Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for her question. I have to say that her colleagues on the opposition benches were shouting so loudly that I could not hear her question on the previous occasion, so I thank her and her colleagues at least for letting me understand her question. Let me say this to her: all of the schools in the electorate of Gilmore will receive substantially more funding under the government's school funding program. That is the first point.

The second point is that the $22 billion figure the honourable member talks about is complete fantasy money. It never existed. We are committing an additional $18.6 billion to schools—Catholic, independent and public schools—right across Australia, including in the electorate of Gilmore and, indeed, in the honourable member's electorate. The honourable members opposite can fantasise about the money that they never had, they never paid for and they never financed. They can fantasise about that as much as they like. It is not an aspiration on their part; it is a hallucination. It was never there.

The reality is that the parents in the honourable member's electorate and in the member for Gilmore's electorate deserve to know that the funding is there—it is committed, it is paid for and it is in the budget. We have done that. We have done the hard yards. We have raised additional revenue. We have made savings. We have delivered a budget that can fund that substantial increase in funding for schools—the largest level of Commonwealth funding for schools in our history.

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