Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister Assisting the Leader for Science) Share this | Hansard source

I want to comment on Minister Pyne's letter, dated 17 September, in response to the Senate resolution. His response is yet another example of the coalition's deliberate deceptions and misrepresentations. Before the election the then shadow minister for education promised:

You can vote Liberal or Labor and you will get exactly the same amount of funding for your school.

Just two days before the election, Mr Tony Abbott promised that there would be 'No cuts to education, no cuts to health, no change to pensions, no change to the GST and no cuts to the ABC or SBS.' But the deceit and the duplicity have of course all been laid bare. Today we see an ideologically-driven minister saying that black is white and claiming that this government does have a commitment to rural and regional schools. Nothing could be further from the truth.

The government's mendacity is understood even by conservative governments, such as that in New South Wales. The New South Wales education minister, in responding to Mr Abbott breaking his promise to honour the Gonski agreements by cutting $30 billion from school funding, said:

Schools in regional areas, as well as disadvantaged and Aboriginal students, will be the hardest hit.

The recent PISA analysis shows that students in regional areas are up to a year behind their city peers and those in remote areas up to two years behind. This is completely unacceptable for a country which says that the importance of education is a measure of our civilisation.

Country schools are paying the price for the inequality in our school system. And to those in the coalition who say that money does not matter: tell that to the parents of children who go to some of our elite private schools and who are paying over $30,000 a year per child to go to those schools. You tell them that money does not matter! National Party senators in particular ought hang their heads in shame because they are demonstrating just what doormats they are to this government. Clearly, they have no sway whatsoever within the government. Country schools in fact have the most to gain from the full implementation of the school reforms that the Labor Party introduced when we were in government, which of course means keeping the loadings and the funding for years 5 and 6 of that school reform program.

Instead, what we have seen from the government is $30 billion cut from schools. They are cutting funding from every school in Australia by an average of $3.2 million—that is, $1,000 per student. The minister pretends that, somehow, he should be congratulated for linking school funding to the CPI. Anyone who knows anything about education knows that the ABS Education Price Index increases by 5.1 per cent a year, whereas the budget papers predict a CPI increase of just 2.5 per cent per year. That of course has a significant compounding effect when you look at it in real terms.

This government has been deceptive, dishonest and duplicitous. It is a government that is not able to lie straight in bed politically, because it has a fundamental commitment to misleading the Australian public. The minister himself said—at the time when he was at university—that he was quite happy to tell people what he thought they wanted to hear, not what he actually believed to be the case.

The cuts this government has introduced will have effects in classrooms. Teachers and principals cannot plan for the future, with the biggest cuts to school funding ever seen in the country. Those cuts are hanging over the heads of every school in this nation. The response we have from this minister today is, frankly, embarrassing. It shows a minister who is desperately trying to rewrite the commitments that he made before the election. It shows a minister clinging to false excuses about the funding cuts outside the forward estimates, while his colleagues will be claiming they are committed to infrastructure spending over the next decade. The minister admits here in black and white that school funding has been cut by this government over the next decade.

Finally and tragically, it bells the cat on the government's plan to rip apart the needs-based funding system from 2018, by foreshadowing new negotiations on school funding, negotiations that this government will hope will divide parents and schools as they fight over a shrinking pool of funds. Since the election, this government has abandoned the Gonski school funding reforms; failed to fund years 5 and 6 of the Gonski reforms; cut $30 billion from schools, the biggest cut in this nation's history; and cut indexation for growth funding.

At the next election the government, in a desperate attempt to grab votes, will defraud voters, will deceive Australians and will never have any intention of maintaining a commitment that they make in any election campaign. You simply cannot trust them.

This government is built on lies, dedicated to lies and deceit. We know that, whatever the problems in the education system at the moment, this government has no interest in fixing them. This government is perfidious. It will go down in the history of this nation for its commitment to lying its way into office.

This is a government that at the next election will have to face the public on its record of deceit. It is a government that has failed to meet its commitments in office, a government whose chicanery will be demonstrably clear to parents of this nation, and I have no doubt the public will reject it for its dishonesty. This is a government that ought to be condemned, and I expect that that is exactly what will happen. I am looking forward to the perfidy of this government being demonstrated, and we will take every opportunity to do exactly that. I seek leave to continue my remarks at a later hour.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.