Nick Champion (Wakefield, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Manufacturing and Science) Share this | Hansard source

It was interesting listening to the previous speaker, the Liberal from Queensland, because he trotted out the exact same excuses that Nick Xenophon has been trotting out in the face of these cuts. A cut is a cut is a cut. If, in your first budget, as Mr Hockey did, you own up to these cuts, it's a bit hard to deny them years and years later. It's a $210 million cut. That is what's happening. And guess what? The government on their corflutes, without compromise, excuse or caveat, put up dollar-for-dollar matching: 'We're going to match dollar for dollar in education.'

Then they get into government and they change things. But the only reason they can change things is because the Nick Xenophon Team, and St Nick himself, broke his promise. We know what happened: he wrote to the Education Union before the election and said, 'I write to reiterate in the strongest possible terms the commitment of the Nick Xenophon Team in relation to the implementation of the Gonski funding model.' Then he talks about his colleagues—Griff, Kakoschke-Moore, Sharkie—who will stand by full implementation and full funding of Gonski. What do they do when they're elected to this place? I'll tell you: they voted 57 times to cut funding to South Australian schools and national schools. What damage did it do to schools in my local electorate? I'll tell you. At Craigmore High School, in the seat of Elizabeth, it means a cut of $880,000 over two years. At the South Downs Primary School, the school that my mum taught at many years ago, before she got pregnant with me: $116,000 over those two years. At the Mark Oliphant College: $1.2 million. That's rounded; it's actually an extra $77,000 on top of that. Parafield Gardens High School: $817,000. Virginia Primary: $290,000. I've got a whole page of cuts. So don't tell us they're not real cuts. Don't tell us they don't really make a difference. They make a difference to Craigmore High School. They make a big difference to South Downs Primary School. And they make a big difference to country schools as well. In Greenock Primary: $95,000 over those two years. At Kapunda High School, where I studied: $425,000 over those two years.

Being raised in a country town, I can tell you something. The one thing they dislike more than people who lie—they really dislike people who don't keep their word in the country—but they don't like sanctimonious hypocrites, either. And we know that St Nick, lately of Hartley in South Australia, but who has run for every other political office in South Australia as well—is a sanctimonious hypocrite, because he goes on and on about trust in the political system. He goes on and on about 'breaking the two-party duopoly' and the new politics of centrism, and how it's going to liberate us from all of the sins of politics. But the truth is that he said one thing before an election and did another thing after the election, which had a dramatic effect not just on communities, not just on South Australians in Craigmore or South Downs, but all over. Generations of children are going to go to schools which have inadequate funding, because these cuts get locked in and they roll on. The same way higher funding, as was originally implemented in the Gonski package, would have had an upwards effect on kids' education.

We know there's an election, and we know that a new politics is being offered by St Nick of Hartley. But let me tell you something: a vote for SA-BEST, a vote for the Nick Xenophon Team, is a worthless vote, because he'll say one thing before an election—he'll do anything: any media stunt, anything to get his head on TV; he'll say and do anything with any stakeholder—and then after the election he'll do dirty deals with the Liberal Party, because deep down he's a Liberal. He's just got a grudge against the local Liberal Party, who wouldn't let him into Adelaide's student union many moons ago.

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