Julie Owens (Parramatta, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Small Business) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

So much for building the future! The Abbott government brazenly talks about building the future from time to time but by every measure it is a big fail. You simply cannot build a future without investing in education. Educators, parents and even our state government know that. Over 27,000 Parramatta schoolchildren and their parents are counting on funding for our schools because they know that education is our future. The Abbott government clearly does not know or does not care, because by its own figures schools in Parramatta will be $231 million worse off over the next decade. The average school will be $3.2 million worse off, and cuts will affect every school in Parramatta—public, independent and Catholic. Effectively every student in every school in Parramatta will be worse off under this government.

This is the real intergenerational theft: denying our current generation of children the education they need to do well in adult life in a rapidly changing world where our neighbours to the north are overtaking us already when it comes to the education of their children. These savage cuts to schools are just another example of unfairness in Tony Abbott's budget but, more than that, they show an appalling lack of vision. Education is the foundation of future prosperity, and the Abbott government is ripping that away as surely as it is ripping away the future for our children.