Luke Gosling (Solomon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

With all due respect, the member would not know what true needs based funding is if it hit her in the head. We went through this last time the member for Boothby got up, and we had to point out how much schools in her electorate were going to be worse off. The member for Grey—through you, Deputy Speaker—and the member for Durack say that this is great news for your electorates, when you know how much in need your electorates are. The schools in your electorates deserve better than you are giving them. You said to the Australian people and to people in your electorates that you were going to do one thing, and then you did not. You just totally backflipped.

An honourable member: Not a dollar difference!

'Not a dollar difference' is what you said, but you did not deliver that.

I am the member for Solomon, in Darwin, in the Northern Territory, with great cities like Palmerston. When we look at the Northern Territory we can see that there is lots of need. As a father I obviously want the very best for my children, as all Australian parents do. But unfortunately what we are being served up is not the best for our kids or our schools. You know it is true.

I guess quality education for our kids across Australia under the model that we came up with in the initial Gonski plan meant that, whether you lived in Palmerston in the Northern Territory or Peppimenarti, in the NT, or Point Piper, you had the opportunity to get a great education. Under these $22 billion of cuts—and you can say it all you want—the system that we put in and that we projected over the forward estimates is changed by your side of politics, and there is $22 billion less, which equates to $240 million less for the schools in the Territory. That is a cut. That is less funding going to our schools, and that is simply not acceptable.

I have been talking with the Catholic system, and they are obviously very disappointed. In the Northern Territory, the Catholic education system has been educating Territory kids for over 100 years. In our Bishop Hurley's words, the Catholic schools in the Northern Territory are part of the community. They are not apart from it; they are part of the community.

But you have singled them out with no consultation and changed the formula by which support is given to children with special needs. You have no idea about children growing up in the Territory—some of the communities, some of the special needs cases that we have. For the Catholic system, without any consultation, you have changed the formula so that they are disadvantaged when it comes to kids with special needs getting support. It is atrocious, and the same thing is happening in other jurisdictions like those some members opposite claim to represent.

You are vandalising the future of our country and our kids. I think back to the Territory school that I visited about 10 years ago in a little Aboriginal community called Umbakumba. It was a primary school. I wonder what opportunities those kids have had. Did they have that spark from a teacher or an assistant teacher? I think about the kids with FASD. I think about those kids with not that many opportunities to go on with in life. You are disadvantaging the schools and the school systems that are trying to lift up the horizons of those kids so that they can fully participate in our great country. It is really important to lift up those kids' horizons, and it is simply not going to happen with these cuts to the education budget—the budget that they would have had had we continued with those initial Gonski plans.

The damage that is going to be done will be particularly keenly felt in the Territory, and that is why I am very pleased to be able to represent the parents, the teachers, the principals and the school councils of the Territory who really thought that you said you were going to do something different from this. They really thought that you were going to be good to your words. There has been a lack of consultation and faulty planning, and the children of the Territory will suffer. They deserve better.

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