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

I know it is hard to take, member for Moreton. It is hard to take that this side of the House is delivering more money, delivering a national agreement—and actually, incredibly, getting to implement its policies, because we won the election. You are the government-change deniers on that side of the House! As far as you are concerned, every now and then the Liberals win an election—we have governed for two-thirds of the last 60 years, but we will put that aside for one moment. We are apparently allowed to win an election, but woe betide us if we actually try to implement our policies! That is outrageous! We are not allowed to do it on the carbon tax. We are not allowed to do it on the minerals resource rent tax. We are not allowed to stabilise the economy through the debt ceiling. We are not allowed to introduce temporary protection visas. We are not allowed to focus on quality and standards for our students. We are not allowed to do these things—because we won the election, and we were supposed to keep Labor's policies in place!

Ms MacTiernan interjecting—

Well I have some news for the member for Perth. I know it is not going to be easy. I have some news for her: she is on the wrong side of the House to implement policies; we won the election, and we will. We said we would keep the same level of funding as Labor. We have gone one better: we have put $1.2 billion in. We said that we would have a national scheme, and we have delivered it, unlike Bill Shorten when he was the minister for education. And we said that we would remove the command-and-control features from Canberra that were inherent in the model: that we would take away the red tape and the regulation, and that we would get rid of the School Performance Institute, the ministerial directions from Canberra about performance and implementation, and the federal inspectorate of schools—we said we would get rid of those and we will. So we will have a better model with more money. And it will be national.

So where to from here? We will have a four-year funding agreement as promised. In 2014, we will amend the Australian Education Act to deliver the policies that we took to the election, because we on this side of the House think it is really important to keep your election commitments. We will keep our election commitments, unlike Labor. In 2007 they made commitments; they broke them. In 2010 they made commitments; they broke them. They said there would not be a carbon tax; they introduced one. They have so traduced people's faith in the Australian parliament that we will make sure in this parliament that we restore people's faith in the government because we will keep our commitments, just like we are on schools and education.

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