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

We know that government is all about priorities. We know that budgets are all about setting out and making clear what those priorities are. This government have made it very clear this week that ordinary Australians are a long, long way from being their priority. Their priority is big business. Their priority is millionaires, who they can afford to give a big tax cut to. Their priority is not the ordinary working Australians and the families who have been hit and hit again by these budget measures.

We know that, when it comes to ordinary Australians, they care about the education that their children receive. We know that they want assistance when it comes to balancing work and family through the childcare system. But we also know that these are issues that this government are happy to talk about, but we will judge them on their actions. Some people may have been excited when they picked up the newspaper on Sunday and read the headlines that this government would invest $1 billion into our schools. But what the government did not point out is that they are still going to rip out $29 billion first. You cannot change what was a $30 billion cut to our schools to a $29 billion cut to our schools and expect ordinary Australians to be grateful for it. Every student in every school will suffer if this government is re-elected. We know that in just the last two years of the current agreements alone Australian schools will be $3.5 billion better off if Labor is elected than under this government's plan for our schools.

Today we saw the centrepiece of the government's budget collapse in almost record time. We have seen it implode. But it turns out that there is a precedent for this. If we cast our minds back to the budget of just 12 months ago, we might remember that that had a centrepiece as well. The centrepiece of that budget was the government's plans to reform child care and make it more affordable for the Australian public. It was important that they announced this as a big plan because this was a promise they went to the last election with. In fact, in 2013, the then Prime Minister Tony Abbott said very clearly to ordinary Australians:

We're going to have much more affordable childcare with more money in parents' pockets and that's going to be very good for families.

Well, guess what, families of Australia: for those families who had a child when Tony Abbott made this pledge, that child will now be in school before this government plans to do a single thing to help with affordability or accessibility when it comes to child care. It was quietly announced in this year's budget that the centrepiece of last year's budget was all a bit hard and they are going to delay it. They have gone for three years without doing a single thing to assist Australian families with child care—except, I might add, cut over $1 billion out of the system and out of existing payments. And now they are going to the election saying: 'Vote for us. We promise we won't do anything when it comes to child care for another two years.' That is what is in this budget.

The Australian public and Australian families deserve better than that. The Australian public and Australian families deserve better than having a Prime Minister who stands up and waffles and waffles but delivers absolutely nothing for them. We know that Australian families will hurt as a result of the cuts to schools—cuts which were first announced in the 2014 budget by the former Prime Minister and the former Treasurer but now have the current Prime Minister's name on them. Make no mistake, $29 billion has been ripped from our school system under this Prime Minister, going to this election; and the childcare system was such a priority that they promised the Australian public they were going to reform the whole system. They were going to 'make child care much more affordable, with more money in parents pockets'. But when it comes to outlining what the actual priorities are, child care is not one of them. And when it comes to outlining and justifying why they can rip $29 billion out of our school system, it is because, they claim, it is not affordable.

Well, I will tell you what is not affordable. It is not affordable to not help families be able to participate in the workforce by having an affordable childcare system; and it is certainly not affordable to rob this country of our future prosperity, our future economic growth, by not investing in each and every young Australian. Regardless of their postcode, regardless of the local school they attend, every single Australian should have the opportunity to access a great school education. That is something they will get under Labor. That is something that is just not the priority of those opposite.

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