Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

In an effort to be as unequivocal and as brief as I possibly can: this MPI claim is incorrect. Minister Andrews was absolutely right just before when she pointed out that ABC Fact Check has already looked at this question. It states:

RMIT ABC Fact Check takes a deep dive into the figures.

The verdict

Ms Plibersek's claim is misleading: the Government is not cutting $22 billion from schools.

Commonwealth budgets set out spending over a four year period.

According to the … budget handed down on May 9, Commonwealth schools funding will continue to rise every year.

I could almost stop there. That is all the Australian people need to know. The plain fact is that this MPI claim is completely misleading. It is utterly false. Labor are misleading. That is the quote from the ABC Fact Check. Members opposite have proven time and time again in this parliament their tenuous grip on reality, let alone facts and figures, when it conflicts with their own political interests. There might just be for once a member over there who can still slightly detect reality, even when it is not convenient to them, so for their benefit I will continue.

There is no cut. There are funding increases. Schools will receive more money next year compared to this year, and their funding goes up for each and every one of the next 10 years under our plan. Let us cut to the heart of this. Labor's alleged cuts are compared to fantasy figures. They are not compared to the actual spending figures this year, last year or next year. They are not compared to actual numbers contained in the budget passed by this parliament. They are trying to compare our plans to a set of numbers that Labor once promised in the death throes of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd years. They never funded those promises. They never had any idea how to fund their crazy promises in that crazy period, and they are not even committed to delivering that funding now.

As the Prime Minister said today in question time, Labor are comparing fantasy figures that are not locked in anywhere. They are perpetrating a massive fraud, 'a hallucination'. The only fact Labor really knows is that this MPI topic really has little to do with education funding and much more to do with their politics. If it was all about whether funding should be higher, funding should be equitable, funding should be needs based or funding should be transparent, our historic reforms would have been legislated by now, because that is what our reforms deliver and that is why David Gonski has endorsed them. Labor has been exposed. For years they mindlessly mouthed and repeated the name Gonski, but now they do not dare speak his name. Neither of the two former speakers did. It is almost quite funny and comical. David Gonski has become the Voldemort of the Australian Labor Party: he who shall not be named.

David Gonski does not practise the dark arts, nor does he lurk in the halls of this Parliament House looking, searching, for the shadow education minister. And if he were here he probably would just want to chat with the member for Sydney. He probably would just want to know why the sudden change of mind, why all these backflips and why these Labor politicians and union leaders are tying themselves into pretzels compared to the former positions that they very recently held.

There is no $22 billion cut. We are increasing funding by $18.6 billion, in fact, compared to current funding levels. But don't take my word for Labor's hypocrisy, don't just take the word of the ABC's Fact Check, take The Sydney Morning Herald's Matthew Knott. He said: 'The Labor Party is in a position that has grown increasingly absurd as the debate has progressed.' Or here is Pete Goss, school education program director at the Grattan Institute, on Labor and the unions' complete misrepresentation of the facts:

Having won the philosophical war on needs-based funding of schools, the union is now in danger of snatching defeat from the jaws of victory. If the amendment fails this week, government schools will get less money, not more.

Or how about this salient editorial from the Fin Review, which says: 'The true saga of education under Labor is one of extravagant promises, lost opportunities and overblown rhetoric.'

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