Alex Hawke (Mitchell, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Immigration and Border Protection) Share this | Hansard source

This is an example of exactly the kind of poor behaviour that Australians are turning against—this sort of sham protesting, faux outrage. They are not here for an intelligent, sensible debate, but are instead holding up shameless props—which do not say anything, mind you, because if you listen to this debate carefully and you follow what is going on, if you listened to the Prime Minister today— (Quorum formed) Of course, it is good to have all my friends and colleagues here to talk about the importance of education spending, because this is a government that is spending record amounts of funding on education in Australia today. And it is to the eternal shame of the Deputy Leader of the Opposition that she storms out of here in a hissy fit because she is not allowed to use props in relation to a debate. They are the rules of this chamber, and the rules of this chamber apply to all members equally because we are here to debate intelligent points.

When you consider that this government is spending record amounts of money in education—every year, every Australian government has increased education funding in Australia. And it is, of course, a fact today that we are still seeing results in international standards and international terms in important subjects like maths and reading and writing that are not living up to the amounts of money that the government is spending. If you listen to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition—

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