Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I am happy to withdraw the remarks, and if I return to that subject I will move a substantive motion. It is disappointing that the member for Chifley has to come into the House and take an appropriate point of order when the parliamentary secretary, who fancies himself as Prime Minister embarrassingly, sat here for five minutes and took no point of order at all. No doubt the Leader of the House will take that up with the parliamentary secretary, because his job in the House is to monitor what the opposition is saying and doing, but he was doing no such thing.

I return to the budget and the disappearing programs that are the hallmark of the education aspect of this budget. The other one that is an embarrassment to the government is the School Chaplaincy Program. The School Chaplaincy Program is set to end in 2011. This was a program which the Howard government initiated. It is extremely popular in both government and non-government schools, but particularly in government schools. We committed to this program in the forward estimates, and the opposition has committed $165 million in the future, to ensure that this program becomes a permanent fixture of our government and non-government schools. It is a very popular program, because there are many young people who, for whatever reason, may not speak to their parents or their uncles or aunts or best friends about problems they might be having but are more inclined to speak to somebody whom they regard as somewhat of a stranger or as someone who is becoming a friend. That is one of the reasons the School Chaplaincy Program has worked so successfully.

This government has not committed to it in this budget in an ongoing way. The funding is due to finish at the end of 2011. It has put no extra money into making sure it will continue into the future. It is not a program that has been earmarked for growth. Yet again, the government has announced a review of the chaplaincy program, which amazingly is due to report after the election. Of course, if the Labor Party is unfortunately returned to government in this country, I think there will be a lot of very nasty surprises for a lot of people after the next election.

We have talked about trade training centres and we could talk about the school hall rip-off program until the cows come home. I also want to cover an issue that my honourable friend at the table, the shadow minister for early childhood education and childcare, the status of women and other issues, will be interested in—that is, the disappearing childcare centre program. In yet another one of the Ruddisms that we have to tolerate all the time from this Prime Minister, he was going to end the dreaded double drop-off. In other words, you would have a childcare centre at the school and you would therefore be able to drop all your children at the same place. Of course, it was just another promise designed to get them elected in the 2007 election. They never had any intention of delivering that program. They quietly and embarrassingly tried to sneak it through in the last paragraph of a Kate Ellis press release a few weeks ago that they would not be continuing with the childcare centre program.

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