understand.” She went on, “It is our role to honour God by allowing students to explore those gifts to the fullest extent possible.”

I thought that was a beautiful summation of what your schools are all about.

You can’t build that sort of culture by accident.

It is deliberate.

It is work done by you. And it is valued by parliamentarians like me.

BY THE NUMBERS

It is also valued by Australian mums and dads.

In 2025, there were 4,160,918 school students enrolled across Australia in 9,673 schools.

Of those students, 20.0 per cent were in Catholic schools, and 17.2 per cent were in independent schools.

Or to put that into raw numbers: last year, there were more than one and a half million students educated outside the government school system.

Nearly 4 in 10 students across Australia are now in non-government schools – and overwhelmingly, they are religious schools.

The growth in independent schools has been explosive – and I want to put it in context.

It is one of the great demographic and cultural shifts of our time.

In October last year, shortly after being appointed to this portfolio – in fact, around 23 hours after being appointed – I gave a speech at the Menzies Institute in Victoria about the need to take “the long view”.

I made the point that there are stories hiding in our national data, and that ‘getting the long view’ means understanding the changes that can take a generation or more to manifest.

Like it or not, Australia is being shaped by grand demographic, cultural and lifestyle shifts which only really become apparent through multiple censuses and public policy datasets—usually over the course of 20 years or more.  

These trends are slow but profound.

The story of independent schools – including schools like yours – is one of those grand demographic shifts.

Tracked across the last 50 years, there is an extraordinary story of the growth of independent schools, and in particular, the growth of religious schools like yours.

The ABS data on school affiliation goes back to 1977, and it makes for fascinating reading.

In 1977, just 4.3% of Australian students were enrolled in an independent school.

By 1996, when John Howard took office, that number was 9.73%.

In 2006, it was 13.09%.

By 2016, when I joined the Federal Parliament, it was 14.46%.

And on the most recent figures, it is 17.2%.

In fact, in the last 50 years, the proportion of students educated in independent schools has increased every single year except one – in 2016 – when the proportion remained steady on the previous year.

Independent schools are not just growing in line with population growth. They are growing as a proportion of our national student cohort.

The proportion of students in independent schools has more than quadrupled over the last 50 years.

How does that compare?

Well, the Catholic system remains relatively steady. In 1977, 16.84% of students were in a Catholic School. But between 1985 and today, the proportion of Australian students in the Catholic system has never dipped below 19% and never gone above 21%.

The growth in Catholic schools has been more or less in line with the population.

Regardless of which side of politics was in power, every year more Australian parents chose to send their children to independent schools.

Why?

I think the story in our national data is that families are making deliberate choices around the way they educate their children, and that they are prepared to make sacrifices to choose the option that is right for them.

And that brings us back to my role, and the task that has been given to me today – to present my party’s approach.

Because I believe – and we in the Coalition believe – that it is critically important to support parents in making the choice that is right for their family.

It’s not my job to tell parents what’s best for their children.

They know what’s best for their children.

It’s my job to make sure parents have a range of options.

Whether it is government or non-government, single-sex or co-educational, comprehensive or selective, secular or religious, my aim is to ensure they are all good options.

I believe that governments should respect the choices families make when it comes to the education of their children.

And I believe that governments should acknowledge that more and more families are choosing schools like yours.

Because in the tradition of my political philosophy – unlike my political opponents who have consistently attacked religious freedom and religious schools – we believe in parental choice, institutional autonomy, freedom of religion, and that schools with a faith mission should be able to remain genuinely faithful to that mission.

JEWISH SCHOOLS

I want to take a moment to reflect on another part of our school infrastructure in Australia – a much smaller part – Jewish education.

I know in this room you empathise deeply with the lived experience of persecution and discrimination which has been experienced by Australian Jewish communities in recent years.

Antisemitism has been allowed to fester and boiled over just before Christmas into the most serious terrorist attack on our shores.

People celebrating Chanukah, as you would celebrate the Christmas season by holding Carols by candlelight, were targeted because of their faith.

I said at the time that when Jewish people could not feel safe in Australia, no one could feel safe.

In Jewish schools across Australia – which of course are much like your schools – there remains additional security, higher fences and a perpetual heightened fear amongst students, teachers and families.

I want to thank Christian schools for standing with the Jewish community.

All children in Australia have an equal right to a safe education.

THE PRESSURES FAMILIES AND SCHOOLS ARE FACING

Let me return to the issue of family choice in schooling.

Because families are making these choices under pressure.

The most recent CPI data shows that education prices rose 5.4 per cent in the year to January 2026, with secondary education up 6.3 per cent in the last 12 months.

That is well above the inflation rate of 3.8%.

It manifests as more money spent on uniforms, school trips, bus and train fares, fees, books, activities and sporting carnivals.

It means more money from the pockets of families already managing mortgages, groceries, transport, insurance and everything else that comes with raising children.

These above inflation increases are not explained by taking the lazy and politically expedient route of blaming school fees.

For one thing, the ABS CPI figures for education include both government and non-government schools. If you are a parent, you have felt that 6.3% increase in the cost of secondary education, regardless of whether your child is at the local high school or not.

And for another thing, when I speak to religious schools, they tell me about their mission.

There are of course, some schools with higher fees, but there are a great many more who actively choose to be low-fee schools, who keep a lid on costs, and who see it as part of their mission to support the poor and the disadvantaged who want their children to be educated in accordance with the faith of their family.

Australian families work hard. They do the right thing. And as I have said, over the last 50 years, they have shown that they will make sacrifices to choose the schools that are right for their family.

When they choose faith-based schools like yours, Australia reaps the benefit.

Australian society reaps the benefit in terms of engaged, committed and values-driven students who actively seek to contribute to their community.

And the national balance sheet reaps the benefit too. According to analysis by the AEC group, Independent schools saved Australian taxpayers an estimated $12.51 billion in expenditure through recurrent education and capital costs.   

For the government to hold its side of the bargain, it means keeping downward pressure on the drivers that increase the out-of-pocket expenses for families.

On energy prices. Insurance premiums. Land and capital costs. Regulatory complexity. Taxes. And all of the other things that make it more expensive to deliver a high-quality education that parents ultimately pay for.

A failure to keep a lid on those costs through endless government spending and increases in regulatory complexity ultimately just makes it harder for families who are doing the right thing.

THE PRINCIPLES THAT GUIDE MY APPROACH TO SCHOOLS

Let me say something about the principles that guide my own approach to school policy.

First, choice.

Families know what’s best for their children. They choose schools based on a range of factors, including where they live, a child’s needs, the opportunities in their area, their religious faith or values, and a myriad of other factors.

These choices arise in multiple ways.

It may be a choice between a co-educational or single sex school.

It may be a decision about comprehensive, selective, or specialist schools.

It may be distance or flexible schooling.

It may be a choice between government and non-government education.

Education policy should respect those choices. This means building diversity within the system, defending the autonomy of religious and independent schools, and supporting families – by funding students regardless of school choice – to make the choices that are right for them.

Second, excellence.

I believe that the foundations of a strong education—reading, writing, maths, science and history—are non-negotiable.

Students need a deep foundational knowledge to set them up for success and help them to understand the world. We should expect our education system to set high standards and drive excellence in these fields.

Third, backing teachers.

I have said multiple times that you will not hear me criticise teachers. Teachers are the key asset in lifting student outcomes.

Teachers and principals should be empowered to manage classroom behaviour and disruption. We should look to reduce administrative, compliance and non-classroom demands on teachers where possible.

These elements of teacher capacity and quality help drive academic excellence.

Fourth, cultural literacy.

The foundations of learning are meant to be built upon.

In addition to deep foundational knowledge, schooling should support democratic citizenship, civic literacy, and shared national values.

The decline in social cohesion in recent years corresponds to data showing a growing loss of faith in democracy.

In this context, there is clear evidence about the importance of a ‘knowledge-rich’ curriculum.

A knowledge-rich curriculum that supports democratic citizenship should include content that enables students to build a foundational understanding of our democracy, the rule of law, Australian civic values and the unifying aspects of our national history and character.

Angus Taylor has said rightly that he wants our children to be proud of our country and its history and I could not agree more with him.

Fifth, accountability.

The only way to achieve improvements in education is with clear, measurable data and outcomes that are meaningful to parents.  

To take just one example: the failure of NAPLAN testing we saw on Wednesday—and the resulting loss of confidence in that testing and in the data obtained—is a serious issue. It is an issue in relation to which children, parents and teachers are entitled to answers.

The institutional architecture for education is up for review, according to Minister Clare. I will pay close attention to any of the Government’s proposed changes and will always seek your advice as well.

These are the principles that shape my thinking on school policy over the coming months and years.

CONCLUSION

Let me finish by saying this.

Christian schools make a powerful contribution to our country, our national character, and our economy.

Those contributions should be respected.

So too should we respect the decisions of parents who are increasingly choosing your schools.

We respect those choices. And we will stand with you.

Thank you.