Bill Shorten (Maribyrnong, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

This week we have actually seen the 'tale of two puppets'. I do not mean Punch and Judy and I do not mean Bert and Ernie. I mean the member for Wentworth and Harold the giraffe! They are both noble, stately, proud creatures. They are both exotic. They enjoy a water view. They are at home with the safari set. They are both famous for looking down on everyone, and in some parts of the world both are endangered species!

Now, we are hearing some familiar rumblings from the Liberal backbenchers. They have started to wonder if anyone is listening to the Prime Minister. They are questioning, with that head-slapping Conservative attitude, 'Is our message getting through?' And yet the first puppet to get it in the neck was not the member for Wentworth; it was our friend, poor old Harold the giraffe. At least he sticks his neck out for something! This is what Life Education has said:

The recent news that our 2017/18 Budget Submission was unsuccessful now finds Life Education defunded by the Australian Government for the first time in ‘literally decades’.

Sometimes it is the little things that speak volumes about the government.

In a budget which contained $65 billion given away to large companies, banks and multinationals; in a budget which has $37 billion protected for property investors; and in a budget with $19 billion for tax cuts for the top two per cent, this mean-spirited government could not find half a million dollars for a program that last year reached nearly three-quarters of a million children. It talked about a healthy lifestyle and the dangers of drugs. And now they say that it was all an honest mistake—it was an oversight.

But I can tell Australians what was not an oversight by the Liberal Party and their country cousins, the National Party: a $22 billion cut for Australian schools; cuts to TAFE, training and apprenticeships; increasing the cost of university; punishing graduates—especially women—by lowering the threshold at which the HECS repayments have to be paid; and, of course, the ongoing wreckage of Australian Apprenticeships.

These are all deliberate acts of political vandalism and they undercut the key to our future prosperity: education and training. Education is how we make our luck in this country. I acknowledge the work of our commodity sectors in meeting world demand. That is fantastic. But in some way that world demand is the luck that the world gives us. This budget does nothing to address the luck that we make for ourselves—being a clever country.

That is why if we want to compete in the world—if we want to be able to cope and collaborate and create in a world where we see the marvellous rise of India and China and the countries in our region—only Labor has a plan. It is Labor which will put $22 billion back into our school system—the $22 billion that the Liberals are cutting from government and non-government schools.

We heard today in question time about the special school in the South Australian system. Mr Turnbull says they are adding more money, but what the member for Wentworth does not tell us is that they are taking that increase using Mr Abbott's cuts—the member for Warringah's cuts—as the baseline. The fact of the matter is that the Catholic education system in South Australia, which run this special school, are desperate. They are the ones the parents will listen to. All of the rhetoric from the government, saying, 'Trust us,' is not going to wash with the parents. We know that some of those backbenchers with their heads down right now understand that the principals and the parents are not buying what Senator Birmingham is selling.

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