Doug Cameron (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Human Services) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Fawcett, you will have to do better than that. If you have to descend to the argument that it is socialism to give Australian schoolkids a fair go, then I think you have lost the plot—a bit like Mr Pyne, who has completely lost the plot when it comes to education policy and actually understanding the key issues for children in this nation.

I just want to go through some of the headlines to dispel the arguments of Senator Fawcett. What are the headlines that we have seen in the press in the last couple of days? 'Pyne blows himself, and the Gonski reforms, to pieces'. The argument that the coalition are actually going to deliver is a nonsense, because the independent analysis is that the Gonski reforms are dead. The only thing that is left is additional funding. In a blind panic the Prime Minister and the Minister for Education have gone to the states and said: 'We will throw billions of dollars your way. You won't be accountable for how it is spent. Sign off and we can then run an argument that we have a national agreement.' There is no national agreement because there are no checks and balances on how that money will be spent. There is no guarantee that the public school system in this country will be better off.

I, like many senators here, go to both public and private schools in my work as a senator and I have to say that I know where the money needs to be spent. The money needs to be spent in our public school system. If you go to a public school you see some of the infrastructure that is falling apart. You see some of the lack of decent conditions that our schoolkids are toiling in. Then you go to a private school and you see the cricket pitches, the three-quarter length Olympic swimming pools and the art galleries. You see all the trappings of wealth and luxury. Public school kids have to go in and toil to get their education in conditions that in my view are unacceptable in the 21st century. They are just not acceptable.

We have to get a position where we understand what this government is doing. It has been clear that they are destroying the capacity of public schools to provide a fair opportunity for schoolkids in this country. The first headline was 'Pyne blows himself, and the Gonski reforms, to pieces'. You cannot say much more than that. Then there is 'Abbott in backflip to save face on schools'. It is about saving face; it has nothing to do with the education system, nothing to do with our schoolkids. Mark Kenny in TheAge: 'Abbott's Gonski backflip shows honesty in short supply'. He goes on to indicate that Minister Pyne 'first feigned surprise at the "missing" $1.2 billion'. It was in the Pre-Election Economic and Fiscal Outlook. So there was this feigned surprise at the $1.2 billion that was not there.

Another headline from TheAge reads 'Going, going, Gonski: report is no longer found in online search'. The government has removed the Gonski report from government websites. The Australian Financial Review says, 'Reverse double backflip but no safe landing'. That was from Laura Tingle. I think it says it all. Actually, I don't think Laura Tingle, with all her expertise, has got it right. I think they will have to come up with a new name for this backflip, because it is the most complex, convoluted backflip you have ever seen and there will be no safe landing because the public are onto the coalition. They know that this is about ripping off from the public school system, they know this is about destroying Gonski. You will pay a price for this. You will pay a heavy price for this backflip, the lies and the awful position that you have adopted on Gonski.