Jon Sullivan (Longman, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is not my class warfare, member for Indi; it is his class warfare. I am not standing here in class warfare. I went to a private school at high school. I have been in both the state and the private system. I support both. I have wonderful schools in my electorate, both private schools—whether they be Catholic or not—and state schools, and they do a wonderful job. The teachers in those schools do the equivalent—not better—job of the teachers in the public schools, and the students in my area are benefiting from that.

I want to say a couple of quick things about schools in my area. I am pleased that the minister is in the House as I can report that the schools in my electorate are very pleased with the computers that they have received. These schools include Caboolture State High School and Caboolture Christian School, which is a low-fee non-government school. The Edmund Rice Flexible Learning Centre at Deception Bay have received computers to help them with the children they are trying to teach who have not been able to be accommodated by the mainstream schools. Northpine Christian College has also received computers. I am particularly proud of the effort that was put in by the Caboolture State High School, the Tullawong State High School and the Morayfield State High School, who formed a cluster to get one of the trade training centres. The parents in my area are very grateful for the tax refund regime, which they are starting to gather their receipts for in terms of next year’s taxation.

I do not want to stand here and try to make the point that the opposition—the former government—did not fund schools. I have had the opportunity to go to a number of school events in the last 12 months to acknowledge federal government funding that the schools received as a consequence of the previous government—North Lakes State College, Caboolture State School, Narangba Primary, Narangba Valley State School and Grace Lutheran College. And next Sunday I will have the opportunity to represent the minister at the opening of the high school component of St Eugene’s, a school in my electorate where the federal government has contributed a little over $1 million.

But can I say that there have been varying degrees of priority afforded to education. I go back to a document produced in 1988 by the then Queensland state government. I believe at that time Mike Ahearn was the Premier. That document, to give it its full title, was Quality Queensland, building on strength: a vision and strategy for achievement and was prepared by the Queensland government. In that document they decided that the Queensland education system was sufficient to prepare students for the jobs that were available to them after they left school. That kind of inferior policy is rife in business dominated, conservative-thinking governments who see the future generations as fodder only for the profit mechanisms of their masters.

People who are going to schools today should be fed the aspiration that they can take on jobs that have not been invented yet, not that they should do their schooling with a view to ending up in the jobs that are available today. As former Prime Minister Keating said once when talking to students, the job that he took when he first left school did not exist any more. That is the way things are changing. The education revolution is about Australia’s future, but it is also about people’s futures—individuals’ futures. We need to train and inspire our children to take on these other roles. I am a little disconcerted at the concentration that has been evident in recent years on trades training, both at school and postsecondary. I think that we need to concentrate a little more, particular in the area where I come from, on conditioning our children to the idea that they may seek to do something beyond a trade course or a certificate course if that is their desire.

I have had a lot to say in other forums about the need for a full university campus on the north side of Brisbane to serve Brisbane North and the Moreton Bay region. We have an excellent campus of QUT operating at Caboolture, and I am in no way critical of the work done by the administrative or academic staff there; they do a first-class job. The students achieve first-class results, as well, and I do not wish to diminish the workers in that university or the students in any way, but there is a limited range of opportunities available for students there. Neither of my own children were able to study a university course locally and it is quite difficult for people from our area to access universities elsewhere.

I propose to say no more than that this evening other than to say that these bills, whilst they are remarkable in the amount of attention they give to the areas that are affected, really do nothing more than that. They are not making any radical changes in terms of the funding for non-government schools—it is steady as she goes. In terms of assisting our Aboriginal students to close the gap in educational outcomes, this legislation is continuing with those processes and adding to them. I commend both bills to the House.

See this speech in context