Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker:

… we will honour the agreements that Labor has entered into. We will match the offers that Labor has made. We will make sure that no school is worse off.

Those were Tony Abbott's exact words promising full funding of the Gonski reforms in 2013.

'We haven't seen a cent of the Gonski money.' These were the plain and simple words of Peter Wright, the principal of Koonung Secondary College in Mont Albert North, just yesterday. Peter is incredibly frustrated. Koonung is a great school, but you would be forgiven for believing it is at the bottom of every government's priority list. This is a school that was set for a $13.8 million rebuild by the Brumby Labor government in 2010. This was then scrapped by the Baillieu-Napthine Liberal government in 2011. Funnily enough, Koonung suddenly appeared on state member Robert Clark's agenda and radar. After 26 years he discovered that down the road he had a really good school, and he promised $8.8 million for a rebuild by the Liberals in the 2014 election. Sadly, this was not matched by a Labor promise.

This is a great school with great teachers and students who achieve excellent results, but they are living in buildings that are now outdated and overcrowded and in need of major maintenance and repair. With 130 families eligible for the educational maintenance allowance, the school is in desperate need of the needs based funding they were promised by Tony Abbott. They have received nothing. In fact, Peter is clear: they have actually been getting less and less funding over the past few years. This is the story of just one school in Melbourne's leafy green suburbs. It is a small sample of the damage the Abbott government is doing. There has been a cut of $194 million from education funding in my electorate. It is just not good enough.