Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Probably one of the most appalling performances over the last period of Labor will be the way they trashed the education expectations and performances that are now typical of our country's schools, particularly in rural and regional Australia. No country would stand proudly when it looks at the rankings of Australia as they slip further below other countries, whether it is in reading, writing or numeracy. It is an appalling indictment on this government that today they have the cheek to bring into debate in this place the extraordinary failures of their government, trying to somehow justify their existence.

In 2007, Prime Minister Kevin Rudd promised Australia an education revolution. He was fond of revolutions. This was his education revolution. What did we get and what were we left with? We had the Building the Education Revolution. That was $16.5 billion worth of bricks and mortar and bits of wood and we were told it would somehow revolutionise the outcomes of education in the country. It imposed templates on schools around the country. I think of my poor little Nathalia Primary School. They wanted a toilet block. They begged the Commonwealth government for a toilet block. What did they get? They got a classroom built over the town's sewerage easement. They did not get a toilet block. The cost of the classroom they built was way outside of any reasonable costing parameters. No locals were allowed to be engaged in the building; it was people brought from the capital city. Building the Education Revolution left school councils in despair and it left $16.5 billion less in the education budget, money which could have been spent on better outcomes for kids.

Then we had the Digital Education Revolution—the computers that were meant to magically show up on student desks across the country. They did not show up or, where they did, there were no funds for connecting them. It was a tragedy, a mockery of what the schools really needed. Some $2.4 billion went down the toilet as a result of the Digital Education Revolution.

Then we had the magical MySchool website. I can remember the then minister standing up and saying, 'This is a great success; we have had so many hits on this website.' What did the website do? It named and shamed schools whose kids did not achieve the country or state average on the NAPLAN tests. The trouble is that there were no funds to support those schools that were being shown to be unable to reach the national average. It was simply a name-and-shame outing exercise. What an appalling indictment!

What about student outcomes? After six years of Labor, how did the performance of our students in reading, maths and science compare internationally? We had slipped to 27th in the OECD in reading levels for year 4. In maths we were down to 18th and in science we were down to 27th—that is out of a group of about 30. We hang our heads in shame when we see developing countries way ahead of us and our kids struggling to read and write in year 12.

This is an indictment of Labor's period in government. They gave us a revolution in education all right—a revolution in how to appallingly mismanage a huge budget. Most of it ended up just supplying work for their mates in the building industry, I suspect. Then they ripped $1 billion out of the universities and $1.2 billion out of the schools—after which they have the temerity to stand up in this place and ask what we have done.

We have been in government for only 11 weeks, but we have already said how it will be. We will improve teacher quality. Have you ever heard of that—teacher quality? There are people enrolling in teacher education who have barely passed year 12 and who need remedial maths and English. That is not good enough for our kids. We have to improve our year 12 outcomes so that our best and brightest want to become teachers and then we have to give them a strong and robust curriculum.

Let us get back to teaching history in this country—and to teaching geography and literacy. Let us help our multicultural communities understand how we came to be a free country. It did not happen by accident. Let us talk about parent engagement. Let us give our principals some autonomy so they can move on the underperformers they have inherited from the Labor regime.

We have added back the $1.2 billion that Labor ripped out just before the election. All up, we will deliver $2.8 billion over four years to all of the states and territories, not just the lucky ones who signed up before the election was called. In implementing real education reform— (Time expired)

See this speech in context