Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Last week an email from a mysterious, dare I say, faceless entity known as the Labor Party caucus communications team instructed every Labor MP to stand outside a school gate to spruik the government's schools funding plan to parents.

Presumably, the entity was acting on orders from above. And so, on Friday, I decided to heed the directive of the Prime Minister and join the so called 'national school gates blitz' at a school in my community—Woodford State School. However, there was one pivotal difference. For mine, this was an opportunity to acquaint Woodford State School parents with the facts.

Established in 1882, Woodford State School caters to 400 students from prep to Year 10. It provides a proud, wonderfully committed public education to a semi-rural community and has a vision to expand up to Year 12. But there is no place on any honour roll for Woodford State School under this federal Labor government. Instead, it has been relegated to a list of shame as one of 160 Queensland schools that will go backwards under the government's school funding plan.

Mr Perrett interjecting—

Bruce Scott (Maranoa, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The member for Moreton.

Wyatt Roy (Longman, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The federal budget shows that, over the forward estimates, school funding will not be increased but will be slashed by $325 million. Schools will be waiting until 2019 for Labor's promised rivers of gold to start flowing. That is six years and three elections away. And from 2019, the Queensland government has confirmed that 160 schools, including Woodford State School, will end up worse off anyway.

Regional communities face enough resourcing challenges as it is. But in a rush of bureaucratic penmanship, this Labor government has chosen to assign nothing but disadvantage to Woodford's children. The lack of rationale really is mind boggling. The government cuts funding to universities in a desperate bid to bail out its schools funding program. But how can the desired aim of better educational outcomes for our children, who are lagging internationally, possibly be achieved in the face of a corresponding under-investment in the tertiary training of classroom teachers?

And in the weekend's press we learned the funding proposal is yet another hand grenade into the Labor Party leadership chaos. We read that the Rudd camp believes the Gonski school agenda is a saga of policy mismanagement where funds are pledged without prospects of better results.

The coalition parties are the only political force with a funding model for schools that will leave none worse off. The coalition's preferred plan is one that will deliver certainty by maintaining current schools funding and indexation.