Ewen Jones (Herbert, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Gonski is supposed to have $6 billion a year extra. David Gonski has not come out and said anything about this. So if you in the education sector believe that this government is going to come good with $6 billion a year extra in years 5 and 6 after three more elections then you go ahead and vote for them.

The cut to university funding is also shameful. When it comes to university funding, the key to education has got to be good teachers. To cut funding to universities is absolutely ridiculous, I say on behalf of James Cook University, the Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority.

My side of politics is very serious about the development of the north of Australia. If we are going to be the food bowl of Asia then we have to get our science right. We cannot make the same mistakes with salinity and water that we made over 100 years ago in the Murray-Darling Basin. We have to get it right. The Murray-Darling Basin flows into the Great Australian Bight. That is the only place it flows. We have over 25 river systems in the north of my state and we know what goes into about five of them. We must get our baseline research done and places like James Cook University, Australian Institute of Marine Science and the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority must be backed to get that. We must develop our PhD and research fields to make sure that we are getting the best results.

When it comes to schools, we must make sure that principals have the autonomy to run their schools like they would their business. We must let teachers teach. And we must get parents involved. If teachers can teach and parents can parent then we will get away with most things. If we could just get fathers to read to their children every night for 15 to 20 minutes most of the problems in this world will go away. We must work on outcomes as opposed to process. We must have our children become risk takers. At the moment we are so risk adverse with our children that we have kids in primary school who cannot climb over a see-saw. We are developing a bunch of children here that do not take risks because every time somebody falls over and scabs a knee there has to be reports done. A part of growing up is to fall over. We must tell the kids now that they must appreciate failure because if you fail it means you have had a go. 'Fail, and fail better', is a better lesson than, 'don't do anything'. So we must make sure we do those sorts of things.

I would also like to say that I am disappointed with the Queensland government's decision to raise stamp duty on insurance policies. We are copping it in the north of the state. But again, this does play into the fact that we must do more when it comes to tax reform. Raising stamp duty is probably something that was considered very seriously and would not have been done lightly, but that it has happened at this time hurts a lot of people. Insurance is too expensive in Northern Queensland. The coalition is working on practical expenses.

Townsville is perfectly placed for the development of north Australia. We have the north-west minerals province to our west. We are near Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands, and there is real growth in education and cultural exchange, and in services being two-way. We are perfectly placed to have used the north-west Queensland Cowboys in our soft diplomacy with Papua New Guinea, which is the only country in the world where rugby league is the national sport.

We must abolish the carbon tax, because the carbon tax does nothing for the environment. We are going to end up spending $3.5 billion per year every year to buy carbon credits from dodgy overseas operators. Direct action is a carrot versus the stick—I do not know how you guys work, but I tell you that when someone is hitting me over the back of the head, we will be fine.

We must work with the JCU algae project. We must open up the Coral Sea to recreational fishermen. We must get rid of the Pew foundation, and the GetUp people. We must secure our borders. We have people living in refugee camps in Cambodia and Chad and all those places, people are being pushed to the back of the line and not able to get here. I want to see a whole heap of things but I have run out of time, so I will thank the Deputy Speaker and I will take them up at another time.

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