Tony Smith (Casey, Liberal Party, Shadow Assistant Treasurer) Share this | Hansard source

I want to briefly take the time of the House to address the Tax Laws Amendment (Education Refund) Bill 2008 and, as previous speakers before me have done in this debate, some of the broader education issues related to it. As speakers on this side have made clear, the coalition will be supporting this measure; however, as we have also made clear, we think it is too narrow. It is no secret that at the last election we had a broader policy, both in items covered and in families covered. We think this policy that has been put forward is too narrow—we have said so—but we acknowledge that it will be of assistance to those parents who are eligible in the narrow field of items that are covered.

The previous speaker, the member for Shortland, mentioned the digital revolution, as it is called by those opposite, which many other speakers from the government side have lauded. Those opposite in their heart of hearts know that there is great scepticism about the so-called education revolution. The hollowness is now coming to the fore. We have heard the computers in schools policy lauded by those opposite, but they know that, as we approach the one-year anniversary of the election of this government, many will look back to those first few days after that election when the first COAG meeting was held to set out the new deal with the states and to end the blame game. The first thing that was going to happen on that agenda back in December was that all of the costs for the computers in schools were going to be worked out. But, no, that was deferred until March and deferred again until July. We had the Treasurer saying in the days before that July COAG meeting that everything would be sorted out. New South Wales has since refused to participate in the computers in schools policy.

We have had parents complaining across all of our electorates. We know that members opposite have had the same thing across their electorates because as the detail has come to the fore it has become quite obvious that this program was not thought through properly and that the cost of putting computers on the desks of every student in years 9, 10, 11 and 12 had not been thought through. What has happened is that the states have said they are not going to pay the bills. Julia Gillard, the Minister for Education, has put her head in the sand all year on this issue and, as we have warned from this side of the House right through this year, parents are now being hit with the bill. We have the extraordinary situation where we have the members opposite saying how important it is to assist parents—and we agree with that—but ignoring the fact that now parents are being hit with a new Rudd government computer tax. In my electorate of Casey—

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