Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, I move:

That all words after 'that' first occurring be omitted and the following words substituted. That this House condemns the Leader of the Opposition for cutting funding to schools in Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory by $1.2 billion in the Pre-election Economic and Fiscal Outlook and for failing to achieve a national fair and needs-based school funding model when Minister for Education.

I move that as an amendment to the suspension of standing orders.

Madam Speaker, the Leader of the Opposition has turned up today with last week's questions pack. It is as if he has turned up to the set of Mad Max to play a small role in it but insists that it is really Alice in Wonderland, and everybody has to run around with a clock saying, 'I'm running behind time.' The Leader of the Opposition reminds me he is one of the worst leaders of the opposition that I have experienced in my 21 years in parliament. He has turned up for question time; he has last week's questions pack. He has decided that the way to solve this problem—because the opposition is being killed in the social media verse that I am not part of—is to shout and bellow at the dispatch box at members of the government and the press gallery, almost to insist that the press gallery accepts that he has had a great day in spite of the fact that at half past one today his house of cards came falling down around him. Unfortunately for the Leader of the Opposition, he is shattered that we are putting $1.2 billion into school funding that he ripped out of the school funding model before the election in the pre-election fiscal outlook, rather than standing up to congratulate the government for putting more money into the Northern Territory, Queensland or Western Australia so that there are no second-class students under this government. He did not stand up to praise the government—to seek indulgence to praise the Prime Minister—for putting money in that the Leader of the Opposition took out. Instead, they are going to insist that that has simply has not happened. They are going to say that the questions pack stands, 'We do not have time to change it.' As I said in question time, Madam Speaker, Ataturk said that when the battle changes, a good general changes his tactics. Sadly, on that side of the House, with Mr Albanese away in Italy, they are short of their good generals. And didn't it show today, Madam Speaker? The reason the Leader of the Opposition should be censured, and the reason the amendment should be carried for the suspension of standing orders, is that when he was the Minister for Education he left an absolute wreckage when he departed the scene after the election. He had cut $1.2 billion out of the school—

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