Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise in support of the matter of public importance brought before the House by the member for Adelaide. Before commencing my remarks, I think I should acknowledge the previous speaker, the member for Page, because he did something quite extraordinary in this parliament: he talked about some things the government is actually doing. So I congratulate the member for Page in taking about two minutes of his contribution to talk about the responsibility of this government. At least he believes in no excuses.

It is disappointing that we have to have this debate, because before the election—as everyone in this place knows—we had a unity ticket on education funding, which goes to the core of the challenge that the member for Adelaide is putting forward today and which is at the core of Labor's agenda. It is very disappointing that we have to have this debate, because while it relates to many cuts and many broken promises, at the core there is one: the unity ticket on schools funding. But this is a government that said one thing before the election and quite another after. Yesterday I spoke about the government's neglect in the area of skills in the legislation that is presently before this House. We have a very, very thin agenda that goes nowhere near creating the high-skilled high-wage jobs of the future, whereas skills, training and education and their impact on people's ability to secure meaningful employment is of vital concern to the people I represent in the Scullin electorate and indeed Australians everywhere. This goes to the heart of meeting our productivity challenge. But opposite us we have a policy-free zone.

Today I was proud to walk out the front of parliament with many of my colleagues on this side of the House and stand with the Gonski vans, which have conducted a road trip around Australia. I did not see members opposite, but I am proud to stand up with advocates for public education in support of needs based education funding. From there I came into the parliament to meet with children from St John's Primary School in Thomastown. They were thrilled to see Bill Shorten, Australia's next Prime Minister, and they were very excited to hear from him. They were also very interested to hear that we would be debating education and skills, and I think their teachers were interested too, to see if this parliament can chart a pathway to better productivity, and to the high-wage, high-skill jobs of the future.

The urgency and importance of this debate is heightened for me and for many of my colleagues by the recent major job announcements, which impact on many people in the northern suburbs of Melbourne—most recently at La Trobe University, building on from Golden Circle, Ford, Holden, and all the other auto-related jobs. The government still does not have a jobs plan, but it is much worse than that. The failure to invest in education and skills will cause profound damage to our future prospects. This challenge is about productivity, but it is also about equity. That is why Labor took the Better Schools Plan to the last election. We acknowledge the critical role education plays in giving children the best possible chance of getting good jobs. Labor's plan, of course, was not the no-strings, bucket of money approach. It was a targeted, equitable allocation of funds based on individual student needs. It provided certainty to schools, something they never had under the SES model of the Howard government.

I heard yesterday from representatives of the Catholic Education Office, who are keen to emphasise these very points. They discussed their noble aim, and tradition, of assisting students in need, but they highlighted the massive financial disincentives the Howard era funding model created. For example, it costs about $13,000 to educate a child, but $64,000 to educate a child with special needs. Under the coalition's funding model, schools had a perverse incentive to turn away children who cost more to educate—this was needs based funding in reverse.

All schools and school communities desire certainty, and Labor gave it to them. That this government saw fit to walk away from that certainty, or perhaps to weasel out of existing arrangements, shows the contempt that the coalition has, not only for students and staff but for schools themselves, for Australia's future and for the job prospects of the kids at St John's Primary School in Thomastown, and many kids like them.

The coalition liked to engage in motherhood statements about education. We have heard some of them today, but their instinct is to cut it. As the member for Isaacs knows, one of the first acts of the Baillieu government in Victoria was to slash funding for TAFE. One of the first actions of this government was to break its core promise of a unity ticket for education funding.

As the member for Adelaide put it, at the core of the government's agenda is a smaller future—an end to needs based school funding, cuts to trade training, cuts to Youth Connection, and no skills agenda. It is neglect that must come to an end.

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