Kirsten Livermore (Capricornia, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Since this is a debate about education, I am going to start out by playing teacher just for a second. Hands up all those of you who are sick and tired of being lectured by Howard government ministers about things for which they have had responsibility for the past 10 years. Hands up. It happens time and time again. All we get from John Howard and his ministers is commentary—never action, never solutions, just commentary. They spend all their time playing politics, lecturing others and usually blaming others. What they seem to forget is that they have been in government for 10 long years, so these problems that they lecture other people about have been theirs to fix for quite some time.

But of course nothing is ever their fault. The latest example of this lecturing is Joe Hockey’s comments today. He accuses Australians of being lazy. Apparently the skills shortage has nothing to do with the government’s failure to train Australians. It is not the government’s fault; it is just that people are too lazy. I suggest that before the minister starts pointing the finger at the community he should take a good hard look at his cabinet colleagues, because when it comes to dealing with the challenges facing this country this government knows all about laziness.

Let us have a quick look. We now know, thanks to the Cole inquiry, that members of the government were too lazy to read the many cables coming into their offices raising concerns that an Australian company was funnelling $300 million to Saddam Hussein. Five years after the terrorist attacks on the United States the government still has not addressed the gaping holes in Australia’s transport security regime. The government’s policy laziness and fixation on the privatisation of Telstra has left Australia stranded on an information goat track while our competitors have access to broadband internet speeds that families and businesses in Australia can only dream of. And of course there is the subject of today’s MPI—education and training—where the government’s laziness and obsession with ideological agendas for the past 10 long years has left Australia falling behind the rest of the developed world—and not just the developed world but the other parts of the world as well—in its investment in training and education. This is happening at a time when this country is crying out for highly skilled and qualified people so that we can make the most of our opportunities and remain competitive.

For the Labor Party, at least, education is seen as a crucial portfolio and one that brings with it an enormous responsibility to develop policies to ensure that our education system gives everyone the opportunity to reach their full potential. Education creates opportunities for individuals and secures our future as a nation. So the education portfolio can be seen and should be seen as an opportunity to change lives and build the nation.

But, sadly, like every other portfolio in this government, education is seen as nothing more than another opportunity for grandstanding and cheap political point scoring. We all know the usual targets from this government. First are the states—they always try and shift blame onto the states for everything. There are the education unions, and the cheapest shot of them all: teachers—those professional and dedicated people who do no more to aggravate the government than just get out into schools every day and teach our kids.

After 10 long years of this government, there is no shortage of failures for a new education minister to get in and fix. Perhaps you could start with the chronic skills shortage. The Reserve Bank thinks that might be a good idea. Earlier this year it identified the shortage of skilled workers as one of the significant constraints in our economy that is putting pressure on inflation and upward pressure on interest rates.

Perhaps you could look into the reasons behind the decline in domestic enrolments at our universities. This is particularly a problem for regional unis like CQU in my electorate. You have to ask: where will we get the engineers, nurses and ag scientists that we need in our regions if people are being discouraged from higher education? Perhaps the minister could do something about the numbers of apprentices who do not complete their trades—a big contributor to the skills shortage. Figures for the March quarter this year showed apprenticeship cancellations and withdrawals reached 36,000—up 13 per cent from 2005.

It is clear that there is plenty to do if you were part of a government that actually cared about the future of this country. But, sadly, for this minister it is all about playing politics. The minister’s performance has shown she does not want to get serious about the portfolio or fix any of the problems this government has presided over. She is much too busy dreaming up her next headline to worry about substantial policy—the substantial policy on education that this country needs.

The education minister has not developed much in the way of education policy but she has mastered the art of grandstanding. One could say that she learnt from the master who was her predecessor in this portfolio. The grandstanding pattern goes something like this: first of all, float a thought bubble—and the shadow minister has run through a few of those. First there were vouchers and then there was the threat to withhold funding from the states over teaching history as a stand-alone subject. We heard about universal preschool education for four-year-olds and then there was last week’s idea about the national curriculum. So you float the thought bubble, bask in the headlines for a day and then nothing.

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