Helen Kroger (Victoria, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

May I firstly applaud the tone of Senator Marshall's address, given that Senator Wright before him commented and deliberated on the parlous state of the debate on this particular matter of public importance. I thought that was quite a striking observation to make during her own speech. But I will leave it for others to make their own judgement on that.

I would also like to share one thing with the comments that Senator Marshall just made and that is that, without question, education is the key to unlocking the potential of our young people for decades to come. There is no question about that. I think we would all support the fact that it is the key to unlocking the potential of our young. But what I do not support—and I have been listening for probably a good three or four minutes—and where I fundamentally disagree with Senator Marshall and the government is that you do not achieve that by throwing a bucket of money at it. You actually have to see an outcome for what you are doing and then ensure that that money is invested wisely so that it does genuinely unlock the potential of young Australians.

The current Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, was the Minister for Education under former Prime Minister Rudd. Since she became Prime Minister she has not been particularly consistent in public policy in too many areas. But the one area I will commend her on, the one area where she has been consistent, has been her rhetoric—screaming and shouting, if you like, from the rafters—about her commitment to education. It is all rhetoric; it is all spin. But she has certainly been consistent in the way she has continued to pursue this. In fact, when Julia Gillard became Prime Minister she referred to herself as, and assured the Australian public that she would be—and I quote—the 'Prime Minister of education'. Those were her words.

What extraordinary hubris, these meaningless words. But what is more tragic is the way in which she has continued to fail Australia's children and our leaders of the future. Since 2007 she has been decrying the neglect of the education sector and the lack of appropriate resourcing, and all we have seen is a continued denigration of students' standards across the board. Not surprisingly, for more than five years we have seen a demonstration that the Labor government, as I said earlier, has a total lack of understanding—that you do not throw a bucket of money at something to come up with the right solution. There has to be a clearly crafted framework to advance the education standards that we have here in Australia.

One of the initial claims of the Prime Minister when she was education minister was that every student would have a computer on their desk. Then she massaged that message and it was changed to 'Every child from year 9 onwards would have a computer on their desk.' In the last few months we have seen not only that that is not the case but also there is no more money to ensure that every child does have a laptop on their desk.

This is a consistency of approach that we are seeing time and time again not just in education but also in other areas. I think it is incredibly tragic for those in the education area. As Senator Marshall and Senator Mason before him pointed out, $16.6 billion was spent in building school hall monuments to Prime Minister Gillard. To my mind, there could not be a greater example of money wasted in terms of investing in the education sector and, essentially, the opportunity that has been lost by that money being directed in that way instead of being spent in far more effective ways.

Senator Thistlethwaite interjecting—

Senator Thorp interjecting—