Gary Humphries (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Before I talk about the failure of the education revolution, I want to address the last point that Senator Milne made, which has also been made by other speakers in this debate, and that is the claim that the Howard government allowed public school funding to slip during its time in office. That claim is based essentially on a trick with the numbers. Senators should be aware that during the life of the Howard government there was a significant increase in the number and the proportion of school students in Australia who attended non-government schools. Of course, the constitutional arrangements in Australia are very clear: the federal government has prime responsibility for the funding of non-government education and the state governments have responsibility for the funding of state schools. And it was that growth in non-government school enrolments that drove an increase in the size of the non-government funding sector. But it is absolutely not true to say that the Howard government neglected the funding of government schools. I illustrate that point by observing that, in the life of the Howard government, enrolments in government schools increased across Australia by approximately two per cent and funding of government schools by the federal government increased by more than 70 per cent in real terms. To increase funding by that level over that period of time is not an indication of neglect, and those opposite should know better than to manipulate figures in that way.

On the matter of public importance, let me say that I think the education revolution launched by the government is essentially a slogan in search of an intellectual underpinning. It is also in search of some real dollars to make it actually work. I see in this policy nothing but intellectual drift; a sense that the government hit upon a great idea—a sexy idea—that the pollsters said would really turn people’s knobs before the election last year, and the details of how this would actually work to change the landscape of Australian education were to come later. The details are coming through in dribs and drabs, convincing nobody that Labor has a coherent and consistent approach towards improving education outcomes in this country.

The best evidence of that phenomenon is the speech that the Prime Minister gave a couple of weeks ago in Canberra at the National Press Club to announce the so-called philosophical underpinning of the education revolution. He talked about transparency in education, performance reports for schools, the right of school principals to be able to hire and fire teachers and performance pay for good teachers. They are great ideas, but where do those ideas come from? They were borrowed directly from the education reforms announced by the then education minister, Brendan Nelson, in 2004.