Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Sturt for his question and I am more than happy to answer his question because the member for Sturt has been out there playing silly games with figures to try and confuse people. As to what he should be doing in this parliament, he should be referring to that section of the budget which shows increasing investment for our schools. Across six years it is $14.5 billion between state and federal governments and then, of course, there is the indexation figure and he should be looking at the note in that budget table that tells you the difference between our plan and the broken plan that the Leader of the Opposition and the member for Sturt have decided that they support. The difference between those two figures, footnoted in the budget papers, is $16.2 billion. So the member for Sturt, if he wants to come in and quote the budget papers ought to take himself to that budget paper and ought to ask why he and the Leader of the Opposition stand by a funding system that would rip Australian children off, that would rip Australian schools off and which conservatives like Premier O'Farrell and his education minister, Mr Piccoli—conservatives—have referred to as 'a broken system'.

Why would the Leader of the Opposition and shadow minister stand behind such a broken system and a plan to rip off Australian schools? I do not think there is any mystery. These are the people who went to the 2010 election saying that they would rip more than $1 billion out of investment in trades training centres for schools and saying that they would rip almost half a billion dollars out of improving teacher quality—our national partnership to make sure that quality teachers are teaching our kids, driven by the research which shows that there is nothing more important to the outcomes of a child's education than the quality of the teacher standing in front of the classroom. The Leader of the Opposition says to that, 'Cut it by half a billion dollars.' Some $330 million of cuts for our poorest schools is what the Leader of the Opposition took to the last election, ripping off the most disadvantaged kids and disadvantaged communities.

It goes on and on. In fact, between the last election campaign and cuts announced in February 2011, almost $3 billion of cuts to Australian schools have been announced by the Leader of the Opposition. He and his shadow minister are not done yet. That is just a curtain-raiser for the amount of hurt and harm they want to do to Australian schools and the prospects of our children getting a great quality education. That is who they are. That is what they stand for.

See this speech in context