Joel Fitzgibbon (Hunter, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Agriculture) Share this | Hansard source

He says he will. I do not think his name is on the speakers' list. Maybe now that I am issuing the challenge he might find the intestinal fortitude to leap to his feet and defend this outrageous bill before the parliament. But I want others, from all of those electorates, to have a look at the speeches of their members, have a close look at those speeches, and see the extent to which they sought to defend this bill. And if they did not defend this bill, that will be even more interesting, because we do not have time to listen to all of them, and I would make an appeal to those residents to let us know what they were saying and to let us know where they thought they were being duplicitous. Have a close look, I say to those residents, at what their members have to say—and of course we will all have a very close look at what the member for O'Connor is now going to say, having been dragged screaming to the debate.

But what about the members for Calare, Capricornia, Murray, Parkes, Flynn, Maranoa, Dawson, Wide Bay, Hinkler, Durack—and O'Connor? We might have him; we might be able to move him—and La Trobe and Farrer, people representing rural and regional communities, the communities that are going to be the most adversely affected by this bill. Not one of them is on the list. And I did not mention the member for Hume. Maybe he has come in here now to make a contribution to this debate. Maybe the member for Hume has just come in to defend this bill, despite the adverse consequences for his local schools.

I was very proud to join the Australian Education Union and our leader and deputy leader and so many members of the federal parliamentary Labor Party in our party room last week, where we held an event to highlight the disadvantage. I was talking there to a high school teacher who was outraged by these funding cuts. He is a leader in the union movement as well. He comes from Armidale High School in the electorate of the Deputy Prime Minister. And guess what? He cannot even secure a meeting with his local member. As the president of the union locally, representing his school and teachers and the families of those students, he cannot even secure a meeting with the Deputy Prime Minister, who no doubt is too busy pork barrelling the APVMA into his electorate rather than worrying about the real issue in New England, and that is that we need to give students the best opportunity to secure a job.

The member for Hume is going to get sucked in to now quoting what is happening with school funding in Armidale. He just highlights the point. Of course school funding is going up, but it is not going up enough, I say to the member for Hume. It is not going up as much as it should. It is not going up as much as David Gonski insisted it must in order to give those students the best opportunities in life. So, I look forward to seeing the member for Hume, who is avoiding speaking on this bill, jumping, leaping to his feet and explaining to the residents of Hume why he is in here voting for a bill that is going to entrench disadvantage in his local electorate. I look forward to that very, very much. (Time expired)

Honourable members interjecting—

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