Ed Husic (Chifley, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is a shame, as the member for Bass says. On 27 February this year, the member for Sturt told Radio National:

The current funding model does work, it's not a broken model.

He must be the only person in the country who thinks that. In his budget reply speech, the Leader of the Opposition made it clear:

We won't back a so-called national education system—

The member for Sturt wrote to state premiers and territory leaders to dissuade them from reaching agreement, saying:

Under the Gillard Government’s plan this means that those could receive a much lower rate of Commonwealth indexation in the future, when the average indexation rate over the last ten years has been 5.6 per cent

Those claims that indexation will return to 5.6 per cent defy logic. Current state budget decisions and estimates show that, next year and in future, indexation will fall to around three per cent. That is less money from the Commonwealth for all schools.

The Liberal Party continue to peddle untruths about the current levels of funding for schools. They are falsely claiming that our government is cutting $326 million from school funding. But the truth is that our funding is a direct match of funding provided by the states so any reduction in Commonwealth funding for schools in my state is a direct result of a reduction in school funding by the state government. New South Wales education minister Adrian Piccoli is quite clear where he stands on the issue of how schools should be funded. He says:

The status quo would see NSW worse off, and what essentially the federal Coalition is saying is the status quo.

I listened earlier to the contribution on this debate by the member for Kooyong, and I have to agree with him on one point. He said that people should judge Labor on what it does rather than what it says. When it comes to school funding, Labor is the party that has runs on the board. The other side of politics is interested in just taking us back to the Howard years or softening us up to such things as larger class sizes, as the member for Sturt has been on the public record doing. I am more than happy to put our record up against those opposite and let others decide who they trust to provide the best outcomes for their kids—our students.

This financial year, our government will invest $13.6 billion in our schools in stark contrast to the $8.5 billion spent in the last financial year of the Howard government. In our first four years of government we invested over $65 billion in schools while the Howard government spent only $32.9 billion in its last four years of office. To keep people in jobs, this government built or upgraded school facilities across the country—almost 24,000 projects in 9,500 schools including 3,000 libraries. In Chifley alone, that equates to $140 million spent in 67 schools.

Those on the other side of the chamber opposed the stimulus measures, which included the investment in the Building the Education Revolution program and helped save the country from recession. In government they built 3,000 flagpoles. That was their contribution to school improvement. But they then have the audacity to say that there is no detail to our National Plan for School Improvement. Reflecting on the coalition's record, it is clear their lack of care or detail then clouds their ability to see detail now. We had the member for Wentworth, the member for Bowman and the member for Kooyong all claim there is a lack of detail with our plan. I ask them to answer this one point: are you suggesting the New South Wales government signed up to this massive reform on the basis of no detail?

Premier Barry O'Farrell went on TV and basically indicated that Tony Abbott had made clear his view to Barry O'Farrell that the system was not broken, that the agreement should not be entered into, but Barry O'Farrell made clear 'what the cabinet would do in New South Wales'—that is, the cabinet had examined and determined this was the best thing for New South Wales. They are happy and have always have been happy with the current regime because it fuels an 'us versus them' mentality. This reform is far too important to let it slip through our fingers and it represents the collective hopes of schools, parents, teachers, students and all those in the industry.

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