Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question, again, is to the Prime Minister. When the Prime Minister's department worked up options to cut Australian government funding to public schools, did the department model how much more Australian families would pay under the Prime Minister's secret plan to cut school funding?

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

All that the member for Port Adelaide is doing is exhibiting the hollowness and the hypocrisy of Labor's position by focusing on school funding when he is from the political party that cut school funding by $1.2 billion when they were in government and that are now attacking this current government for a so-called shortfall of $30 billion in the future. But they have not committed to putting that money back in—not the member for McMahon, not the member for Port Adelaide nor the member for Maribyrnong—and they have been asked about it on numerous occasions on radio and television. Reading the newspaper a couple of weeks ago, it was very clear that the member for Port Adelaide was using every possible—

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Speaker, the question goes quite specifically to modelling within the department of the Prime Minister. The minister has not gone anywhere near that point.

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I presume that the Manager of Opposition Business was trying to call a point of order on relevance.

Mr Tony Burke (Watson, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Finance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I have found that using the word does not help, Madam Speaker, so I thought I would just refer to it from a distance!

Mrs Bronwyn Bishop (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

It is not going to help now either. Resume your seat.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Leader of the House) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Obviously, I am talking about school funding, which is very much relevant to the question I was asked by the member for Port Adelaide. It is passing strange that the Labor Party would want to talk about this subject because it talks again to economic credibility. Where is this apparent $30 billion, this mythical $30 billion, in the future? Where are they going to find that money if indeed they ever commit to it? Where is the $18 billion for foreign aid? They rail against changes to foreign aid, but they do not actually come up with where the source of $18 billion in foreign aid is going to come from. They have a mythical $50 billion change to health funding for public hospitals, but they do not explain where the money is going to come from.

The coalition welcome the debate about economic credibility. We are very pleased to have the political subject back on economic credibility, because we are the party that started restoring the damage left by Labor when they lost office in 2013. For the second time in my political career, we have had to do this job. The first time was the Howard government—of which you, Madam Speaker, were a member. In 1996, we had to restore the finances of the Commonwealth, and did so. And then in 2007, Labor blew it again. In 2013, we were elected to fix the mess that Labor had left us and we are setting about doing just that.

Mr Abbott interjecting—

Of course, as the Prime Minister points out, I am fixing in education what needed to be fixed from the wreckage left by the Labor Party when they lost office. We are not only restoring funding to schools that Labor ripped out, that they trousered from public schools; we are also focusing on what matters, things like the national curriculum, teacher training, independent public schools and parent engagement. That is why every state and territory, Labor and Liberal, have signed up to the independent public schools initiative. I am pleased that Jay Weatherill, the Premier of South Australia, said today:

We've been asking them to canvas the broader range of options. There’s a broad debate going on about Commonwealth/state relations, which is a good thing

I agree with the Premier of South Australia. (Time expired)