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

There is certainly one area in this place where there needs to be investment of the money—particularly in mathematics—and that is in the Labor Party, their leader, their shadow Treasurer, the assistant shadow Treasurer and, of course, Senator Carr!

I always start with the famous $100,000 degrees. The very renowned Vice-Chancellor of the University of Western Australia, Professor Paul Johnson, made the comment that there would not be more than $16,000 needed per annum for the cost of degrees. Now, for a three-year degree, that is 16 times three. If our Labor colleagues could only get out their calculators and take their socks off they will see that it is only $48,000. Sixteen times four, as my good colleagues know very well, is $64,000.

My good Western Australian colleague, Senator Pat Dodson, on his first day and in his first question was drawn into the $100,000 degrees. But that was not enough, was it, because we have only learned in the last 24 hours about the $20 billion blow-out! Of course, the $20 billion blow-out has blown out all of Labor's money for what they said they would have been doing. They go on about Gonski, but they never ever funded Gonski—we all know that.

And then I come to the Gillard memorial halls and Building the Education Revolution. This was the one that was going to cost about $13 billion or $14 billion. Senator Ruston here remembers it quite well. I was on that committee with Senator Cash and it was not until we started putting a lot of pressure on the government of the day and pointing out their financial errors to them that they actually appointed Mr Brad Orgill to have a look into the squalid waste that went on with the Gillard memorial halls.

The principals were saying, 'We don't need new classrooms, thank you very much. We want toilet blocks.' The answer was, 'No, you're getting new classrooms! Rip the old ones out and away you go!' That is the pattern of the Labor Party. And now we have come to a point of congratulations, in my view, to Senator Birmingham, because he has been able to lay out so clearly where the government is increasing its investment in education.

In 2012-13 I chaired a Senate inquiry into teaching and learning—not the Gonski-level stuff, but why kids are not learning and why teachers cannot teach. I remember that the predecessor of Senator Simms was on that committee—Senator Wright—plus Senator Gallacher and, of course, my excellent education colleague, Senator McKenzie. The areas that we came up with were really interesting: engagement of parents, particularly from the youngest age; the actual capacity of the universities to turn out competent graduate teachers; the need for literacy and numeracy assessment of teachers—new teachers and others; professional development of teachers themselves—developing the excellence of teachers; and literacy and numeracy in the children—back-to-basics.

As I recall, this was indeed a unanimous report in its recommendations and added rural, remote and regional students to those disadvantaged, along with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander groups, lower socioeconomic groups and disabled children. I am very proud to say that in government we have seen the recommendations of that report find their way into the coalition's policy on education.

So what do we have today? We have remarkable figures. I will just concentrate on those from our own home state of Western Australia, if I may, Mr Acting Deputy President Whish-Wilson. Commonwealth funding to government schools across Australia will grow by $1.9 billion by 2019-20. That is an increase—an increase!—of 33 per cent. That is for government schools across Australia. For non-government schools it will be a growth of $2.2 billion by 2019-20, a 22.7 per cent increase. In the case of Western Australia, of which I am very proud, we will see total Commonwealth funding to all schools increase by $600 million between 2015-16 and 2019-20. That is a 38 per cent increase. Where is the decrease in funding to education?

Let me break that down a bit further, if I can. For government schools in the West there will be an increase of $367 million by 2019-20, an increase of 65 per cent—65 per cent! And for the non-government school sector there will be an increase of $229 million, or 23 per cent. These are the sorts of statistics that we are talking about.

But in our inquiry, when we looked at teaching and learning we went to look at what Finland was doing. Our committee, which included my colleague, Senator Bilyk, the now Deputy President and Senator McKenzie—