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

It is a terrific opportunity to speak on this bill—the Australian Education Bill 2012. There is so much detail about Labor's plans for education for the future that the member for Lyons could not get through 15 minutes actually talking about the bill; he had to go back through alleged history. We might deal with some of that. He suggested that state Liberal governments are cutting education. Let's go through what the cuts in the federal education budget are in the next four years: in the MYEFO figures—Deputy Speaker, you will be well aware of these due to your role now as the opposition the costing spokesman—in 2012-13, $918 million was cut; 2013-14, $587 million was cut; 2014-15, $1.05 billion was cut; and 2015-2016, $1.3 billion was cut. So let's not have anything about funding cuts from this side of politics.

Mr Adams interjecting—

You can get as angry as you like, Member for Lyons. Those are the stats. That is your MYEFO document. I know it will change—Swanny will change it soon, I agree with you! It will be worse. Let's not have any hypocrisy from the Labor Party about state Liberal governments cutting funding. The other point the member for Lyons made was that the Howard government apparently attacked state schools. I have just a bit of constitutional advice for the member for Lyons: state schools are funded by state governments. Guess who was in power in states largely during the Howard years—Labor governments.

Let's actually get the facts on the table here about what this is all about. This bill has no detail and it has no substance; it is purely a bill to try and raise a political issue in the lead-up to 2013 election. We are seeing it on a daily basis. We are seeing it in the attempts to reduce the freedom of the speech in the Australian media by the minister at the table's friend and colleague Senator Conroy. We have seen it with the NDIS legislation which is before this place, which is without detail, and with the refusal of the offer of a bipartisan committee inquiry on what is such an important issue. We are seeing it with this bill here, which is all about political puffery, with no details attached and no costings attached. And something you are close to, Mr Deputy Speaker—

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