Karen Andrews (McPherson, Liberal Party, Assistant Minister for Vocational Education and Skills) Share this | Hansard source

I have a message for the mums and dads of Australia, and that very simple message is that your kids will get a better quality education under a coalition government than you will ever get for your kids under a Labor government. The reason for that is that the coalition government is the government of quality education. We know on this side of the House that funding is important, but what you do with that funding is just as, if not more, important than the quantum of the funding. There are numerous examples. Those opposite, if they had read the reports that are available about the standards of our education here in Australia and the comparison with education standards overseas, would know that here in Australia we have a lot of work to do to ensure that our kids can compete internationally and globally—because, despite the record funding that is being injected into education, our standards are, unfortunately, slipping. The time has come when we need to face up to the fact that significant work has to be done focusing on the quality of education here in Australia.

On this side we all know that funding of schools is a responsibility of the state and territory governments and the Commonwealth government. The Commonwealth provides about one-third of government funding to schools, with the state and territory governments providing the remainder. I have already said that school funding under this government is at record levels over the forward estimates. We can also demonstrate very clearly that the Commonwealth contribution is outpacing the contributions of the states and the territories. But I am not necessarily here today to have a debate about the quantum of the funding; I am actually here because I am interested in a good-quality outcome in education for our students. As I have indicated before, we know that there is not necessarily a direct link between the quantum of funding and the outcome. That has been demonstrated in a number of studies, particularly when we compare ourselves with many of the overseas countries that have a much lower per capita gross domestic product than Australia and yet are outperforming us. So we know that there are other things that you need—

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