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

I want to take the opportunity to indicate how important this debate this afternoon is. I thank Senator McKim for moving this matter of public importance because it allows me to speak on a subject that is very close to my own heart, education. As a former teacher, and also a teacher of teachers at the University of Newcastle, I know about the transformative power of education in my own life and also giving that opportunity.

I want to respond to a couple of comments by Senator Henderson in her contribution. I know that she is the spokesperson for education for the government that just was—that just was for the last 10 years. She talked about cuts. Let me tell you about being in estimates here in this building and watching Senator Birmingham defend cut after cut. A former agreement that was made with my state, New South Wales, allowed that state to count the cost of bussing kids to school as part of the educational contribution. That's why we have the situation that Senator Tyrrell was just talking about, where teachers are buying lunches for kids and are going out and getting paper for them to be able to work with. That's why we're where we are. It's because terrible things were done for a point of difference in terms of funding.

I warn that the simplistic solutions that were the signature of the previous government—we must have explicit instruction; we must be mandating that that occurs for every student—let me tell you that the evidence base is that every learner learns in a slightly different way. There is no way anybody would dare come in here and say to a builder: 'I'm sorry, I'm going to mandate the tools that you can use to build a house. You must do it the way I say, even though I'm not an expert and I don't know.' Teachers are experts, and they're sick and tired of politicians playing with them and telling them what to do without the expertise or the professional knowledge and diminishing the complex work that teachers do to mandate the sort of instructions we just heard repeated here again.

Funding obviously is critical in making schools able to do the best that they can do, but what's most important is what that funding does. We heard Senator Henderson's words: 'We have to have a war to improve the education sector.' We don't need a war. We need the sort of vision that allowed Henry Parkes to establish the concept of public education in the first place. The buildings we see were aspirational. They gave hope and heart to people in schools. That's what we need. We don't need more of this 'let's play divisive different games' and politicians telling teachers what to do from this building. We should watch and observe. We should take the data. We should obviously notice when things are going wrong, and we need to respond carefully, but we shouldn't be mandating anything for the multitude of needs that exist in schools across this country.

The current National Schools Reform Agreement was signed off in 2018 by the Morrison government. This is an agreement which with every year that has passed has become an illustration of a wasted decade of missed opportunities in school education. The Productivity Commission was damning in its assessment of that agreement, pointing out last year that the former government's plan lacked real targets and was missing very practical reforms needed to help prevent students from falling behind. The results of 10 years of supposed educational leadership in this place by the Liberal-National parties was that more than 86,000 students were failing to meet either basic literacy or numeracy standards. And why are teachers leaving? Because they're being berated, deprofessionalised and discarded; they're walking away from really powerful and important work because they've been underpaid and underfunded.

As a senator for New South Wales, I want to give a voice to the thanks of my teaching colleagues across that state. They're so happy that there has been a change of government there as well. I want to acknowledge my colleagues there: Prue Carr, the Minister for Education and Early Learning, and Premier Minns, who are going to lead a revolutionary transformation of and lift in investment in our students in that state.

I'm pleased to say that this government here in Canberra is getting on with the job of dealing with the legacy of decline that was accurately documented by Senator Henderson. But it all happened on their watch. We went to the election with a commitment to work with the states and territories on funding, to get every school funded to 100 per cent of its fair funding level. Fairness in funding for every Australian student is simply what we have to do.