Craig Emerson (Rankin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Service Economy, Small Business and Independent Contractors) Share this | Hansard source

The Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007 will increase funding for the Investing in Our Schools Program by $181 million over the four-year period from 2005 to 2008. I certainly welcome that increase in funding, as I welcomed the Investing in Our Schools Program.

In the area of Logan City, most of which falls within my seat of Rankin, we have been very successful in applying for grants under the Investing in Our Schools Program. Most of the grants that have been sought have been successful. I have been delighted to provide letters of support in most cases, and we have therefore enjoyed a lot of success in improving the infrastructure of our schools. For those who do not know Logan City, in large part it is not a wealthy part of Australia. Unemployment in Logan Central is around 16 per cent. In fact, in that part of Logan City which is highly welfare dependent, the unemployment rate has risen in the last couple of years whereas in other parts of Australia it has fallen. While I welcome the fall in the unemployment rate in other parts of Australia, it is a matter of great concern that unemployment in Logan Central and suburbs such as Woodridge and Kingston is around 16 per cent and has been rising.

The only way of dealing with that problem of unemployment is to reform our education system. Mr Deputy Speaker, you will have heard me speaking on many occasions about the imperative to improve our education system, to break that cycle of dependency and despair by giving all young people, especially those from disadvantaged communities, a decent opportunity in life. Education is a key that opens two doors—one leading to prosperity and a strong economy and the other leading to opportunity for all in a fairer society. We can as a parliament do no greater service to our community than to improve the education opportunities for young people.

I acknowledge that the Investing in Our Schools Program makes a contribution to improving education opportunities. It does so by improving the physical environment, the facilities that are available to students, which makes their study and their concentration at school that much easier. The sorts of projects that have been undertaken include reading spaces outdoors at Rochedale South State School, for example. That sends a message to the young children there that reading for pleasure is a really good thing to do, and it makes it just a little bit easier. Other programs include air conditioning. In the middle of summer in all parts of Queensland it gets pretty hot, and that affects the ability of children to concentrate. Therefore, providing some funding for air conditioning in at least one or two rooms, whether it be the library or some other refuge to which the children are able to go during the hot hours, is a very good idea. I commend the government again for providing support for those sorts of projects. Shadecloths are another example of a response to the long hot summers that can occur in Queensland.

So without hesitation I support the Investing in Our Schools Program and support the extra funding that is associated with this legislation. It is a pity, as Labor has pointed out, that the maximum funding for particular schools is now going down from $150,000 to $100,000, but I am not going to be miserable and churlish about that—$100,000 sure beats nothing. Those extra funds are most welcome.

I reject the government’s criticism of state governments, especially the suggestion that the government of Queensland is not playing its part in improving the education opportunities of young people in the Sunshine State. It certainly is doing so. It has improved early childhood education opportunities and it has a ‘learn or earn’ program that is being implemented to ensure that as many young people as possible are able to stay on and finish year 12 or its equivalent through vocational education. All of that is very worthy. It is essential to lifting productivity growth and therefore prosperity in the future and to ensuring that we have a much fairer society.

I want to draw attention to the contrast, however, between the position that successive Labor governments have taken on the broader issue of providing education opportunities and encouraging younger people to go on and finish high school or its equivalent in vocational education and the government’s attitude towards these matters. The Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions now, including most recently in an AAP report, that Labor governments made a tragic mistake during the 1970s and 1980s in encouraging young people to stay on and finish year 12 and then go to university. It was not a tragic mistake at all; it was essential to the fairness and prosperity of this country that those changes were made. When the Prime Minister was Treasurer in the Fraser government, only 36 per cent of young people went on to year 12. That is around one in three. The Prime Minister seemed to think it was a pretty good ratio that one in three young people would go on to the final year of high school.

Successive Labor governments in Canberra—the Hawke and Keating governments—worked to offer income support for parents in disadvantaged communities so that they could afford to keep their children in school, and they also worked to improve the attraction of education to those young people. The consequence of that was that the proportion of young people who went on to year 12 more than doubled, from 36 per cent to around 75 per cent, under Labor. Sadly, under this government, reflecting the attitude of the Prime Minister that it is unimportant that young people should go on to the final year of high school, year 12 completion rates have actually fallen over the last two years. The Prime Minister thinks this is a good thing. He thinks that it is great that young people leave early and then go and do a trade.

Labor strongly support vocational education. We support trades as a career. We recognise that there are young people who feel that they are not cut out for the academic pursuits of going to university, and that is why we support vocational education. This support has always been forthcoming from Labor but has not been forthcoming, I must say, from the Howard government. The previous Minister for Education, Science and Training, now the Minister for Defence, spent his entire period as education minister fighting with the states over vocational education and never wishing to complete a new agreement with the states. So no such agreement was ever reached.

I am sure that the then education minister was trying to impress the Prime Minister that he was really a true-blue Liberal, because true-blue Liberals like to have fights with state Labor governments. The consequence was no agreement and, ultimately, the dismantling of ANTA, the Australian National Training Authority. The state Labor governments and the federal Labor opposition wanted to see the completion of a new funding agreement between the Commonwealth and states, but the Commonwealth, under the then education minister, now the defence minister, played the blame game for all it was worth, saying to the states, ‘It’s all your fault.’ As a consequence, the Commonwealth never completed a new agreement for vocational education.

If you really want to be confused, listen to the government on vocational education. During a debate at the dispatch box here a couple of weeks ago the Minister for Workforce Participation said to me: ‘I don’t know why Labor is so obsessed with training. We should have young people leaving school without any training.’ So we have the Minister for Vocational and Further Education and the Prime Minister saying that Labor is obsessed with having kids going on to university and they should actually be obsessed with training and then the Minister for Workforce Participation saying, ‘I don’t know why Labor is obsessed with training.’ The government, as we have seen in the last couple of weeks, is in disarray. It does not have a view on the value of vocational education when one of its ministers is actually arguing that Labor is obsessed with training and that what should happen is that young people should leave school early and not engage in training.

See this speech in context