Julia Banks (Chisholm, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for the Environment and Energy, representing the Minister for Education and Training. Will the minister advise the House how the government's wide-ranging education reforms will deliver choice, fairness and opportunity for students and families? Is the minister aware of any alternative approaches?

Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong, Liberal Party, Minister for the Environment and Energy) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Chisholm for her question and note her deep commitment to ensuring better school-funding for the 40 schools in her electorate. Indeed, I had the great pleasure of visiting Koonung Secondary College with her last year, where she got a rockstar welcome from those who know how strongly she defends the schools in her electorate.

Education is absolutely critical to our future prosperity and to our future harmony, and that is why it is the first defence of the nation. In our school funding reforms that we have announced, we will be supporting students on the basis of need. We will be giving them, for the first time, the real Gonski needs-based funding. We will be ending the 27 special and secret deals that the Labor Party cut. We will be ensuring $18.6 billion worth of new funding over the coming decade. This will include an announcement of an additional $2.2 billion in tonight's budget, a 75 per cent increase in school funding over the next decade.

We have also tasked David Gonski to do an inquiry into ensuring how we get better results. How do we get more excellence for the money that we spend, building on the reforms that we already have underway, to get better parental engagement, better school autonomy, better work around phonics and literacy and reading skills? That is why our reforms have been welcomed by everyone from the Primary Principals Association to the independent schools, to the Australian Council of State School Organisations and to the Grattan Institute. The work that we have done on schools complements the announcement that we made around preschool funding—an extra $428 million to ensure 15 hours of preschool funding for the year before these kids start school, benefiting more than 340,000 children. And then there are the higher education reforms. There will not be any full fee deregulation, there will not be a 20 per cent cut to universities, and we will ensure a world-class loan program.

Back in 1942, the founder of our party, Sir Robert Menzies, in 'The Forgotten People' address, said, 'Over every school should be written in gold: "Here we deal with our future."' And today our school reforms, our reforms to preschool education and our higher ed reforms will ensure greater excellence, a more sustainable future and a fairer system of education for all.