Chris Hayes (Fowler, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I would like to think that most members who come to this place appreciate the honour they have in representing their community and doing the best they can for the future, not only for their constituents but for all those within their respective communities. But when it comes to education, health and other issues—although this debate is about education—you have to start to look at not just what this government says but what this government does.

A number of faces I see here were here in 2013. We saw in the lead up to that election that the government obviously did some polling and worked out that, in terms of health and education, they could not have much division with Labor. When it came to education, the view from the then shadow minister was that there was not daylight between them and Labor and, therefore, if you voted Liberal you got the same deal as if you voted Labor. He said, 'We all subscribe to needs based education, so this is not a division; this is a unity ticket.' And what did they do? As soon as they got in, they tried to take $30 billion off that. They led with the view that there would be no cuts to education, not cuts to health and no cuts to pensions, but they moved on all those.

When it comes to education, I think we have to be realistic about it insofar as this is an investment. There is no question about it. I know the member for Gilmore says, 'This is not our problem; it's a matter for the states.' I will tell you what is our problem: investing in this country and in its future. The best way of investing in the future is through education. Not only does it give a ticket to opportunity for young people in the future but it also actually skills up these young people for the jobs of the future. By the way, that is our future as a country. I get concerned when we hear the explanation or the doubling down as to why this is not a $22 billion cut to education.

The Prime Minister was asked on repeated occasions today, 'If it is not $22 billion, what is the number between the Liberals policy on education and what Labor would deliver over the next 10 years?' Apart from the obfuscation that occurred, nothing really happened. They were not prepared to come out and say, '$22.3 billion,' but the PMO was quite happy to go out and circulate a briefing statement to all of our colleagues up in the press gallery to say, 'This is what it amounted to.' This is a key area of investment in this country. There are many key areas, but education is what we need if we want to be that smart, innovative nation for the future. Yet they are trying to double down. How do you get back out of this and call it a saving of $22 billion?

I am not in a habit of quoting Liberal state ministers, but I will on this occasion—Minister Rob Stokes in New South Wales. He made it very clear. He said:

We made sure we found the funds we needed to meet the obligations under the agreement we signed in good faith with the commonwealth government. We have funded the full six years of our agreement with the commonwealth.

He goes on to say:

… we have a deal with the commonwealth government and we expect that deal to be honoured.

If he cannot get a deal out of his liberal mates here in Canberra, I guess this guy cannot get a deal at all. The head of the NSW Department of Education, a senior public servant, says that the Commonwealth budget contains an increase of $820 million for New South Wales Schools but that there remained a shortfall of $1.8 billion in the existing agreement. That has been circulated at every school and to every PNC; every principal has that letter from Mark Scott, the Secretary of the NSW Department of Education.

Education should not be an issue that we are coming in here and debating about. I would have thought that all of us who have been the product of, hopefully, a decent education understand that it is the ticket to success in a country like ours. I have seen what it means for areas such as mine in Fowler. For those who are not aware, my electorate in southwestern Sydney is not a rich electorate. As a matter of fact, it is an electorate that is primarily made up of migrants, but the vast majority are refugees. We are actually slated to have the majority of the new refugees from Syria who come to New South Wales come to my electorate. Education is very, very big for those young people—kids for whom English is not a first language and kids who come from a war-torn, persecuted background. We expect a lot of our schools and a lot of our teachers, but this government has just turned its back on all of that.

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