Warren Snowdon (Lingiari, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for External Territories) Share this | Hansard source

I sit here every day and I see Tony Abbott in drag sitting across the other side. There he is, Tony Abbott, in drag, masquerading, while the member for Wentworth talks to us about government policy, when we know the policies are exactly the same as the policies his predecessor, the member for Warringah, had—and that includes policies on education. We need to understand precisely what the government are doing. We know that they are cutting funding from schools in the out years. We know this, because they have said they are going to do it. It is no surprise; we all know it. We know what the impact will be on the education system, on every school and on every student around this country. We know that it will have a dramatic impact and that it will have the worst impact on people who live in remote and rural communities.

I am surprised that the National Party, the coalition partners of the government, are standing back and supporting these proposals, when they know, as I know, that the people with the worst educational outcomes in the country are people in the bush. The people with the worst employment outcomes in the country are people in the bush. The people with the worst health outcomes in the country are people in the bush. What the government are doing is compounding the differential between the country and city by undertaking these cuts. We know that every school in the bush will be negatively impacted by these cuts. Cutting teachers and cutting school expenditure will mean that kids get a poorer outcome. In the Northern Territory alone, $335 million will be ripped out of classrooms, with $179 million being ripped out of classrooms in my own electorate, Lingiari. The people in Lingiari, the bush communities, have the worst educational outcomes in the country. They have the worst health outcomes in the country.

The member for Aston spoke about the importance of quality teaching. We all accept the importance of quality teaching. But, if you hang your hat on the notion that, if you improve teaching quality, you will get the better outcomes you are after, you are kidding yourself—because there are a whole lot of support systems that need to operate which this government will not fund. I went to a community very recently where a seven-year-old girl was identified as having type 2 diabetes. These kids have chronic diseases. We have moving into the education system kids with mental health issues that are not being addressed. This funding cut that is being proposed by the government will compound the difficulties of providing support for those students and support for the very, very good teachers that teach them.

You are not going to improve things by continually cutting funding. As the member for Adelaide pointed out, all you are doing is increasing the growing gap between communities that are worse off and those that are well off. As she said, that gap is wider than the OECD average. We cannot tolerate this rubbish. We in this place need to have a genuine dialogue about how we properly address the concerns of parents and students around the nation regardless of where they live.

The government went to the last election promising people that they could vote Liberal or Labor and they would get exactly the same amount of funding for their school. It is no wonder people do not trust politicians. It is no wonder people have raised questions about the honesty of politicians, when the Leader of the Opposition comes into the chamber and argues against the government and says these things, and the shadow minister asserts the importance of understanding the truth about what the government said when it was in opposition. Understanding the impacts of what they have done in government and masquerading as a government that is actually trying to improve the outcomes, they have doubled the deficit since they have been in government. Is that a problem for the Labor Party? Yes, it is a problem for the Labor Party, because we will inherit it if we are in government.

But we have not made the outlandish claims that this government has made about how they are going to achieve a better outcome. What we know is this: we have identified the savings required for the investments in education which have been announced. We have identified those savings and we have had our expenditure properly costed. We invite the government to demonstrate some authenticity with the Australian people. Do not be dishonest. Tell us the truth and make sure you do the right thing by every Australian child, every Australian parent and every Australian school—something you are not doing.

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