Alannah Mactiernan (Perth, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I do want to talk about education outputs and I do want to talk about the inherent schizophrenia in the position adopted by the government. Outputs are incredibly important, but if the member for Boothby really understood that data he would know what is happening in Australia—the top 25 per cent of Australians are doing very well, the next 25 per cent are doing quite well but the bottom 50 per cent, those two lower quartiles, are doing very poorly. When you read that data, you need to understand how it is broken up and you need to understand that that is why we need Gonski; that is why we commenced the whole process of Gonski. It was to investigate forensically where we are going wrong in our education system and target the funding towards those people who need it.

Quite correctly those opposite say analysis shows that things have been going wrong in our education system—but that education system has largely been run by the states. Under Labor, federal Labor said, 'We've got to get more involved. This is too important.' Federal government has to get involved because, as the minister has himself said, this is essential and important to the productivity of this nation. So the federal government decided that it had to get more across the detail. It had to get more involved. That was the whole point of Gonski and the agreements that were subsequently entered into with the various states to deliver change, to deliver the money where we needed it, to deliver the resources where we needed them. It is certainly true it is not about resources. There are other things that have to happen as well. But the resourcing is certainly part of it. There is inequity in our system. You have got to understand how that lack of educational opportunity is playing out and why we need to actively go in there and fix it.

There is a complete and absolute contradiction. You are saying you want to do all these things. You are going to insist on school autonomy. You are going to have better teaching. You are going to have that, but you are not having any agreements with the states. The states have presided over this regime and have been delivering the schools. You say, 'The states run the schools. We're going to let them continue to run the schools and we're not going to have any engagement with them. We'll give them the money no strings attached.' How are you going to do that? How are you going to make change by just giving more money to the people to continue on with business as usual? It does not make sense. You have to engage. You have to get into agreements. Now, we did have agreements with—

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