Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is again to the Prime Minister. I refer to the Prime Minister’s answer to my last question where he said that the proposal for a national curriculum was in fact a proposal from the current education minister, Julie Bishop. Does the Prime Minister recall the fact that in 2002 the previous education minister, Brendan Nelson, also promised to establish a national curriculum? Prime Minister, what has the government been doing for the last five years in not delivering this outcome for a national curriculum for this country, which our children need?

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I am quite aware that the former minister for education the very distinguished former member for Goldstein in this parliament did raise that proposal. I am also aware, as no doubt the Leader of the Opposition is aware, that in order to bring about something of this nature you do need the cooperation of state governments.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would have thought that it was self-evident that you do need the involvement and cooperation of state governments. My experience is that sometimes state governments cooperate with you and sometimes they do not. Sometimes some state governments cooperate with you and one does not—although hopefully later on that state government will cooperate with you. I have to say that, over the past few weeks, every time the issue of a national curriculum has been raised the reaction of state education ministers—

Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Trade and Regional Development) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Oh, it’s their fault.

David Hawker (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Hotham is warned.

John Howard (Bennelong, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, I was just observing it. It is not their fault actually. Every time the issue has come up, in the case of New South Wales the state education minister has said, ‘Well, we’re not going to alter our curriculum because we think all the others are lousy.’ In the case of the other state education ministers, they have said, ‘We’re not going to have the federal government imposing their views on us.’ So it will be very interesting to see whether there are good national curricula and bad national curricula and whether the reaction of state education ministers will be the same to the proposal put forward by the Leader of the Opposition, which is essentially the same as that which has been advocated by the Commonwealth for a number of years. If in fact the state education ministers change their tune because the federal Labor Party have put up the proposal, it will demonstrate what we have believed for a long time: that they have been playing politics for a number of years.