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

Given the high level of interest from government members in using this time to ask questions of their own ministers, I am going to have to squeeze two different portfolio topics into this five minutes, so forgive me if I do some speed talking.

I will begin on early childhood education. These budget papers do something pretty extraordinary: they outline how we can spend an additional $3 billion of taxpayer funds to make hundreds of thousands of Australian children and their families worse off. I know that, despite increasing expenditure of taxpayers money, the government's proposed changes make one-in-three families, that is 330,000 families, worse off. The government's proposed changes also leave almost half of all families either worse off or no better off—556,000 Australian families—and over 71,000 families within an income below $65,000 per year worse off.

Perhaps what is worse than all of this is the impact that these reforms have been shown to have on some of the most vulnerable children in Australia. By now the parliament should be clear on what all of the evidence makes very clear: the children who benefit the most from access to quality early childhood education services are those in the two years before school or those children who come from dysfunctional families who are particularly vulnerable. What we do know is that, under the Budget Based Funded Program, Indigenous and mobile services will be placed under serious threat as a result of these changes, as a result of what is in this budget.

This is a government that stands and talks about closing the gap, that stands and talks about needing to invest in education, and that claims to know that this is the greatest way that we can increase opportunities so that Australian children today have greater potential and greater opportunities than the parents and grandparents who came before them. At the very same time, we know that under the Budget Based Funded Program the Indigenous and mobile services that are accessed by 20,000 children in mostly rural and remote communities will be put under threat. Many of the services will not be financially viable and will close as a result of the proposals placed in this budget, and as a result of the Australian taxpayers spending an additional $3 billion at the very same time. My question is: why won't the government listen and change their approach on funding these services when the PC has identified that 15,000 more early education places are needed for Indigenous children, not less?

On early childhood education we also know that, as a result of the measures in the government's budget, they have already ended all professional development programs for early childhood educators. A government that regularly stand up and say that they recognise that teachers are the most important part of our education system, when it comes to our schools, are providing absolutely no ongoing professional development for our early childhood educators. Why won't the government support educators to support our children?

With regard to vocational education, there are a number of reforms that the government has announced. When Labor announced a number of policies earlier this year, in May, the government claimed that they would not work. I ask: what is it that made the government change their mind? The government claimed the policies would not work; the government claimed that they were in the wrong direction. The government claimed that capping student loans to stop rip-offs was the wrong approach—though of course they are now trying to adopt it. Labor announced that we would crack down on brokers. We announced that we would link publicly funded courses to industry need and skills shortages, and that we would require providers to reapply under new standards. What is it that made the government change their mind from May this year, when they opposed many of these very same proposals?

And my question with regard to the budget is: obviously there is no funding contained within the budget for the next national partnership; given the reforms that the government have announced, many of them copied at the last minute, quite hypocritically, how is it that they are going to ensure a sustainable future for the vocational education sector of Australia at the same time as, by their own account, they will be saving billions of dollars from that sector if it is not through the national partnership? How much funding will be provided for the national partnership, and when will this national partnership be negotiated and announced? And will the government ensure that the strong future of TAFE is guaranteed as a result of the upcoming national partnership?

See this speech in context