Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Universities and Research) Share this | Hansard source

We are debating the Australian Education Bill 2013 and the Australian Education (Consequential and Transitional Provisions) Bill 2013. The Prime Minister has described the government's Gonski reforms as 'the biggest change to school education in 40 years', yet the Senate has been given only two hours and 45 minutes, or 165 minutes, to scrutinise and debate these bills. This is an insult to the Senate and it is an insult to the taxpayers, whom the government wants to saddle with a $16.2 billion bill for its reforms. That is 165 minutes to debate the expenditure of $16.2 billion.

The government is as careless with people's money as it is with the constitutional process of Senate scrutiny and Senate review. Of course, this is not the first time that the Senate has debated the Australian Education Bill. The difference is that the last time, a few months ago, we were debating a nine-page document which was short on detail and rich on platitudes and motherhood statements. It was more of a policy document, or an aspirational rhapsody, than detailed legislation. Now we have in front of us two bills and, sure, there is plenty of detail—I accept that. Yet there is not enough time to debate them properly on this the second or perhaps the third last day of sittings of the second term of the Rudd and Gillard governments.

The government has had years to get this done and to get it done properly. The Prime Minister—the then Minister for Education—has been talking for a long time about her desire to see a new school funding model. Mr David Gonski was commissioned in 2010 to look into it, he delivered his report in November 2011 and here we are today, more than a year and a half later, with less than three hours to debate bills that reflect a deeply flawed new funding model which has been rejected by many states and territories.