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

I thank the member for Robertson for her question. As the Prime Minister said, we met here today with members from the non-government schools sector of New South Wales and with caucus members from New South Wales as well. The community values the support that is provided to schools in funding, and the New South Wales Liberal government's cuts to schools mean things like fees going up, class sizes increasing and curriculum options narrowing. We heard that when we met today, and those views have been echoed by principals, teachers and parents around New South Wales. Listen to what the Principal of St Felix Primary School in south-west Sydney said: 'We have students with very specific learning needs. The withdrawal of state funding will be devastating to our families.' The executive director of Catholic schools in Parramatta said to the Rouse Hill Times that the cuts represent:

… betrayal by a government which has shown a lack of understanding of what is needed to deliver quality learning and teaching in today's world.

That understanding is completely absent.

But of course the New South Wales Liberal government's cuts do not just hit the non-government schools; they hit support for government schools, they hit school front-office staff, and they hit TAFE students by increasing their fees and sacking teachers. And this is after the Gonski review told us that we need to be investing in more support, that we need to be providing our students with more opportunities. Instead, the New South Wales Liberals have gone the other way.

In this House, federal New South Wales state MPs have gone into bat for their schools against the New South Wales government cuts. They introduced a private member's motion so that we can debate those cuts. So I think it is time for the Leader of the Opposition to move on from the end-of-the-world sound bites and come in and make a contribution to this debate, because it is clear that these types of cuts from state coalition governments are a curtain raiser to what the opposition leader has in store if he should win at the next election.

Again, on ABC 24, the member for North Sydney confirmed the Liberal Party's $70 billion black hole. So how will the opposition leader fill it? What is he going to do? As he said to the press this morning:

… I respect the job that they're—

the Liberal Premiers are—

doing. I work closely with them as far as I can. But they are dealing with their problems at the state level and I will seek to deal with federal problems at our level.

You talk about code for what is going to happen—that is open-source code. This is plainly saying that the same savage cuts to health and education that we have seen in Queensland, New South Wales and Victoria will be visited upon us in this House if the Leader of the Opposition should ever occupy the Treasury bench. He has already promised $2.8 billion in cuts—cuts to teachers training, cuts to computers and cuts to school facilities, and we know he wants to cut more. How is he going to cut more? It will be in education and health.

See this speech in context