Jamie Briggs (Mayo, Liberal Party, Chairman of the Scrutiny of Government Waste Committee) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to support the amendments moved by the Manager of Opposition Business, the Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training, the member for Sturt. In doing so I follow a very high-quality contribution from the member for Bradfield, who is keeping up the usual standard of his contributions in this place. He spoke thoughtfully about some very important concerns—the standard of education in our country and the direction that it is taking and the way the government is plans to implement the national curriculum through the Schools Assistance Amendment Bill 2011—that are close to the hearts of many of us in this place. The member for Bradfield summed up our concerns very well in his contribution, so I do not intend to go through them in the same detail as he did. They were also placed on the record very well by the shadow minister earlier today. But I do want to touch on a couple of the issues raised and how they relate to my electorate of Mayo.

Many of us in this place understand the importance of a high-quality education. The Liberal Party has pursued policies which are about achieving standards in education for some time now. We take the view that government should try to encourage the education sector, whether it be the government sector, the Catholic sector or the independent sector, to produce students with the highest possible education standards so that they can meet the demands of industry for jobs and go off to university, if it suits them, and get a higher level of education so that they have an opportunity to create their own prosperity and improve their standard of living and the national well-being at the same time.

Obviously, standards in schools are very important in what a national curriculum sets out, and I am supporter of a standardised approach across the country so that there is some consistency. I think, though, that we have to be very careful that we do not take away from a competitive approach across the different streams and get to the point where people are being dictated to about what they can and cannot teach in their schools—there needs to be some flexibility in government's approach to the matter. The argument that the voices of non-government schools in this debate need to be heard more loudly is a very important part of the second amendment that the member for Sturt is pursuing, because there is a concern amongst parents' groups at non-government schools in my electorate that there is a pursuit by some of a political agenda through education.

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