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

My thanks to the member for Fowler for his question. Giving every Australian student the chance to have a great education is a core Labor value, and every member on this side of the chamber and, I surmise, the crossbenches too, gets the importance of education in a child's life. Every member on this side gets the importance of education for our economic future. Yesterday, here, I outlined the National Plan for School Improvement that will deliver reforms to quality teaching, school leadership and quality learning—reforms that are essential to drive improved results in our schools and are a necessary step in implementation of the National Plan for School Improvement. Part of that was the introduction into this House of the Australian Education Bill, an important bill that provides the directions for the National Plan for School Improvement.

It is axiomatic that in this parliament we should be able to debate these issues. Of course, we are discussing the reforms with education ministers, parents and teachers, but today we have learned that the Manager of Opposition Business, the shadow spokesperson for education, has taken the extraordinary step of trying to shy away from the debate on this bill in this chamber. Many outside this House might not believe that—after all, this is a bill about how we can improve education in Australia—but it should not surprise those of us in the House when we consider the opposition's record: 11 years in office and they failed to get up a national curriculum; 11 years in office and they failed to fix a broken education funding model; 11 years in office and they failed to give more power to school principals. Eleven years in office—they could have built classrooms and libraries; they managed 3,000 flagpoles.

In opposition they have been no better. In the 2010 election, what did we get? $2.8 billion to be cut from education investment. They rejected the Gonski review of school funding within 20 minutes after it was released, and of course the opposition spokesman on education is notorious for wanting to see one in seven teachers sacked. Then they tried to play catch-up policy, and we saw that education came in at number 17. Now, after all of that, we see the shadow minister for education in the federal opposition not wanting to stand in this parliament and debate the very matter for which he has responsibility, instead scampering out of the House like a startled gazelle while people here want to put their views about how we need a national plan for school improvement.

At the end of the day, all I can say is this: we will continue to work with education authorities to implement the National Plan for School Improvement to build a stronger, smarter and fairer Australia, and let that debate continue in this place.

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