Alan Tudge (Aston, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The reason for this bill in front of us is that the government has wasted so much money that it has brought the net debt figure up to $145 billion and we now have to cut programs, many of which have actually been effective.

The member for Fadden yesterday was reminding us of the fact that the government are cutting back on the Defence Force personnel's trip at Christmas time to see their families. We have wasted billions of dollars on pink batts, but they are now going after Defence Force personnel and preventing them from being able to go home to their families at Christmas.

This bill in front of us is in a similar vein. They are trying to save $1 billion over the next four years and they have to make the savings because we have net debt of $145 billion and we have net interest payments of $8 billion per annum. We have just had waste after waste after waste by the government over the last five years. That is why this point is relevant. Never have we had such a wasteful government in the history of this federation.

The other points I would like to make about this bill being introduced—and I would reinforce the member for Forrest's comments—is that it is retrospective for some students. Although it takes effect from 1 January next year, it affects some students who are now studying maths, science and statistics who only undertook those courses because of the discounts which were in place. They thought that those discounts would be there for the duration of their course. Now the government is coming in and saying, 'Actually, despite you having made your course selections, in part on the basis of those discounts, midway through we are going to change that policy.' That is not a good way to conduct public policy, but it is the type of thing that we have come to expect from this government.

The bigger issue that this bill brings up—and I would like to spend the remaining time that I have available talking about this issue—is that we do need more maths and science graduates. How do we achieve this? In some respects the issue, though, does not start at the university level; it actually starts before there at the school level. We simply do not have enough students at year 12 level anymore who are studying the tougher maths, science and biology subjects. If you look across the statistics over the last two decades you see that the number of year 12 graduates in those areas has declined markedly. For example, the Chief Scientist tabled a report merely a couple of months ago that looked into this question. The number of year 12 students across Australia taking physics, chemistry and biology fell by 31 per cent, 23 per cent and 32 per cent, respectively—incredible drops in the course of two decades. This is the real nub of the problem. If people are not studying it at the high school level, they will not be going on and studying it at the university level. As the Chief Scientist said in his report:

These [science and maths] subjects are fundamental to shaping the future of Australia, and the future of the world … They provide enabling skills and knowledge that increasingly underpin many professions and trades and the skills of a technologically based workforce.

There are many reasons people are not studying these tougher subjects of maths and science anymore at the year 12 level. I hear anecdotally in schools in my electorate that part of the reason is that they are harder subjects and that other subjects can be done and count equally towards the students' ATAR scores to get into the university courses that they like. I think that needs to be looked at and a proper examination be done on that matter.

I think the bigger reason for it is that we have a severe shortage of passionate maths and science teachers in our schools. The Chief Scientist pointed this out in his report which was tabled a couple of months ago. In that he stated:

Inspirational teaching was time and time again identified as the key to future study choices of students.

Getting higher quality people into teaching, and particularly into maths and science teaching, is a subject that I have spoken about at length in this chamber. I have written about it at length as well.

I am greatly concerned generally about the decline in the quality of the applicants going into teacher courses and I am particularly concerned about the decline in the maths and science graduates going into teaching. In 2010, only 550 students enrolled in graduate Diploma of Education courses had a science degree. That was out of nearly 73,000 students undertaking teacher training courses that year. It is remarkable that there are so few.

What can we do about this? That is the real question. That is what we should be focused on, that is what the government should be focused on. How do we get outstanding, passionate maths and science teachers into our classrooms?

The Chief Scientist in his report outlined a number of recommendations. Those recommendations should be closely looked at. He pointed out some of professional development needed, some of the careers advice which needs to be improved. He talked about professional development standards.

I think, however, that the nub of the issue goes beyond that and that we need to look at the salary structures for maths and science teachers, in particular giving discretion for school principals to be able to offer higher salaries for maths and science teachers if they have a shortage of such teachers in their schools. This was something that the Productivity Commission looked at and what they recommended in their report which they handed down earlier this year. It is something that needs to be done.

The other thing I raise here is that we need to be looking at how we can fast-track outstanding maths and science graduates into the classroom. I have been involved with a program called Teach for Australia and I remain on its board. It targets outstanding nonteacher graduates and fast-tracks them into the classroom. It has had fantastic success.

But one of the problems that we have had with this program is that we have had some brilliant applicants who want to teach maths and science but are prevented from doing so. Let me just give you one example. A person who was a Fulbright scholar and had completed a PhD at Yale University in econometrics was approved only to teach legal studies and humanities. He was not approved to teach mathematics because the bureaucracy and the clipboard checkers said that he did not have sufficient qualifications to teach maths. He is exactly the type of person we want in the classroom to teach mathematics. We need to fix up these problems and we need to encourage similar people likewise to be in our classrooms. (Time expired)

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