Matt Thistlethwaite (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Sheree O'Brien is passionate about special needs education. She fought with the education department to ensure that the BER funding that the school received went into building special needs classrooms for kids with profound Down syndrome and autism. I went to the school and opened these wonderful new facilities, and I met the teachers, the students and their parents. At the afternoon tea that occurred afterwards, one of the parents came up to me and said, 'I want you to go back to Canberra and thank Julia Gillard and Kevin Rudd for what they have done for our local school.' I asked her, 'Why is that?' She said, 'I have a son with profound autism. We moved our family from Perth to get our son into East Maitland Public School.' They did that because they found out about how passionate Sheree O'Brien is about special needs education. She said, 'You have no idea what a difference it has made to my son's education and to his relationship with his family—in particular with his two younger siblings who are also students at the school.' That is real change for the better that probably will not show up in any of the educational statistics that you see when you compare international students.

What you have to understand about special needs education is that there is never just one teacher in the room. Teaching special needs kids requires additional resources. There will generally be two teachers, at the very least, and a teacher's aide working with them. When you talk about $1.7 billion worth of cuts to education from the New South Wales budget, guess what will be the first positions to go at East Maitland Public School? It will be the teacher's aides that assist with that special needs education. That is the difference between a Labor government and a Liberal government when it comes to education. The $2 million that went into building special needs classrooms at East Maitland Public School, which will give these kids a better chance at an education, is referred to by Senator Kroger and the opposition as waste. They have referred to the Building the Education Revolution program as waste for the last three or four years in this place. Ask the parents of those special needs kids at East Maitland Public School—and at every other school throughout this country that has benefited from the Building the Education Revolution funds—whether they think that the money that this government has invested in their kids' schools is waste. I think you will find that they have a different view to those opposite, and it perfectly highlights why those opposite are out of touch when it comes to education funding and education policy in this country. That is the difference between a Labor government and a Liberal government. In New South Wales we are now facing the prospect of some of these schools losing their special needs support staff and losing some of their programs because $1.7 billion is being cut from the education budget.

I reiterate the point that has been made: if money is not the issue, then why are schools in other countries that are spending more per capita on education than we are moving ahead of us each year? The answer is simple. It is because they invest more in their future and more in their education system. That is what this Labor government is seeking to rectify with the Gonski reforms, and that is why those opposite should support them.