Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Franklin for her question, and I know about her deep concern for education in her electorate and for the future of the children in her electorate. I would like to answer the honourable member’s question by referring to just two aspects of the Rudd Labor government’s education revolution. This is a government that believes in delivering on its promises, and this is a government that believes in investing for the future, in ensuring that we equip this nation for the challenges of the future. With our education revolution we are doing both—delivering our promises and equipping this nation for the challenges of the future and particularly the challenge to lift productivity and participation. We are doing this across the board in education, but I want to say a few brief words about what we are doing in early childhood education and what we are doing to renew our vocational education and training sector and our universities. Of course, the education revolution includes schools as well, but I would like to briefly focus on early childhood education.

This is a government that will deliver an additional $533.5 million over five years to support early childhood education—funding that supports our commitment to ensuring that every Australian child has access to an early learning program delivered by a university qualified teacher for 15 hours a week, 40 weeks a year in the year before formal schooling. This work is being led by the Parliamentary Secretary for Early Childhood Education and Childcare, the member for Bennelong. We believe it is vital, and all of the world research shows that if you can intervene early you can make a difference for life chances. Gone are the days when a Prime Minister—as the former Prime Minister did—would say early intervention is a big part of the answer and then do nothing. Gone are those days. Gone are the days when the former education minister, the now Deputy Leader of the Opposition, could say in one breath, ‘Investment in early childhood is very, very important,’ and in the very next breath disavow any Commonwealth responsibility for funding. We are investing because we believe in the best possible start for Australian children. We are also investing to make child care more affordable with our increases in the childcare tax rebate from 30 per cent to 50 per cent of out-of-pocket costs. This measure comes into effect on 1 July. I make it very clear that the government will be watching and the government will not tolerate unfair pricing practices amongst childcare providers related to the new rebate being delivered. The government will canvass all options to act if there is any evidence of unfair pricing practices.

Our agenda—our education revolution—goes from the early years all the way through. This is a government that has invested $11 billion in our Education Investment Fund to renew our universities and our vocational education and training sector. This is a fund with $6 billion coming from the former Higher Education Endowment Fund joined by a new investment of $5 billion to enable renewal of the capital infrastructure of universities and vocational education and training. In the words of the Vice-Chancellor of the ANU, Ian Chubb, this new Education Investment Fund will ‘allow us to draw down from the capital. That will make an enormous difference to the size and scope of the projects we do. We go from spending on maintenance to being able to plan for a world-class future’.

Also gone are the days when an education minister—as the former education minister, the current Deputy Leader of the Opposition, did—can say, ‘Our universities are in the best financial shape they’ve been in.’ This government and ministers on this side of the House will not be making statements like that, and they ought not to be made, when this nation watched, under the Howard government, public investment in tertiary education decline by four per cent between 1995 and 2004 while in other OECD countries it increased by an average of 49 per cent. Those days of neglect of our education system are over. The legacy of the former government to the nation is one of slipping standards and a skills crisis. Our education revolution is there to invest in the future.

I have watched as this House in recent days has canvassed a number of issues, and it has intrigued me that the opposition is now pretending to care about petrol prices when in government it did not care about them at all. The opposition is now pretending to care about cost-of-living pressures on families when in government it did not care about them at all.

Interestingly, in opposition they do not even pretend to care about education. Here we are in June and I am still waiting to be asked the very first question by the shadow minister for education—the Marcel Marceau of Australian politics, still trying to work his way out of that imaginary glass box. Now presumably he will be seen in mimic eating—

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