Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Social Inclusion. Will the minister update the House on the progress of the Council of Australian Governments productivity working group since COAG met in December last year? Will the minister outline to the House what she hopes COAG will achieve when it meets in Adelaide next week?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Braddon for his question. At the last election the Rudd Labor government argued that an education revolution was necessary to boost the productivity of our economy and lift workforce participation. We argued for productivity at work, with a fair and balanced workplace relations system, and we argued for the building of productivity for the future, with an investment in education and training, which had suffered 12 long years of neglect, including under the leadership of the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition.

Of course, we know that people who acquire skills and qualifications beyond the basics of schooling will earn more, they will contribute more, they will have longer working lives, and they will have access to more opportunities. And we know that investment in the early years and help for parents with childcare costs and schooling costs are very important to making sure people have the access to education that they should have. We have committed to investing billions of dollars in schools and in the development of trade training centres.

We are keeping our commitments in education, as we are keeping our commitments across government, because the Rudd Labor government believe in honouring our word—something not known to members opposite, who invented the term ‘non-core promise’. We have concluded that a different way of approaching reform is necessary if we are to deliver an education revolution right around the country. We need to have Commonwealth-state cooperation if we are really to make a difference.

Last December, the Prime Minister held a meeting of the Council of Australian Governments, and it agreed to make sure seven working groups drove the new reform agenda for the Commonwealth and the states. I chair one of those seven working groups, the productivity working group. It has met three times since the December COAG meeting. It has noted that in February 2007 the Productivity Commission found that early childhood education, education generally and skills and workforce development could boost participation by 0.7 per cent and productivity by up to 1.2 per cent by 2030. In percentage terms, this may sound fractional, but in dollar terms it is truly startling. This corresponds to an increase in GDP of around 2.2 per cent, or around $25 billion in today’s dollars—an amazing dividend from investing in productivity and participation by investing in education, from the education of our youngest children right through the spectrum of education.

Of course, we know when we look at the country today that educational opportunity and educational disadvantage are associated with local communities. We can all think, across this great nation, of communities that continue to experience disadvantage despite more than a decade and a half of economic growth, communities where, on current statistics, we know that, unless we act to make a difference, it is far less likely that children will successfully complete school and it is far less likely that they will have a successful working life. Indeed, it is quite likely that they will slip into disadvantage or have a working career with only a marginal attachment to the labour force, with periods of either unemployment or underemployment or cycling through unskilled jobs.

We do want to make a difference to that disadvantage. We have been working on making a difference to that disadvantage in the COAG productivity working group that I chair. We know that we are not well served by the lack of consistent national data on the distribution of disadvantage and its impact on schools. I hope and I expect that next week’s COAG meeting will agree to an unprecedented new agenda for raising educational outcomes and boosting productivity and participation in this nation. The agenda to be discussed at COAG will form the basis for the development of funding agreements and national partnerships designed to lift productivity and participation.

I would like to take this opportunity, on the parliament’s last sitting day before the COAG meeting, to thank my colleagues in the states and territories for the effort and commitment they have shown in contributing to this agenda.