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

Mr Speaker, how is it fair to have a school funding policy that Labor had when they were in government which had special deals from one part of Australia to another, which had special deals between students in one system and another without any consistency? For years the Labor Party have said that they hold up David Gonski's report as the gold standard but they never implemented it. What did David Gonski call for? He called for national, consistent needs-based funding and that is exactly what the government has delivered. By 2023, every state school, every government school, will be receiving from the Commonwealth 20 per cent of the schooling resource standard. Everyone right across the country, they'll all be getting that on a fair basis. Now that's fairness; that's consistency; that's transparency. The total school funding expenditure from the Commonwealth government, under our policy, will increase spending by $23 billion over that period, over the decade. That's a substantial increase in spending and, above all, it is needs based. What did we see during the Batman by-election? Much to the horror—

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