Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I'd like to begin my remarks by thanking all the teachers who showed up in classrooms today across this country. I'd like to particularly thank the graduate teachers who went to work today and had a bit of a tough day but who'll be back again tomorrow with a smile on their faces and a welcome for every student as they enter their classroom. Teaching is really complex. School leadership's really complex, and I'm glad that the member for Nicholls, in his one day as principal for a day, learned so much about the education system. I'm so glad that he wants us to use evidence based things in our schools and yet he came here with no evidence for most of the assertions that he just made! Seriously, it was riddled with errors. Where are the state negotiations up to, member for Nicholls? Perhaps you'd like to read a newspaper, or perhaps you could go to Minister Clare and ask for a briefing. The Victorian deal is signed. He Victorian deal is signed, and every Victorian state school will be funded by the Commonwealth to 25 per cent of SRS, member for Nicholls.

But you're a Victorian, and you want to talk about Victorian schools, so let's start there—let's start somewhere else. This really has more front than Myers—to bring this here to the federal parliament of Australia. The Commonwealth assists in funding schools but does not run a school; states run schools. For the second part, I just want to make sure everybody understands the hypocrisy to mention the funding programs and the funding agreements when those opposite, when in government, dashed the hopes of a generation of teachers, dashed their hopes that their work was finally going to be valued by a Commonwealth government, because they stopped the movement of Gonski. They told people, through their actions, that education is not valued in this country. In fact, what they did was cap the Commonwealth contribution to the SRS for state schools across the country to 20 per cent. But they didn't put a cap on private schools.

Like the member for Nicholls, I have been principal for a day since I've become an MP; unlike him, I was a principal for a lot longer than that. That means I understand the funding models. It also means that I can go to the My School website and I can see right now where independent schools in this country are being funded by the Commonwealth more than state schools are being funded by the state. That's the legacy of a coalition government. That is the legacy of a coalition government. So, for those who are listening in at home, just know that those opposite don't value education; those opposite want to criticise teachers. They want to criticise society. They don't understand the complexities of teaching at all. They want to talk about social media impacting our classrooms. If I have to hear from one more male member in this place about how they know about schools (a) because their mum was a teacher or (b) because they went to a school, well—as a profession, we'd like to be valued for the work we do, for the training we did, for the on-the-job training we did, for the perpetual learning that we committed to on the first day we walked into a school.

I didn't bring your family into it.

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