Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Australian Education Amendment Bill 2017. It is a great privilege to be able to contribute to this debate on behalf of the people of Goldstein, particularly because the central thrust of this government's proposal is to focus on equality of opportunity for every Australian child. One of the tragedies of this debate, as we just heard from the previous speaker, is highfalutin rhetoric designed to achieve a political gain, rather than focusing on what is in the best interests of Australian children to make sure that no matter where you come from, no matter what your circumstances, your background or who your parents are, every Australian child has the best chance to be able to secure a good education that is funded and enjoys public support to make sure you have the best chance to be successful in life. That is the central thrust of everything that sits at the heart of this education package, ably led by the education minister, Senator Simon Birmingham. That is, in the end, why I applaud it.

One of the most disappointing parts of this debate has been the continual effort by those on the opposition benches to talk about funding cuts that are simply fictitious and imaginary. Do not get me wrong: they are not alone. They are being aided, for instance, by the state government of Victoria. I had a constituent who emailed me only a few days ago saying, 'I have just read a news story in The Age newspaper.' I could not find it on their front page, and I am not surprised, because they should have been embarrassed by it. It was basically a carbon copy of a state government of Victoria press release, going through how the federal government, despite spending $18.6 billion additionally on education across Australia, was somehow cutting education across the board and to every single school.

That seemed to me a rather fictitious proposition, but I persevered. I have an inquisitive mind and sometimes like to see what the basis is of the fallacies and lies put out there by the Australian Labor Party and particularly the Andrews government. I read through the story and it became clear that they had simply generated a whole bunch of numbers which helped support their argument, because rather than focus on how to improve the outcomes for Australian children, they would rather dedicate the lives and energies of bureaucrats in the education department towards running a fictitious political campaign—arguably an abuse of their time and resources. You could tell, because there was not a single specific number. There was a number that said, 'This school loses somewhere between $200,000 and $400,000 a year'—whatever school it was that was specifically listed. That seemed to be pretty spectacular, considering that it was supposed to be an exact identification of how much money was going to be cut.

So I continued to engage with this constituent, and I said, 'I do not think that is right, because if you use the education department's estimator about how much money is to be spent on the school'—I will not name the school—'it showed quite a substantial increase in expenditure.' Eventually we got to the bottom of it and found a state government of Victoria funding estimator that they applied to every single school. This constituent said—this is what they said to me; I did not make this up—'Every time I enter the name of a school, there was a cut.' I said, 'Do you think perhaps they should reveal how it is calculated; what the evidence base of it is; where the information came from?' None of that was present. All that was available was, there was this school and there was a funding cut, within these huge parameters of hundreds of thousands of dollars. Then I pointed him to the education department's estimator, which said, 'This is your school; this is the amount of money you get now; this is the amount of money you will get next year; this is the amount of money you are going to get in 2027 based on enrolment data.' Obviously the last part is hypothetical, but with specific dollars. Then it breaks it down, aggregated for the school and also for the students.

I said, 'Which data do you trust more—the one that is specific and gives you a clear indication, or this round number put up by the state government?'

Eventually we found that the state government number of $22 million was based on a fictitious promise that they could never back up, that they could never fund, to increase the amount of expenditure on education. They had simply rounded it out by the number of students, weighted a little bit.

It is quite common to say that some people cannot lie straight in bed when you are saying something that is not accurate, but the truth of the Australian Labor Party today, particularly when it comes to education funding, is they could not lie straight in a coffin. That is how dishonest this campaign is. It is simply not true. The federal government is spending more money on public schools, independent schools and the Catholic education system than has ever been spent. That is the truth. That is a factual accuracy. Nominally, there is a huge amount of money being spent. There is a significant increase in funding to independent schools, to Catholic schools and also to state government schools. Not a single school in the electorate of Goldstein is losing a dollar of funding. Every single one is seeing a dollar increase.

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