Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Maybe, Senator Brandis, you should listen a little bit more carefully to what I have just explained to you and which was explained hour after hour to Senator Mason. Either he did not listen to what the departmental officials were explaining to him or maybe, just conveniently, he did not want to hear, so he could keep running this fictitious case based on fabricated figures, which he knows—and I am disappointed that he is not better than this and that he is not actually lifting his game to a higher level—is simply a political stunt to undermine the education revolution that this country so needs. One would have thought that he could have actually got up and told us about what they did when they were in government. We did not hear anything about that because we know that what they, the now opposition, did in government was simply to de-fund education. They did worse than stand still.

In the House today Minister Gillard talked about the latest OECD figures from 2005—and they are the latest figures available. They showed that public school funding during the life of the previous government was 4.3 per cent of GDP in this country against the average OECD figure of five per cent. We were ranked 19th in the OECD. That is very close to the bottom. In early education spending we were 24th out of 26 in the OECD. So it is not surprising that Senator Mason cannot come in and contribute to this debate based on any record of the previous government and instead simply wants to undermine our education revolution, which is so needed to fill the neglect that was left by the previous government.

The initiatives that the Minister for Education, Employment and Workplace Relations has undertaken in her portfolio touch on a number of bases. The education revolution is not just a slogan. The education revolution is a response to over 12 years of Liberal Party neglect.