Chris Bowen (Prospect, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

and the minister knows it. The minister knows that last night was another squandered opportunity from a government which is riding the mining boom, taking the Chinese dividend, and refusing to invest and prepare Australia for the downturn which will inevitably come in this nation. It is a government which is ignoring the productivity gap which has not only existed but has been rising under this government for several years; a government which ignores—and has ignored for 11 years—the need for a massive reinvestment in Australia’s education system. At five minutes to midnight, five months before an election, they suddenly rediscover the need to invest in education. Well, it is not enough.

It is not enough to catch up. Australia has to do better than that. A catch-up is welcome—we welcome some of the funds going to education in last night’s budget—but a catch-up is not enough. And the Australian people will not be fooled by a cynical and cunning budget at five minutes to midnight which finally recognises the need to invest in education. It does not go far enough—on any measure.

I was in the budget lockup yesterday and I thought, ‘I’ll look up the early childhood measures; I’ll find out how much new money is going into early childhood.’ And I looked and I looked and I looked through the budget papers, locked away in the room—not one. Every respected economic commentator in the world says that one of the best ways to invest in a nation’s future is to invest early—to invest in early childhood education; to take people in their first two or three years and give them the best possible start in life. That is why Labor has committed to a multimillion-dollar early childhood investment plan. Yet there was not one word on that in the budget. I thought, ‘Maybe the government will try to catch up; maybe they will respond,’ but there was not one word on that.

Australia’s overall investment in education is 5.8 per cent of GDP—behind 17 other OECD nations. That is not changed by this budget. We are behind Hungary—still behind them. We are behind Poland. We are still behind New Zealand. We are still behind 17 other OECD nations when it comes to investment in education. As the honourable member for Perth pointed out in question time, we welcome the $5 billion Higher Education Endowment Fund. That means an average allocation between Australia’s 38 higher education institutions of about $8 million. Now, that is welcome. But let us not kid ourselves that that is enough. Let us not kid ourselves that that is going to make up for the backlog of investment in capital infrastructure in universities in this nation. The government are kidding themselves that it is enough, but it simply is not.

I looked through the budget papers for higher investment in broadband funding. I looked and I looked and I looked—not one word; not one cent. And then, in question time, I realised why: it is because the government just does not get it. We got up here and we pointed out the connection between education and broadband. We pointed out that children in regional areas need access to high-speed broadband to help them with their education—and there was laughter from the other side; guffaws of laughter at the connection being made by this side of the House between education and broadband. They just do not get it.

The honourable member for Moncrieff called Labor’s plan to invest in a broadband network for this nation ‘theft’. He used all sorts of other pejoratives to describe Labor’s plans. He does not get it. And nobody on the other side of the House seems to get the connection between the need to connect 98 per cent of the Australian people to broadband, the need to increase broadband speeds by 40 times, and the impact that will have on Australia’s education outcomes. But we get it. (Time expired)

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