Kay Hull (Riverina, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Curriculum, Assessment and Reporting Authority Bill 2008. I concur with the previous speaker in the debate, the member for Lyons, that this is a very complex bill. It affects students currently in the Australian education systems, both public and private, and also the future of all of our children—and, indeed, our parents and grandparents. Anybody who is interested in education would most certainly be interested in this bill. I have discovered that enormous numbers of people are interested in the bill, and there has been a campaign of continual letter writing by a variety of people that has concentrated on the need to fund public education in a more significant way. I am a strong supporter of the public education system. I educated my children in the public education system, as have been my grandchildren, and I was educated in the public education system myself. Public education is of enormous concern to me, and the way it is funded, both by the states and by the Commonwealth, has always been one of my priorities.

I will run through some of the areas that I consider have been abandoned by this bill and where it fails miserably the people I represent in the Riverina. I go first to the issue of the axing of the Investing in Our Schools Program. The Investing in Our Schools Program was hard fought for by backbenchers in the previous government. To their credit, the former Minister for Education, Science and Training and the former Prime Minister, Mr Howard, listened to their backbenchers to understand the issues that were confronting the mums and dads in the P&Cs and the school communities across our region. It was then that the Investing in Our Schools Program was established, and it was enormously successful. In fact, the Investing in Our Schools Program delivered over $11 million to public education and about $1.2 million to private education in my electorate of Riverina. This was an enormously popular program—so popular that I note that the Labor members who opposed it when the previous government implemented it are now gung-ho to go out into their electorates, have their names put on the plaques and take all the credit for the money that is being delivered into schools. They stand in front of you and you think about all the hard work that you have put in as the local member with the school community and the P&Cs.

When the Howard government brought in the program, we applied for much needed funding, which was a process of working cooperatively with teachers, headmasters, P&Cs and community leaders—and that funding was delivered. The program was, of course, opposed by the current government, formerly the opposition. But, as I said, now they take great delight in talking about ‘their funding’ that has delivered ‘these benefits’ to communities.

In speaking on this bill in the House today I want to highlight what I believe are its deficiencies. The deficiencies include the fact that the Investing in our Schools Program has been abolished. I have had contact with many in the public education system, including the teachers, and their complaints about this bill have been extremely scathing. In the past, they launched scathing attacks on the Howard government, the role that I played as a member of the coalition in the Howard government years and the way in which we handled education, but they have now concluded their attacks on the former minister. With the new government, educators believe they have been promised much and have been delivered little. They thought that there would be a change in focus and direction from a new Labor government. They said that they went out in droves to man the polling booths in the last election in order that there could be a change of government and of education policy. But the complaints that I am getting now are that there is no difference between the policies of the past government and those of the current government. These are legitimate concerns that have been raised with me and that I have raised with the current Minister for Education.

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