Christopher Back (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The point I want to make is that it is unusual for the necessity of such a long but eloquent dissenting report in this school funding circumstance. The coalition government is continuing to invest heavily. No government—and I am sure that the finance minister will confirm this—is under an obligation to predict beyond the out years where funding ought to be expended. The Labor government never did. Knowing it was going to lose the September election, the Labor government threw all sorts of promises out there. It knew, of course, that there was no way in the world it was ever going to have to commit to them. The coalition government has committed to expenditure as, indeed, we said we would leading up to the September election. But, of course, prudently—and I would say correctly—it has not fallen into the trap of throwing money beyond those out years until we know the value of the expenditure of those monies.