Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Once again, I rise in the House to speak on education as it confronts the nation. I have to make the observation that each time we have a debate on education in this country there is nothing more profoundly disheartening and, indeed, disappointing than to hear the government, particularly the minister, use it as an opportunity to bash state school systems, to criticise state education unions and to simply put a divisive argument before the House and the community. I do not often see that at the local level, and I am sure many people in their electorates would not either.

I do not see any dearth of government members willing to turn up at public schools to talk about how wonderfully they think that particular school is going and to participate in the activities of that school. But the government and the minister at the table, in particular, have a track record of simply saying that there is a massive failure in the state education system and state education unions. I do not think that helps to advance the argument at all. Indeed, I notice that they are particularly silent on the many emails that we have all been getting from the Independent Education Union and its views on what the government is doing in education.

The issue before us is a critically important one to the long-term prosperity of the country. It is important that our young people are prepared for the work world and, indeed, the broader social world that they will enter when they leave schools. The rhetoric of the government and, in particular, in this case the Prime Minister is that we have to in some way re-encapsulate the sort of primary school that the Prime Minister would have attended in the 1940s. There is such a focus on the minutiae of what subjects are taught in history and on the issues of whether we have a Simpson and his donkey poster and whether we have a flagpole outside the school.

As a parent who has two young people both entering the workforce, I hope fairly soon and I hope well prepared for their future, I have had direct experience of our school system, and I think it does a darn good job. I think young people—whether they go through one of our private education institutions, the Catholic education system or, indeed, the much-defiled by this government state education system—get a really good service from those schools. I think the teachers, by and large, whom I have had experience of through 23 years of having children in the education system, do their very best and sincerely intend to deliver good outcomes for the children whom they teach. I do not think any of them get any joy in being bashed consistently by this government about what they do.

However, education is one of those areas where we constantly have to review, assess and update what we do in our school system because the world into which those young people will enter is consistently changing and updating. You do not need to build an argument based on division, criticism of and attack on the system in order to put an argument for improvements and new opportunities. So I would simply ask the minister to progress her arguments on the basis that they are about improving the education system, without constantly attacking the current system.

The reality is that we are in a global environment in which we have new supereconomic powers emerging, in particular—no surprise to anybody here—China and India. At the moment we are doing quite well out of their emergence because of their heavy demand for mineral resources, and that has given us a very unique opportunity in this country. But none of us should make any mistake in thinking that somehow those new superpowers are simply developing an industrial base; at the same time that they are industrialising, they are modernising and developing their own universities at a rapid pace. They are upgrading their own education systems to deliver young people into those universities at a rapid pace. In fact, in 2004 China ranked fourth in expenditure on research and development in the world, so they very well know that they are almost doing a double reform in one go: they are industrialising and modernising at the same time.

What does this mean for our future? As a nation we have always punched above our weight. How will we continue to do that? By investing in education, skills, knowledge and training of our people—that has always been our critical point of advantage. In this place, I have talked before about my and my family’s experience of tradespeople travelling overseas. It was always the case that if you had an Australian trade and went overseas you could pick up work. In fact, they would do their darnedest not to let you go because we were a world leader in trade training. That mix of skills and knowledge combined with creative, innovative thinking has always put us at the cutting edge. That is what we need out of our education system into the future, and the policies the shadow minister and the Leader of the Opposition have been talking about are aimed at achieving that.

We do not need to have a debate about making our schools the same as when we went to school. The critical mistake that people make in any education debate is thinking that their own personal experience is what should be available for the next generation. The next generation will live and work in a different world to the one we have, and we need to look at what would be best for them. Unfortunately, the Prime Minister does not do that. He is of the view that his education provided well for him, and we need to bring back a lot of that for our kids. We do not.

In February 2004, Alan Greenspan made the point that ideas are the centre of productivity growth. We need young people coming out of our education system who are not only literate and numerate but also computer literate and creative thinkers. We want people who are able to develop innovative ideas, who take pride in what they do and who are valued in the workplace, not placed into the work world that the Prime Minister is creating for them where they will be competing against imported labour—indeed, under this Prime Minister, even for apprenticeships, let alone work—and running a race to the bottom on wages on the basis that, if you can afford to get a place at university or compete and get a place at TAFE and not be one of the 270,000 who have been turned away, then you simply go out and become cheap fodder.

Recent media articles have talked about the exploitation of young people in the work environment. This is not the world we want for our young people in the future. If we are going to compete against these emerging giants, we have to do it by creating a system that produces innovative thinkers and highly skilled workers who are able to improve the productivity of the nation.

The announcements made by the shadow minister and the Leader of the Opposition are directly aimed at that. The minister was all over the shop in her response to this: one minute she was saying we had stolen her policy on a national curriculum and the next minute she was saying that our policy is a mishmash of failed Labor policies. A national curriculum is absolutely critical. Working with the states, it should bring all states up to the highest standards—that is, to reform up, not to find the lowest common denominator.

I have quite a few years of experience as a history-English teacher and I know others in the chamber also have teaching experience. When I taught—that is a while ago, let alone into the future—I never wanted kids who could simply regurgitate facts or roll off Shakespeare quotes. I want kids who come out of our system to be able to analyse information, critically develop their own thinking, and who can put that to use in the workplace to make us a productive and highly skilled nation. This national curriculum proposal works towards that.

We need to start at the beginning and make sure that four-year-olds have a universal right to get play based learning—and we all know how important the early years are—as well as provide support for maths and science students at university to go into teaching. The thing the minister missed in all her comments on science and maths teachers is: the most important thing to ensure you get kids doing maths and science at school is having good-quality maths and science teachers who inspire them. If you provide that opportunity at university, you have a better chance of achieving it. (Time expired)

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