Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Industry) Share this | Hansard source

Mr President, I ask a supplementary question. In terms of priorities, is it not true that even after the initiatives announced in the budget, education spending is projected to remain at 1.6 per cent of GDP over the four years to 2011-12 and will actually fall as a percentage of the total government expenditure? I ask again: in terms of priorities, how can this be a budget about the future if government spending on public research as a percentage of GNP has fallen from 0.4 per cent to 0.29 per cent from 1996 to 2007?