Bert Van Manen (Forde, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is always a pleasure to rise and speak in this House about school funding, because I can assure the member opposite that we firmly believe in funding our schools appropriately. It is interesting to note that, as the mover of this motion, she has not even stayed around to listen to this contribution, which may help educate those opposite somewhat on what is really happening in the school funding space.

Let us first of all clarify a few misconceptions. The money that the member opposite was talking about was never, ever anywhere budgeted for. It was never, ever budgeted for. Explain to your constituents that budgets operate on four-year cycles, and that is what the money is budgeted for. The reality of the fact is that this government has honoured the remaining three years of the funding commitments in the previous Labor government's budget, bringing it to a total of four years. So we have honoured our election commitments that we would match that funding commitment. What we have done is after that—and this shows the complete hypocrisy of those opposite, because they have never said where this extra money is going to come from; never, ever have they budgeted for that.

It is interesting to note that the ABC's Fact Check—not the greatest friend of the coalition government, I must admit—investigated these so-called cuts, and in their verdict they found that we have not cut $30 billion from schools in the May budget.

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