Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Hansard source

As I was saying before I was interrupted by the shadow minister, there is no clearer sign of a strong economy than a surplus. This government delivered a surplus in the budget and, not only that, it means that we have a buffer in case the global economy gets worse. It means that we can protect jobs. It builds on the successful economic management of this government in steering the country through the global final crisis, without Australia going into recession and without the really significant and very serious job losses that many other nations have faced.

In particular in this budget we have secured our key education spending areas while making responsible savings wherever possible. The fact is that the Gillard Labor government continues to make record investments in school education and in early childhood—and my colleague Minister Kate Ellis is here as well—in comparison to the previous Howard government, of which the shadow minister was a member. The fact is that in this budget, in this financial year, the government will investment $13.6 billion in our schools compared to the $8.5 billion spent by the Howard government in its last budget. Over the next four years we will spend an estimated $59.9 billion on our schools. Nearly $60 billion will be spent by the Labor government because we recognise that substantial investment in education is absolutely central to our prospects as a nation in the future and we are prepared to show by the decisions we have made in this budget—by this financial commitment—how important education is for the Labor government. Of course, over the next four years we will spend about $22.3 billion on early childhood education and care measures as well, again highlighting the fact that this Labor government has a specific understanding of the need to invest right across the learning years from early childhood into primary school, high school and beyond.

In particular, I draw your attention to some of the commitments that were specifically made in the budget when it came through earlier this year. In Indigenous education, some $583 million will be provided in the Northern Territory's through the Stronger Futures package—a really significant commitment on our part. There will be significant additional investments for maths and science in schools as part of an overall $54 million joint announcement that I made with Minister Evans. As well as that, there will be two other further measures which I think are particularly important: $55.7 million will be provided to expand the HIPPY program, which was a joint announcement with my colleague Minister Ellis; and, of course, we will be continuing the critical funding for literacy and numeracy schemes which we announced on 5 May. A commitment of some $243 million has been made to literacy and numeracy. This recognises that literacy and numeracy are the building blocks of any child's school education and, in particular, it recognises the existing investment that we have made in national partnerships in the states not only in literacy and numeracy but in teacher quality and low SES communities as well. There are significant commitments to education in this budget as part of our overall recognition of how central education is to the future of the nation. (Time expired)

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