Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am addressing a question and a point made by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition in this debate—a debate that she raised and an issue that she chose to bring up. Let me say that there is a big difference between turnover and profit. That is what we know. We do not understand why Labor wants to put the small business families who sends their kids to schools in more difficulty, not being able to invest more money in their own school choices, by not giving them a tax cut. People who run small businesses want their kids to go to schools and they want them to have good schools, but they want the performance of those schools to be better quality.

That is where the focus of this government's education policy has been. That is why in our focus we have looked at developing a diagnostic test for year 1 students to ensure that if there are literacy and numeracy problems early on we can address them and do something about them. That is the time to actually engage kids who are having really great difficulties in literacy and numeracy. We have put together initiatives to get and ensure that we maintain the best teachers in the classroom. We are reforming literacy and numeracy through improvements in STEM teaching. We know that the best jobs in the future will be jobs that require students to have stronger STEM knowledge.

Increased funding, as we know, does not mean increased performance. We have had increased funding in the education space for decades and yet the performance is slipping. That is why we need to ensure that the focus is on quality. A quality focused education policy will get us the outcomes we need to improve our performance against other countries. The Leader of the Opposition's corruption of the Gonski process demonstrates he is not fit to run the country. This notion is typical of Labor's approach to public policy. Labor is to public policy what Bernie Madoff is to financial management.

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