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

I have withdrawn. Mr Deputy Speaker Ramsey, I had withdrawn 3,000 times before that humbugging member got up. Let us talk about the motion he has put on the books, and let us talk about what he talked about: Jason Inch and Stuart State School, and his motion including ‘classroom overcrowding, Third World facilities, the ever-increasing workload on our teachers’. You know, I might give you that. As the member for Brisbane central said, we ask our teachers to do an awful lot and we are never able to put enough money into education or health. But, in Queensland, 25 per cent of the budget goes into education, 25 per cent goes into health, and that leaves 50 per cent for everything else. There are a lot of things in this motion that we could agree on. We could agree on the dedication of the teachers, as the member for Bowman said. But I tell you what: there is a lot of ratbaggery and humbug in this motion. Take, for instance:

… condemns the Queensland Government over its continuing education budget cuts …

I just happen to have some figures on the education budget for recent years. In 2007-08, the education budget was $7.836 billion in Queensland. In 2008-09 it was $8.328 billion—an increase of $492 million, or 6.3 per cent in round terms. In 2009-10, it was $9.654 billion, an increase of $1.326 billion over the previous year, or nearly a 16 per cent increase. Is that what you call continuous cuts in budgets? I think you need to get your story straight.

I can understand that you are here presenting a communication that you have had from a single teacher in your electorate. Well, let me tell you what we do on our side of parliament. We meet regularly with the Queensland Teachers Union representatives because we are interested in education—we are seriously interested in education—and we met with them as recently as last week to discuss education issues with them.

One of the reasons that I am interested in education—perhaps a little bit more interested than you, Member for Herbert—is the number of students in our respective areas. I did some figures on your electorate versus mine. Let us have a look at 2007. You had 12,731 students; I had 21,556—although it was not my electorate at the time. You had 961 teachers; I had 1,291. You had a teacher to student ratio of one teacher to every 13.2 students. In my electorate of Longman, where there are nearly twice as many students, there was one teacher to every 16.7 students. And those types of figures have remained constant. You had 13.2, 13.3, 13.3, 13.3. You have dropped—

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