Kate Ellis (Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

On two occasions today, the Minister for Education suggested that I was supportive of $1.2 billion being taken out of school funding under the former Labor government. That is just plain wrong. The state Liberal governments rejected $1.2 billion in school funding. In fact, Labor committed more than $10 billion to school funding over the full six years of the Gonski reforms, ensuring that every Australian school and every Australian student would be better off.

Furthermore, later on in question time today, the Assistant Minister for Education claimed that I had supported a '$300 million hijack of taxpayer funds in pursuit of a union recruitment drive'. This also is just not true. The Early Years Quality Fund was introduced as a short-term measure to increase childcare workers' wages whilst their pay claim was being put to the Fair Work Commission to determine a permanent, across-the-board increase. The Labor government also acted to support this pay claim by setting up a pay equity unit to help research the case. I am very proud that in contrast to those opposite, who seek to cut childcare wages, we have supported it continually and we continue to do so.

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