Maxine McKew (Bennelong, Australian Labor Party, Parliamentary Secretary for Infrastructure, Transport, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I have been listening with some amazement during this debate to what I think I have to call the opposition’s mock outrage and to a lot of the fallacies in their arguments. Just what is it that gets their goat about funding the schools of the future and supporting jobs in the process? As I think about it, perhaps it is a sense of shame at their neglect of education over the 11 years they were in government. By contrast, as the Deputy Prime Minister has said, in 20 months there has been $14.7 billion invested—the largest school building and modernisation program ever seen in this country. There has been $1.3 billion for 9,490 schools under the National School Pride program. That supports around 30,000 jobs. There has been $9.19 billion for more than 5,000 schools under the Primary Schools for the 21st Century. That supports around 15,000 jobs. More than 78,000 computers have been delivered to schools, and there has been a record investment of more than $3.6 billion in the early years, which are where the education revolution begins.

But it is much more than that. It is about what previous Liberal governments I think understood but failed to address—that is, that we have an education system that produces an unacceptably long tale of disadvantage. As Professor Glyn Davis from Melbourne university has said repeatedly, Australia has a system that is high on quality but low on equity. That, of course, is unacceptable and we are addressing that, firstly, by insisting on knowing precisely what it is that is going on in our schools. To that end, we have provided significant funding through national partnership agreements to address deficiencies in literacy and numeracy. It is about ensuring that the best teachers are teaching in the most disadvantaged schools. That means that we are committed to transparency on data on school performance. On this point, I know that the member for Bradfield is not in the House at the moment but, as the former Liberal Minister for Education, he has a deep understanding of this. He has some serious intellectual grunt on this issue. He is committed. He continues to be committed to ensuring that transparency is available around schools data, and he is right. It is just a shame that his state Liberal colleagues in New South Wales do not listen to him. It is also a shame that the member for Bradfield, when he had the chance, could not deliver on national collection of school performance data—reliable data which will identify disadvantage. Well, we are delivering.

As far as the investment in the infrastructure in our schools is concerned, if any of the members opposite want to get some genuine feedback, as opposed to relying on tabloid headlines, then they should come to my electorate—to Ryde, for instance, and meet with Father Paul Monkerud from St Charles primary school. I am sure that Father Paul would be happy to repeat what he said to me as he contemplated the almost complete redesign of his parish school. He sent me a letter recently which said:

I believe that BER and the pride initiatives are gifts of divine providence. We are so blessed to have a developed plan to take advantage of this opportunity.

So here is St Charles, ready to go with a complete redesign of the school with the money provided from the Commonwealth.

If members opposite are still sceptical, they could go a bit further north in my electorate to Epping Boys High School. I am sure the principal, Peter Garrard, would repeat to members opposite what he said so me only last week—that is, that this year, for the very first time, Epping boys will be able to hold their speech day on site at the school. That is because of federal government funding through the education revolution. By the way, it is going to save Epping boys something like $10,000 a year because they will not have to go to other schools to hire out their facilities. There are stories like this in schools right across Bennelong—Catholic, public and private schools.

Finally, one of the highlights of my year was back in early June when the Deputy Prime Minister came to Eastwood Public School in my electorate. On that day, the Deputy Prime Minister announced $2.3 billion in funding for New South Wales schools under the second round of the BER funding. For Eastwood Public in particular it meant six new classrooms. That is what the Deputy Prime Minister was able to deliver for the parents, teachers and students of the Eastwood community. What a contrast with the Leader of the Opposition. When he came into Eastwood just a couple of weeks ago, what did he do? He put on his nice apron and he stacked bananas.

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