Nick Minchin (SA, Liberal Party, Minister for Finance and Administration) Share this | Hansard source

We thank the opposition for drawing attention to our substantial and magnificent investment in education in this budget. I begin by reminding Senator Carr of what I said in my earlier answer and that is that we inherited the most extraordinary situation one could possibly imagine: that as a result of their 13 years in office, when we came into government, the financial accounts showed more being spent on interest payments to those lending money to the government than on education. What a travesty! What a record! How can he possibly stand up in here and criticise this government when what they left us with was a situation where less was being spent on education in this country by the federal government than was being spent on interest payments on the debts that they were racking up. We have turned that around.

In our budget now, you have spending of $17 or $18 billion on education and nothing on interest payments. That is the turnaround that we have been able to achieve without a shred of help from the opposition. It is a magnificent achievement on our part, to virtually double education spending under this government, and now, because we have eliminated debt and we are generating surpluses, we can do something that has never been achieved in this country before and put aside in perpetuity $5 billion. This is apparently only a drop in the ocean, according to Mr Rudd. Five billion dollars into the Higher Education Endowment Fund in perpetuity is something the universities are over the moon about. It is something they never expected from any federal government: a $5 billion endowment fund to ensure that our higher education sector has the resources and the facilities available to it in perpetuity. In one stroke we are doubling the amount available currently to universities in their endowment funds, and on top of that, introducing a $3.5 billion investment program over the next four years in education, half of which is going to the universities, the other half to schools—the responsibility of the states, where they are failing miserably and have to be propped up by us. This also ensures that we have a flow of apprentices and that we support apprentices and the trades. It is a very proud moment for the coalition government in terms of what we have been able to achieve in education.