Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to make a contribution in the short time allocated to me before question time today on this outrageous claim by the government that they are about to fix the problem. We have seen the fixer in action in the House of Representatives and the fixer in action is well and truly alive in the legislation that this government is seeking to inflict on this sector. Madam Acting Deputy President Lines, as a fellow participant in the Education and Employment Committee in the Senate, you and I have had the unhappy experience of listening to commentary after commentary, testimony after testimony of how this government has failed to listen to the sector, has ignored every single warning sign of danger in this area. For two years they have been in government and they have not been watching carefully what has been going on. And now here they are in the last week of the year bringing in legislation and a series of amendments which have just landed on the table in the Senate in the last hour. That is how good the fixer is fixing things for education in this country.

What is going on today is a mad rush by an incompetent government who do not have any heart for education. They have taken $30 billion out of education in their first budget.