Jason Clare (Blaxland, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I thank all members for their contribution to this short but important debate about what I think is the most important topic we can talk about: education, the most powerful cause for good in this country. You'd expect me to say that, and the Minister for Health and Aged Care will probably suggest something different in a moment.

Genuinely, thank you for your important contributions, starting with the member for Fowler. You've got the great privilege of representing one of the greatest parts of this country, including where I went to school—Cabramatta Public School and Canley Vale High School. I get exactly what you say. I'm on the record that a plunge pool for principal doesn't pass the pub test. I want to make sure that we're investing in the schools that need it the most, and we've made a commitment to set all schools on a path to 100 per cent of their full and fair funding. The NAPLAN data that came out recently, which I said was pretty good, considering that Sydney and Melbourne were in lockdown for much of the last couple of years, did tell us one thing that is important, that may be underlined here. If you look at NAPLAN over the last 14 years, you see the reading skills of primary school students today, compared to primary school students 14 years ago, are about a year ahead. That's pretty terrific. But if you dig a bit deeper and have a look at the reading skills of children from poor backgrounds and children from wealthier backgrounds, you see that that gap is growing. What we do there really, really matters. I've said publicly I want that to be the focus or one of the focuses of the next national schools reform agreement because it will help children in my electorate, which is next door to your electorate, Member for Fowler. I care about this deeply, and it's what we do here that can make the world of difference in making sure that children in our electorates and places like it across the country get to university and get to build a career, a family, a business and everything that comes from that.

The member for Moncrieff talked about the cost. Maybe the short answer to that is to go to page 17. The $4.5 billion is the net cost when you take into account the integrity measures, but it sets out in the footnotes exactly why the $4.7 billion figure is there. You talked about workforce. There are a couple of points that are important to make here. There are more people in the early education sector today than there were come the time of the election, about 6,000 more. That's a good thing, but that doesn't mean there's enough. There is still a real shortage. You said there's not a plan. That's not right. The former government and the former minister developed a plan. I'm sure the former minister wouldn't make that point, because he knows that the plan was developed by the former government. We're implementing it, so don't undermine the member for Aston.

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