Graham Perrett (Moreton, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Education and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) recognises that:

(a) Australian school students who commenced preparatory school when the Coalition formed government are now entering their final semester of primary school;

(b) Australian school students who commenced high school when the Coalition formed government have transitioned to earning or learning through tertiary or vocational education; and

(c) the future opportunities of these young Australians have been curtailed by the inability of the Government to address the educational needs of Australian students;

(2) notes that since the Coalition formed government:

(a) one of their first acts in government was to cut $30 billion over the decade from projected school funding;

(b) they failed to restore cuts to public schools;

(c) the literacy and numeracy of Australian school students has fallen;

(d) there has been no action by the Government to improve school standards;

(e) there has been no action by the Government to provide support to students, parents, teachers and principals;

(f) Australian Vocational education and training (VET) students are paying more for their courses;

(g) Australian apprenticeships and on-the-job training opportunities have declined;

(h) the threshold for student loan repayments has been reduced, so that VET and university students are now commencing to repay their student loans when they are earning barely more than the minimum wage;

(i) university places have been capped;

(j) penalty rates, relied on by many students trying to earn money while studying, have been cut, resulting in more time away from their studies; and

(k) nothing has been done to address the disconnect between higher education courses and industry demand for skills; and

(3) calls on the Government to urgently implement measures to:

(a) support public education in Australia through fair funding and reversing the cuts;

(b) address the falling standard of literacy and numeracy of Australian students;

(c) make sure university and TAFE is affordable for all Australians; and

(d) ensure that young Australians have the skills required for our future workforce needs.

I'm very pleased to move the motion that has been circulated in my name. The matter before the Federation Chamber recognises that, for Australian children who are in the education system right now, time is passing. As sung by Fleetwood Mac, and I think by the Dixie Chicks, children get older. Australian children who commenced prep when the coalition formed government are now entering their final semester of primary school, and those students who commenced high school when the coalition formed government have already transitioned to earning or learning.

This government is about to commence its seventh year in office. The decisions it has made, or failed to make, have had real consequences on the educational outcomes of Australian children and young adults. Since the election of the coalition government in 2013, students, schools, universities and TAFEs have all been under constant attack. One of their first acts in government was to cut $30 billion over the decade from projected school funding. They've failed to restore cuts to public schools; failed to address the continuing decline in literacy and numeracy standards, much to our international shame; failed to provide adequate support to students, parents, teachers and principals; failed to address increasing fees for students undertaking vocational education and training; failed to address the decline in opportunities for apprenticeships and on-the-job training; reduced the threshold for repayment of student loans; capped university places; cut penalty rates; and failed to address the disconnect between higher education courses and industry demand for skills.

Because of this Morrison-Frydenberg government's failure to address key issues in the Australian education system, Australian school students are continuing to fall behind in literacy and numeracy standards. Australia has fallen below Kazakhstan in the global education report card. How good is Kazakhstan! 150,000 fewer young Australians have the opportunity to undertake apprenticeships. Young Australians are having to repay their student loans when they are earning barely more than the minimum wage. Thousands of clever young Australians are missing out on the opportunity of a university education. Many young Australians are missing out on vital classroom contact hours because they have to work longer to make up for those penalty rate cuts to weekend pay.

This coalition government should hang its head in shame that education standards for children growing up in Australia are falling on its watch. What a disgraceful legacy! Every Australian child deserves a world-class education system not only for their future but also for the prosperity of our nation. Countries around the world are investing in their education systems but, sadly, the Liberal Party and the National Party are letting Australian kids down. As a parent I know that the best future investment any parent can make is in their child's education. The same is true for this nation. The best investment we can make in our future prosperity is to invest in our education system but, sadly, this is an investment that the coalition has failed to see as having much value at all.

Just last month the Productivity Commission released its research paper The demand-driven university system; a mixed report card. The Productivity Commission, not exactly a left-wing think tank, was particularly concerned about the retention and completion rates of university students. The report commences with this paragraph:

University can be transformative. Most university students succeed academically and go on to rewarding careers. On average, they earn higher wages and are less likely to be unemployed—which means higher taxes and lower social security benefits—and they make the economy more innovative and adaptive.

An economic evaluation of higher learning from the Productivity Commission—yet this lost coalescence of a coalition government over there still sees no value in funding education.

Labor has always been the party of education. It is the great transformational policy and our resolve remains unchanged. Labor is committed to a lifetime of education and to making sure that every Australian has the opportunity to obtain a great education. Our economy can only benefit from investment in education. It delivers increased productivity, a skilled workforce and the jobs of the future. I call on this coalition government under Prime Minister Morrison to urgently address the multiple issues facing Australia's education system—problems that have surfaced under their watch—to support public education and reverse the cuts that they have delivered; to address literacy and numeracy standards, which have fallen on their watch; to make sure young Australians can afford to go to university or TAFE so that we get our brightest and best people at university to create the jobs of the future; and to ensure Australia's future workforce has the skills it needs. Listen to the economists, listen to the educators, listen to the parents in your communities and invest in Australian education.

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Is the motion seconded?

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I second the motion.

Tim Wilson (Goldstein, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I'm going to break with tradition and say that I don't agree with the motion. I will speak on it but merely to demonstrate the absurdity with which it was moved. The motion moved by the member makes the biggest list of grab-bag calls for every single thing under the sun as a way of perpetuating relevance for an opposition that simply has no agenda but complaint.

The reality is we all have empathy. The foundation of equal opportunity is, of course, education. It was Prime Minister Gladstone, the great liberal Prime Minister, who introduced in the UK the universal Elementary Education Act. It's liberalism that believes in the power of education. We Liberals, encourage people to realise the fullness of their lives regardless of their background.

I'm not pretending that, from time to time, other political philosophies don't co-opt liberalism. In fact, when you have no political philosophy that anchors or guides you, as with the opposition, I can entirely see the alluring attraction of liberalism. But to give the speech that the member just gave he would have to have gone not to education but to re-education to distract himself from the realities of what this government is doing. There is apparently, according to the member who spoke before, no money spent on education in this country, which would come as a bit of a shock, I think, to most parents who send their kids to schools. One of the things that makes it so absurd is not just that we fund education to record levels—and we do—but that actually we fund public, Catholic and independent education to record levels that have never been seen before under a Liberal or a Labor government.

But, even more than that, we have a skills package investing $525.3 million through a range of measures to try to confront the challenges that young Australians face to give them the best chance in life. There's the National Careers Institute, the national careers ambassador program, the Foundation Skills for Your Future Foundation, the streamlined incentives for Australian apprenticeships, the additional identified skills shortages payment, industry training hubs, the national partnership with the Tasmanian government to enable Tasmania to train a skilled work force, 400 Commonwealth scholarships to young Australians, a national skills commission and pilot skills organisations, an extension to the National Rugby League’s VET Apprenticeship Awareness Program, phase 3 of the jobs and education data infrastructure program and an extension to the unique student identifier service.

In fact, what we have done at every point under this government is actually meet the expectations of the country and the challenges it faces. Our focus is on what we need to do not just to secure the retirement of Australians who came under direct assault from the opposition and not just to provide the record funding for education and improvement in standards which is the heart of our package—and you will see more about that through the life of this government—for young Australians. It is to make sure that at every point we try to improve the standards to make sure that, once people finish school and choose to go into tertiary education, they then have pathways to choose for the rest of their lives.

Again, like economic growth or lower taxes, these are foreign concepts to our political opponents. Perhaps that's a reminder of why they sit on the other side of not just this chamber but the big one downstairs. It's because they simply do not appreciate or understand the challenges that Australians face. This is the gift and the opportunity of this government off the back of a strong budget position and off the back of a surplus which members like the member for Chifley call a vanity project. I wonder whether the members opposite think that a budget surplus is a vanity project or not. They rhetorically say they support the idea. Swannie even promised it. But the easier thing to do was to get rid of Swannie rather than have him around musking up like a bad smell.

Ms Kearney interjecting—

What we can do with a prudent budget position is actually underwrite the funding that we need to help young minds grow and see them succeed. I know that the member for Cooper mocks that very proposition. That's the sadness— (Time expired)

Ged Kearney (Cooper, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Assistant Minister for Skills) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak to the motion moved by the member for Moreton—the member for Goldstein might remember that—which I'm very pleased to second because there's no more crucial role for government than to deliver an education system which, I agree, acts as the greatest social equaliser of all and offers the best chance for opportunity for anyone who wants to take it. On that measure, as this motion outlines, the government gets a big F for 'fail'. The member for Goldstein is leaving, but he has been rolled out tonight to defend the indefensible a couple of times, I see—well done! The government gets a big F because they think if you want a good education you should pay for it. Education is a matter of livelihoods, health and happiness, and governments should provide it. Yet the future opportunities for young Australians have been curtailed by the inability of the government to address the education needs of Australian students.

In my electorate of Cooper, education is the No. 1 issue raised with me, and that's why I'm proud of Labor's education policies, which highlight a real commitment to getting the best outcome for kids. Labor would have restored the Liberals' cuts to our schools, especially public schools, which have had $14 billion ripped away from them—$14 billion under the Liberals. Sure, the Liberals have committed to restoring funding to Catholic and independent schools, where you have to buy an education, but no such commitment has been made for public schools. Public schools teach two-thirds of Australian children, the majority of children in remote and rural areas, the majority of Indigenous children, the majority of children with a disability and the majority of children with a CALD background. Labor would have boosted funding by $14 billion nationwide, $18 million of which would have benefited the kids in the schools of my electorate of Cooper.

Crucially for Cooper's families, this boost in funding would have allowed schools to deliver wraparound services like speech pathologists, social workers, family liaison officers and domestic violence case workers, as well as smaller class sizes, more teachers and more one-to-one attention. We know how important these services are. Caring for the students and their families holistically allows them to thrive. It allows their communities to thrive. In Cooper, Thornbury High School is managed by scrimping some funds together to offer some professional psychological supports to their students. This support is crucial for so many reasons and is accessible to all their kids. The school credits the support service with dramatically increasing the pass rates of students as well as their wellbeing. It's not rocket science. Why would any government deny the ability for all schools to provide such care as this without having to sacrifice other vital services?

As the shadow assistant minister for skills, I can say with some authority that the government, who have been in power for over half a decade, are not only failing school students; they are failing to students in the vocational, education and training sector as well. Since they were elected, they have severely damaged VET, cutting more than $3 billion in funding, presiding over a drop of 150,000 apprentices, closing TAFE campuses and allowing dodgy for-profit providers to gouge the system. TAFE and vocational education funding and the number of supported students are lower now than they were over a decade ago. This is despite an increasing number of jobs requiring vocational skills. For students enrolling in VET, it has meant an unaffordable cost shifted to them, fee increases, limitations on access, and unequal treatment across the post-school sector, not to mention poorer quality courses. The threshold for student loan repayments has been reduced while young people are struggling to find decent, secure work with a wage they can live on.

Like so many things this government has turned its hand to, the assumption that a market-driven, privatised approach will build a better, more efficient sector has been proven completely false. Last week I met with an incredible bunch of TAFE educators and AEU members. They spoke to me about what it's like to watch the great institution of TAFE suffer through years of a neo-Liberal government, the death by a thousand cuts, privatisation by stealth, declining hours teachers have, unstable work environments and anxiety created by precarious jobs in the sector. Unlike those who sit opposite, Labor knows that a well-functioning VET sector has TAFE at its heart, setting the benchmark for quality and standards. The minister for skills, Michaelia Cash, said she wants to see the VET and university sectors on equal footing, but we are yet to see the Liberals commit to the funding and reform required to achieve this important outcome. The answer to the ongoing demise of the VET sector is a $525 million skills package, but that is only $54.5 million in new funding for the sector. We need to see a commitment from this government to our youth. We need to see a commitment to public and TAFE education.

Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Deputy Speaker, you may have heard, as I have, that, since achieving at the last election the lowest primary vote it has had since the Great Depression, Labor has embarked on a listening tour around the country. But, after what we've heard from those opposite, I have to say that they haven't listened very hard, because we've effectively heard the same tired talking points that we heard in the last parliament, and in this motion we're hearing the same ideas that Labor peddled in the last parliament. It's the same old Labor with the same old lines.

The Australian people didn't just reject Labor's $387 billion of new taxes at the last election; they rejected Labor's record of failure in relation to schools, higher education and skills training. Labor never tires of giving us lectures in this place about schools funding. But, rather than actually implementing the Gonski funding regime when they had the chance, they ran around the country doing 27 special deals. Their deals were largely criticised by those people who authored the Gonski funding. They flew in the face of Labor's rhetoric of equity, fairness and 'giving a Gonski'. As education minister in the former government, the member for Maribyrnong cut $1.2 billion from government schools.

Labor's failures extended to the time they last won government from opposition. Upon taking office, they promptly splurged $8 billion on schools halls. Most schools didn't want the money. It was money that could've gone to train teachers, buy school resources or invest in student wellbeing. They wasted $2 billion on their failed Laptops for Kids program. The member for Moreton comes in here and gives us a lecture about literacy and numeracy. Meanwhile, the seeds of the results that we're getting, where we're being beaten by Kazakhstan and Slovenia, were sown from the fruits of Labor's last policy, when they spent $540 million on a failed literacy and numeracy program. They even spent $16 million to recruit only 14 new teachers. Under Labor, grades went down and our global ranking suffered.

Then we heard about higher education. Labor doesn't like to talk a lot about this, but the truth is that in the last budget before the Labor Party lost office they announced cuts of $6.6 billion to higher education and research. They removed incentives from universities to meet performance standards. International educational went backwards under Labor and their failed VET FEE-HELP policy left thousands of students with massive debts and no qualifications. This caused enormous international damage to Australia's VET reputation—damage that had to be cleaned up by our government. We've cleaned up Labor's mess and we've delivered record funding in the school, university and vocational education sectors. We abolished the special deals Labor created and we created a genuine needs based funding arrangement: an extra $37 billion for all schools, an average increase of 62 per cent per student. This brings total school funding to over $310 billion—funding we can actually guarantee thanks to our strong economic management.

Schools in my electorate of Berowra are going to benefit to the tune of an extra billion bucks over the funding period of the next 10 years, and it doesn't matter whether they're independent, Catholic or government schools. Our government has also secured the agreement of every state and territory, including the Labor states, to this program. Funding for students with disability attending schools is at record levels and growing, and, by working with the Smith Family, we're committing an additional $4.9 million to boost the attendance of disadvantaged students who can least afford to miss out.

Labor often misses the point that quality education is not only about money; it's also about good teachers and best practice. That's why we're investing deeply in improving teaching with phonics. We're ensuring phonics is included in university teaching courses so new teachers can use it in their classrooms. We're investing $15 million in an excellent organisation, Teach For Australia, to train high-achieving teachers who'll become high-quality school leaders in rural, remote and disadvantaged schools, which will help improve performance. We're providing more funding to train teachers in STEM subjects to give the next generation of graduates the skills they need for the jobs of the future.

Labor's motion also says nothing about regional Australia, and that's largely because they don't represent regional Australia anymore. Only the Liberal-National government will spend $15 million this year to create five further regional study hubs, with additional Commonwealth supported places to support students to study their university courses in their local communities. I know that many coalition members who are regional members have been at the forefront of advocating for these very important regional study hubs. In universities we've increased funding by 19 per cent, and by 2022 that increase will be 28 per cent. We've invested $490 million to help students from regional Australia access universities. Our government is committed to a vision for Australia's education future. The Labor Party remains stuck in the past.

Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

As always, I jump at the opportunity to speak in this place on education. I thank my colleague the member for Moreton for bringing this motion before the House.

It's a very well established principle, in terms of growth and development and the flow-on effects, and the opportunities that that has for jobs, that there are two significant issues that a country needs to get right. One is investment in education at all levels and the other is infrastructure. At the end of the day, as many of those opposite have said on many occasions, it's not the government that creates jobs but it is the government that creates the environment in which the opportunity to create jobs occurs. For these two aspects of government responsibility, I would have to say that education has been an abysmal failure for this government. Almost seven years in government and I could not tell you—and I very much doubt anybody could tell you publicly—what the education agenda is of this government or of any of the variations that have preceded it. There is never an articulated view of what the future of our education system should be. There is never prosecution of a case of the contribution of education to economic growth and development, and its ability to ensure equality within that so that all people get an opportunity to share in it. At most, what we get is that some of the old diehards here will get up in a debate like this, rattle off a shopping list of things and say, 'The government's putting more money into this and putting more money into that.'

As my colleague the member for Moreton indicated, of course, as the population increases, the size of the government's expenditure increases. But the reality is that the agenda that was established by the previous Labor government, which was well articulated, well discussed, across all sections of education and within a framework looking at the way in which education contributes to economic growth and the sharing of prosperity—those particular reforms were critically important to the opportunity for growth and development, and the government has made cuts. For example, in the school education sector, as many of my colleagues have talked about, there was a $14 billion cut to the money that was projected to go to schools. Those opposite say it wasn't a cut. Let me ask them this question, if they want to make that argument: when the Catholic system said it had had a cut and the government said 'Oh, yes, you have had a cut. We'll reinstate your funding,' how does that apply to one sector but they say there hasn't been a cut on the public education side? If the Catholic system had a cut and got its money reinstated, that means the public sector, under the same funding system, had a cut and it has not been reinstated.

As many of you would know, I am very passionate about the vocational education sector. If I have to listen to one more minister from that side get appointed to this portfolio, get up and say, 'The big problem with the vocational education sector is it's got an image problem'—time and time again, every new minister trots off to the media, saying: 'I'm going to tell people the vocational education sector is great. I'm going to tell people they should be getting young people into apprenticeships, because there's an image problem and we need to fix this.' First, you don't fix an image problem by constantly cutting funding. The poor old vocational education sector has had a cut in every budget and MYEFO; I've followed every single one of them. Every now and then, the government, under so much pressure and embarrassment, will throw a bit of money at a particular program but none of it is actually increasing participation. Every single cut has had the impact of tearing the heart out of the vocational education sector.

The previous member said, 'What are Labor's views on the importance of the TAFE sector?' The previous speaker in this debate said, 'Why doesn't Labor ever talk about regional areas?' I tell you what: when you go into regional areas, one of the things they really care about is their TAFE. (Time expired)

Andrew Wallace (Fisher, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for bringing this to our attention. This is an issue which is very important to me. Vocational education and training is an issue which is very important to me, as is tertiary education, university education. I don't know how many people in this place have done a trade or been TAFE educated and university educated, but I am one of them. And I can say without a shadow of a doubt—and this might make sense to members opposite—that I am who I am because of my vocational education and training background as a carpenter and joiner.

In my view, one of the problems that we have in Australia is that, ever since around the years of the Gillard government, all young people were told that you need to go to university if you want to be someone. That has had a lasting impact on all those young people who didn't go to university. They are now having their own children, and there is still the concept that, if your son or daughter is going to be someone, they need to go to university and get a law degree, an economics degree, an accounting degree or a business degree. We are facing a situation where many young people now feel that they have to go to university. But in my view we need to encourage young people by telling them that, if they want a qualification as a tradesperson, they can contribute to society just as well as someone who goes to university.

An honourable member: They will probably get more money, too.

Indeed, and on that we will agree.

An opposition member interjecting—

I will tell you why in a moment. If you just shush, you might learn something! The problem with doing a trade is that, out of a four-year apprenticeship, an employer will really only get about one year of productiveness out of that apprentice. The reality—and I can speak for this because I have been through it—is that, as a first-year apprentice, you are next to useless. As a second-year apprentice, you are getting better but still not earning the boss any money. By the third year, the apprentice is starting to do well and is able to earn his or her keep. By the fourth year, the apprentice has become so expensive that you could actually employ a subcontractor for less. So you will get one fruitful year, economically, out of an apprentice.

So we on this side are introducing a new policy whereby the government will provide very significant subsidies. The government will provide a wage subsidy of up to 75 per cent for a first-year apprentice, 50 per cent in their second year and 25 per cent in their third year. We on this side understand that we have got to fill this skills shortage. If we don't fill this skills shortage, we are going to have to import tradespeople from overseas. It would be an absolute disgrace if we had to go down that route. We have to encourage young people. We have to give them a sense of pride in their work. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a skilled tradesperson; in fact it is a matter of pride. If you work for yourself as a plumber or electrician, by and large, you will earn more money than you will if you get a business degree. So, young people, go and get an apprenticeship and earn yourself some decent money and start your own businesses.

Rebekha Sharkie (Mayo, Centre Alliance) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

In February this year I again visited the TAFE campus in Mount Barker in my community. Both the focus and the funding for vocational education in South Australia has been under sustained pressure for many years. The three TAFE sites in Mayo—Mount Barker, Victor Harbor and Kangaroo Island—work hard but with incredibly limited resources, facilities and equipment. I was impressed with how much TAFE was able to do with so little, but significant additional investment is clearly needed. Higher education continues to rise in importance. Not everyone is cut out to be a university student and not everyone should be. Quality investment in vocational education leads to quality, worthwhile jobs. This is why before the federal election I made a commitment to the people of Mayo that I would advocate strongly for additional investment in Mayo's TAFE campuses. Briefly, I will summarise the more prominent benefits additional investment in local TAFE could achieve across hospitality, age and disability care, and building and construction.

The Adelaide Hills region is well known as the destination for food, wine, hospitality and tourism. The region is home to over 35 recognised wineries and cellar doors, complemented by a number of restaurants, cafes, microbreweries, hotels and accommodation. Demand for skills and labour across the tourism and hospitality sector continues to grow in the region. The challenge is that it is incredibly hard for our young people to get the skills needed to provide a career pathway and ongoing opportunities. Additional investment would allow the establishment of a true centre for excellence in front-of-house hospitality and tourism training and a move towards the possibility of developing a fully functioning training cafe, which would see students able to provide live service to students, community members and small business start-ups attached to the new community centre and business incubator.

Mount Barker and the surrounding region contains more than 30 residential aged-care and disability facilities. Victor Harbor and its surrounding region contains more than 15 residential aged-care and disability facilities. The move towards individualised and specialised service provision through individual care plans and the National Disability Insurance Scheme has created an unparalleled shortage of new workers. Refurbishing the existing skills labs at both campuses would create a significant expansion and deliver a greater capacity for training.

There are no fewer than 18 different building and housing developments underway across my region of the Adelaide Hills, in close proximity to Mount Barker, with many more set to start. Mount Barker is projected to grow to 55,000 people by 2036 and become South Australia's second biggest city. Despite that enormous growth and despite that being one of fastest-growing areas of South Australia and a major construction hotspot, the Mount Barker TAFE campus is currently unable to deliver genuine live training in building and construction. It makes no sense. The development of a wet-trades specific training space and the procurement of heavy plant equipment would provide this capacity and allow local would-be workers to be locally trained and employed. At the Victor Harbor campus, the purchasing of racking and liftable materials would enable the campus to locally deliver fork-lift licences to the Fleurieu Peninsula, instead of requiring trainees to travel 70 to 90 kilometres to Mount Barker or to Tonsley. And I have not even detailed the benefits that can be secured in the automotive and IT programs as well as in early childhood education and care.

In short, we have seen a slow eroding of funding for vocational education and a slow eroding of value. We have members in here saying how important it is. I agree with them: it is important. But you've got to put your money where your mouth is. We need to properly fund vocational education. We are not doing it now and we can do better. I will continue my advocacy to the state government and to the federal government until they too share a vision that recognises that we need to invest now in vocational education if we want to find the one million workers that we are going to need in aged care. If we want to ensure the NDIS is a properly funded and workable model, we need to have the skills set now. We can do it. It is time to get out the chequebook.

Jason Falinski (Mackellar, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I would like to thank the honourable member for Moreton for bringing this motion forward. He is one of the people who have truly earned the moniker 'honourable'. I'd like to think the members for Cooper, Calwell, Cunningham and Mayo for their contributions to this debate, as well as my colleague from Goldstein—I think he is a frustrated teacher or maybe even a lecturer; he is more in the didactic model of Socrates—and the members for Berowra and Fisher, who brought their own particular interests and knowledge to this area.

I think where we have got to in this debate is a great shame, and I mean that sincerely, because there is no doubt that I'm going to stand here and tell those opposite who remain that their arguments that we have cut spending are just wrong, and they're going to argue until they're blue in the face that I'm wrong, and all of us are going to engage in mathematical models that would put quantum physicists to shame. But the truth of the matter is that this is about more than funding. We know that education is the golden bullet. As a member of the Liberal Party, which believes primarily in equality of opportunity above equality of outcome, I know that access to education for everyone is the most important thing that any society can provide if you are to live that creed which you say you live by. So, for me, this is just the most critical thing that any government can do.

We want to break the cycle of poverty. I know the member for Cunningham and the member for Moreton see in their community, as I see in mine, a third or fourth generation of children repeating the mistakes of their parents. They are going to live terrible lives, because we cannot break that cycle. It is heartbreaking to go to school presentation nights and see people with enormous potential. There is no reason why they cannot be so much more, but they are trapped by the environments into which they were born. No matter what we do to try to break that, we have failed. Frankly, too often the policies of this parliament have made that even worse. Education is the golden bullet for breaking that cycle. We have a choice between being the parliament of interest groups in education or the parliament that delivers for the children of this nation and their families.

So I really want all of us to put politics aside, because this subject is too important. The member for Mayo ended her speech by saying it's time to get out the chequebook. More disappointing words will be spoken in this chamber, I know, but that was just so disappointing, because too often we boil education down to how much money we can throw at it. We know from overseas that money is not the answer. It is an element of it, but Singapore, which has an education system that leaves ours for dead, funds its students at 30 per cent per student of what we do in Australia. We know that, as we have increased funding in Australia, education outcomes have gone down. I know correlation is not causation, I know that there are underlying factors, but, as I or anyone who stands in this parliament today knows, there is a negative correlation between education funding and outcomes. It's not good enough. Singapore have chosen to trade off class sizes. They have much larger classes than we do, with higher pay for teachers and better support for those teachers, like master teachers and other specialties that they can provide for teachers in planning to make those things. We know that there has been too much stress in our education environment on getting people to universities. In some of the most successful nations in the world, with the lowest levels of youth unemployment, such as Germany and Singapore, they have 80 per cent of people going into trades and technical colleges.

There is so much more that I want to say about this, but there is politicisation of education. In my area, there are public schools that have fair funding on their things. There are principals who throw out my congratulation notes to students who've won awards—because they can. They can make sure that I'm not allowed to speak to students. That politicisation has to end. (Time expired)

Kevin Hogan (Page, National Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There being no further speakers, the debate is adjourned and the resumption of the debate will be made an order of the day for the next sitting.

Federation Chamber adjourned at 19:30