Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am very pleased to rise and speak on this topic of school funding, especially in light of some of the comments we are consistently hearing from the opposition in this debate. Those who care about the quality and the standard of debate in Australia, those who have ever wished that politicians might be restricted from saying blatantly untrue things and those who have an interest in sound policy should be listening very, very carefully to the words that the opposition are using with respect to school funding and they ought to be alarmed.

Listening to Labor's lies, one might conclude that the government was actually delivering less school funding than Labor did. It is a fact that this government is delivering record levels of federal government money towards schools. We are delivering more this year than last year, more than any year before and certainly more than Labor provided. And anyone who is inclined to believe the Labor lies should just ask a Labor politician to show them an actual graph of the funding delivered over recent years and they will see very plainly what I am about to say.

The budget papers show very clearly how the federal government's support of schools is growing each and every year. The federal government's contribution to running schools is $16.1 billion this financial year, rising to $20.2 billion in 2020—an increase of over 26 per cent. Now, that is for all school funding as a whole. But let's dive into what I think is the most relevant component of the funding, because I think what matters most sometimes in this debate is how the funding is delivered to government schools.

In my state of Queensland the federal government is helping the state to run state schools to the tune of $1.37 billion in this financial year, rising to $1.79 billion in 2020—an increase of about 33 per cent. And anyone who cares about school funding can go and confirm what I have just said for themselves. These numbers are in the budget papers—people can go straight to the source and checked this out for themselves. The budget is available online—Budget Paper No. 1, statement 5, page 5-49. It shows the government spending, expenses by area under education and under schools. It is all there in black and white. They can see straight away that the funding numbers are going up, not down. They are going up by an amount that is higher than the rate of inflation and population growth combined. It is increasing per student per year in real terms.

Labor's next lie which needs to be called out is that they are trying to say that they would have spent more. They want us to believe that if they promise to spend more then somehow that equates to cuts on our side, even though our funding level is going up and up. The former speaker, my colleague the member for Bowman, already spoke about Labor making promises in the out years, when they do not have to make their promises add up in the budgetary sense. I guess it is a case of 'promises, promises'. Labor promised this extra funding at exactly the same time as they promised our country three economic surpluses, which obviously never happened either.

On the topic of accuracy, I want to say one thing about the name 'Gonski'. On state school fences around Brisbane there are green signs saying that Gonski is making a difference in those schools. In fact, Gonski is not making a difference in those schools, in the sense that Gonski has never actually existed in the state of Queensland. No Gonski agreement was ever made in Queensland, or in most states around Australia for that matter. The kindest interpretation we could use is that the funding agreement with the Queensland government is Gonski inspired. But it is not Gonski funding, and if a local business made a claim like that it would be unlawful under Consumer Law.

For parents, teachers and students who do not know, those signs were printed up by the Queensland Teachers Union, not by the schools. My understanding is that the teachers union offers to host a free barbecue or similar for the teachers at the local school—and who does not want a free barbecue? I fully understand that. But one of the conditions of having that barbecue is that these signs talking about Gonski funding go up in the school when in fact, of course, technically that does not exist.

There is an interesting article in The Sydney Morning Herald today by Ross Gittins. It makes the point that the Gonski report was not really ever about additional funding being a key to improving education. It was about balancing funding at whatever level it was provided on the basis of measured need.

On the topic of school funding Labor are misleading the public. I am calling them out on it today. Anyone who really cares about school funding should support this government for as long as it continues to deliver record funding to local schools and should think twice about a political party like Labor that would seek to mislead and scare, and to drag sound policy into their murky politics.

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