Pat Conroy (Charlton, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Thursday, 28 January will be recorded as the day that Bill Shorten and Labor committed to the most significant improvement in school education for two generations—a very proud day for all of us who have the privilege to represent the Labor Party in the national parliament. A future Labor government will fully implement and fund the Gonski reforms. This is of fundamental importance to Australia's future growth and prosperity. Driving around my electorate past both primary and high schools, it is evident from the number of green posters at the schools declaring 'Gonski: it's making a difference right here' that there is strong support in Charlton schools and the wider community for this policy. Before talking about Labor's policy, I want to briefly refer to the political context of this debate. I will not go through the many quotes that are on the record, but the fact is that the Liberal and National parties blatantly misled the Australian people before the last election. They claimed that you could vote Labor or Liberal and get the same outcome in education. This was a shameless untruth. In its first budget, the Liberal government cut $30 billion from schools. In Charlton, this means that schools will lose $162 million in funding—a massive hit on local schools. With the recent announcements, there is only one political party that will deliver Gonski in full, and that is the Australian Labor Party.

The new Prime Minister loves to talk about innovation and what an exciting time it is to be alive. Fluffy rhetoric about innovation is not good enough. Labor's education policy will definitely have a positive impact on our innovative future. Labor's positive policy specifically focuses on every child's needs, more individual attention for students, better trained teachers, more targeted resources, better equipped classrooms and more support for students with special learning needs. Labor will ensure an additional investment in education of $4.5 billion over 2018-19 and over $37 billion for the package over the next decade. Ensuring that our workforce is prepared for the challenges and jobs of the future starts in our schools, and Labor's policy will make sure that Australia has the education system that our children and our country need. Labor believes the best way to ensure that Australians have a fair go is for there to be a needs based education system where the background of the child, where they live or what type of school they go to does not matter, as long as they have the same chance of succeeding in school and in life.

At the next election young and old voters alike will have a clear choice between a Liberal Party which has cut tens of billions of dollars from schools and abandoned the Gonski reforms and a Labor Party that believes in the empowering quality of education and its importance for a prosperous and productive Australia. This is a policy that is close to a silver bullet for the future prosperity of this nation, and I am so proud to be part of a Labor team that is pushing for the full Gonski reforms.