Tony Abbott (Warringah, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Given that the budget will drive gross debt way past $300 billion, will the Prime Minister have the honesty to bring legislation raising the debt ceiling before this parliament?

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

To the Leader of the Opposition's question, I refer him to the answers given by the Deputy Prime Minister yesterday and what the budget papers reveal. I think he is making the same error or engaging in the same deliberate confusion as the shadow Treasurer was yesterday between face value and market value.

Steve Georganas (Hindmarsh, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Why is it important to fully fund both DisabilityCare Australia and the National Plan for School Improvement? How are those investments in the budget making Australia stronger, smarter and fairer?

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

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for his question and know that on behalf of his constituents he is very focused on jobs and opportunity and on making sure that every child gets a great education. I know that he personally has been a very big advocate for disability care.

On Tuesday night in the government's budget we laid out our choice for Australia's future. We laid out clearly before the Australian people the future that we want to build for them. It is a future that would be fairer because it is a future that would include disability care. It is our way of supporting Australians with disability, their carers and families and of giving peace of mind to every Australian that, should the worst happen to either them or a member of their family, disability care would be there. We laid out before the Australian people very clearly the decisions we had made to fully fund disability care over a decade. Those were not easy decisions but the right decisions for the nation's future.

On Tuesday we deliberately chose a smarter future for our nation, investing $14.5 billion extra into school education, seeking to work with states and territories around the country on a two for one funding deal to make sure that every Australian school—all 9,500 of them—has the resources that they need in that school to get those children a great education tied with a plan for school improvement that we know will work because we have seen it work in Australian schools. We outlined our choice for a stronger economy in the future, an economy in which we support jobs and growth—decent jobs, jobs with good working conditions, jobs that Australians will want to do and be able to build their lives around, jobs of the future during this century of change in our region. These are jobs that will require us to have the best of infrastructure, the National Broadband Network and a clean energy future.

In laying out your choices, you show the nation what you believe the nation should become in the future. Tonight is the turn of the Leader of the Opposition to do the same—to lay out his choices for the nation's future and particularly to be transparent with the Australian people about his plans.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, on a point of order: the Prime Minister is in defiance of the standing orders because she was not asked to comment on the Leader of the Opposition's speech tonight. She was asked about her own plans.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business will resume his seat. The Prime Minister has the call and will refer to the question before the chair.

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

Thank you very much, Speaker. I was making the very simple point that the opportunity the Leader of the Opposition has tonight is to lay out his alternate choice for the nation, a choice to cut to the bone, a choice that Australians should have the full information on so they can see the differences very clearly between the government's plan and what the Leader of the Opposition has in store for the Australian people if he has a chance. (Time expired)

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. I refer the Treasurer to this graph from the budget booklet, 'National Plan for School Improvement', that shows that the cuts to education will outstrip new spending on education for the four years from 2013 to 2017.

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Manager of Opposition Business will desist from using the prop.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

How can the government claim that it is implementing a new school funding model based on the Gonski report that called for $6½ billion in new spending when it is cutting education in real terms for the next four years?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I can well understand his embarrassment. He is embarrassed because their policy that they want to take forward is going to result in very significant cuts to schools right across the country because we have increased school funding substantially. Real education funding has increased by 35 per cent.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order, the Treasurer will resume his seat. The member for Mackellar will withdraw. She knows she cannot continue to use that word even if it is only me who continues to hear her say it.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Mackellar, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Seniors) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I will withdraw, Madam Speaker.

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Real funding for education has increased by 35 per cent since 2007-08, and what we have put at the heart of this budget—which everyone on this side of the House is proud of—is a very substantial increase in funding for the school improvement program. Over six years, $9.8 billion will go to improve schools right around our nation if we can get the state premiers to sign up. Barry O'Farrell has had the guts to do so. Other state premiers have not been so forthcoming, because the Leader of the Opposition has been out there trying to bully them into not signing up to a financial agreement which will mean better schools right across our whole nation. At least Barry O'Farrell in New South Wales has had the decency to recognise how important this future funding is for schools right around our country.

The spokesman opposite knows that the national partnership money has been rolled into this increased funding, and, as is usual, he comes in here fiddling the figures—distorting them—trying to conduct a fear campaign when we have got in place a program which is acceptable to the Liberal Premier of New South Wales for all of the schools in that state. But those opposite want to play politics with this issue. They are acutely embarrassed by the fact that they want to stop an existing funding model which in my state of Queensland, if they were in power, would mean $2 billion less for Queensland schools. I can tell you this: this is going to be an acute embarrassment for the Liberals in Queensland and those other states that have not signed up, because this goes to the core of what sort of Australia we want and whether there is a government prepared to make the investments for the future. We on this side of the House are prepared to make those investments; those on that side of the House have a plan for cuts to the bone, particularly in health and education.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I seek leave to table page 15 of the National Plan for School Improvement, which has the graph that shows that the cuts to education outstrip new spending until the end of—

Leave not granted.

Geoff Lyons (Bass, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Treasurer. Why is it so important to present the Australian people with a detailed, costed plan to make our nation and our economy stronger?

Wayne Swan (Lilley, Australian Labor Party, Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Bass for that question. We do have a detailed plan to create prosperity in our nation and to spread opportunity to every postcode of our nation. What we are doing in this budget is building on our underlying economic streets. We have an economy which is 13 per cent bigger than it was before the global financial crisis, and it will be 22 per cent bigger by mid-2015. Something like 960,000 jobs have been created in Australia since we came to office, and we have got a AAA credit rating from the three major global rating agencies. What all this says is that we got the big economic calls right in this country when they were needed, and, in particular, we got them right during the global financial crisis.

Overnight we have seen some more disturbing data which has come from Europe. We have now seen that there have been six consecutive quarters of negative growth in Europe, and what is being done in Europe is they are following a policy of austerity—austerity for austerity's sake. What that is leading to is contractions in those economies and higher unemployment. We on this side of the House have taken a choice. We have taken the choice to support jobs and growth and to do that for the long-term benefit of our economy. The budget makes our economy stronger through critical investments in infrastructure but also makes our nation smarter because we have put in place additional investment for the school improvement program. Most importantly, it makes our nation fairer, because we are fully funding DisabilityCare Australia.

I guess that is why it was so disappointing to see in the Telegraph today that a source very close to the Liberals said that they would not be providing the same amount of money as the government would provide for DisabilityCare. They were telegraphing, if you like, in the Leader of the Opposition's favourite newsletter that they were going to cut funding for DisabilityCare Australia. On this side of the House there is a vision for the future, there are detailed plans and there is funding for a decade. What we know is on that side of the House is a plan for vicious cuts, a plan for cuts to disability and a plan for cuts to schooling, because what they are doing is following the approach of Campbell Newman. Campbell Newman took to the people of Queensland a whole set of proposals, none of which he did after the election. He had a commission of audit and he cut to the bone in the state of Queensland. He slashed health and slashed education. The Leader of the Opposition is going to try to skate through tonight not providing any great detail, and he is going to do that because he knows that, if he told the Australian people about his plans, they would never accept those sorts of vicious cuts to the bone.