Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The federal budget shows that, over the forward estimates, school funding will not be increased but will be slashed by $325 million. Schools will be waiting until 2019 for Labor's promised rivers of gold to start flowing. That is six years and three elections away. And from 2019, the Queensland government has confirmed that 160 schools, including Woodford State School, will end up worse off anyway.

Regional communities face enough resourcing challenges as it is. But in a rush of bureaucratic penmanship, this Labor government has chosen to assign nothing but disadvantage to Woodford's children. The lack of rationale really is mind boggling. The government cuts funding to universities in a desperate bid to bail out its schools funding program. But how can the desired aim of better educational outcomes for our children, who are lagging internationally, possibly be achieved in the face of a corresponding under-investment in the tertiary training of classroom teachers?

And in the weekend's press we learned the funding proposal is yet another hand grenade into the Labor Party leadership chaos. We read that the Rudd camp believes the Gonski school agenda is a saga of policy mismanagement where funds are pledged without prospects of better results.

The coalition parties are the only political force with a funding model for schools that will leave none worse off. The coalition's preferred plan is one that will deliver certainty by maintaining current schools funding and indexation.

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