Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Grant Commission’s Report on state revenue sharing relativities: 2007 update. This is an important aspect particularly when we talk about education, which is one of the major areas of revenue sharing between the states and the Commonwealth. Where that money ultimately gets spent is derived primarily from the policy parameters of the various levels of government. In the case of the federal government, those policy parameters are derived from the attitudes of those in government. While listening to the debate yesterday on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006, I was rather distressed and angry to hear some of the attitudes expressed by Senator Barnett. Senator Barnett said in his speech, and I will quote from the Hansard:

For too long in Australia, a technical or trade education has been considered a second-class option to a university degree. This is exactly what happened under the Labor government before the Howard government came in about 11 years ago. Parents considered themselves failures if their children did not leave high school to go on to a ... university ...

These comments show an extreme case of arrogance and intellectual snobbery on the senator’s behalf. His comments are an insult to parents and an insult to every person who did not go to a university. As someone who also did not go to university but was a very proud person engaged in a trade as an electrician, I know that my parents did not feel like failures. They would have felt like failures only if I had felt like a failure. I can assure the Senate that I certainly did not. I was very proud to engage in a trade, to be responsible for building our cities, our homes and our infrastructure, and to be part of the manufacturing base of this country. It was a terrible insult not only to me but to every single parent whose child did not go to university and to every individual that did not go to university. Let me say Senator Barnett’s words again. He said:

Parents considered themselves failures if their children did not leave high school to go on to a ... university ... .

He then tried to throw that back as if to somehow—and this is so typical of this government’s opportunistic rhetoric—blame the Labor government for that attitude. But of course Senator Barnett is wrong: that attitude never existed; it has certainly never existed in the Labor Party. It is not the view of the Labor Party, and we actually recognise the valuable contribution that all workers make to this country regardless of whether or not they attended a university, whether or not they embarked on a trade or whether or not they left school at 16 and work in a factory or do any other sort of work. We value all that work; it is important for its contribution to our society.

I suggest no parents have considered themselves failures if their children did not go to university. I suggest that this is probably the attitude of Senator Barnett himself. It is that two-bob, elitist, intellectual snobbery that we get from the other side that has this view that if you did not go to a university you were in fact somehow a failure and therefore your parents must have been failures too. I find those comments absolutely objectionable. It is a view that could only have come from someone who must have had it pretty easy all their life. I am clearly sick of the elitist, pompous, superior attitude of Senator Barnett in respect of education. The failure here is not by parents and not by workers who have not attended a university; the only failure here is Senator Barnett, who has failed all hardworking Australians with these egotistical comments.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Whilst I have made some comments on this Commonwealth Grants Commission report in the past, the previous speaker did not speak about this report at all but spoke about a colleague’s address on a bill before the Senate. I did not listen intently to what was said by Senator Bartlett—

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Barnett! It’s the wrong speaker you’ve got.

Ian Macdonald (Queensland, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

sorry, it was Senator Barnett—but I did hear elements of his speech, and I think his speech has been grossly, viciously and very unfairly represented by the previous speaker. In fact, Senator Barnett was making the point that the trades were a very honourable occupation to embark upon. In Sydney, we used to talk about the latte set, the latte socialists, who would attend university, sit around in cafes and then run along to Labor Party meetings. The attitude that you had to go to university to be any good in society grew up in the Hawke-Keating years. Senator Barnett was saying there was a perception in Labor ranks in those days that, unless you went to uni and drank lattes down in one of the trendy cafes in Sydney or Melbourne, you were not worth looking at. Senator Barnett was quite rightly saying that the trades are a very honourable calling.

That is something I have said over many years in various other forums. I have encouraged young people to think seriously about the trades rather than simply going to university because everyone else went to university and it was the socially acceptable thing to do. Many people went to university who were not really interested in it and not well equipped for it. I think Senator Barnett made that point. That reached its peak in the Hawke-Keating years in the latte society, which so many in the Labor Party were a part of.

Like the Prime Minister, I did not go to a wealthy private school—I know that a lot of Labor Party people did—and there are many others on this side who did not. My parents did not have the money to send me to university, so I worked as an articled clerk during the day and studied externally through the University of Queensland at night to achieve my solicitor qualification. Many of my extended family are proudly in the trades—and very successfully and rewardingly so. My wife’s nephew was not terribly successful at school, but he is a good boilermaker. He is barely 40 and he earns more than twice what I earn in this place. Of course, in the great economy that the Howard government has given us—with the mining boom that has been supported by the Howard government and its export policies—those in the trades are earning enormous money.

I was recently in Gladstone talking to the boss of a construction organisation. He is a very successful businessman in Gladstone and he has built up a business in which he employs 200 people. I said to him, ‘You must be finding it difficult to get tradesmen to work on the extension of the Gladstone port that you have embarked upon.’ He said, ‘Yes, it is, but we have to pay the market rate.’ I said, ‘What is the market rate?’ He said, ‘A carpenter earns $150,000 a year and the boilermaker who works night shift overseeing the work earns in excess of $200,000 a year.’ I think that is probably more than the Prime Minister earns. And good luck to them! Those of us on this side—(Time expired)

Glenn Sterle (WA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Like Senator Marshall, I took offence at some of the statements that were made yesterday. But I want to speak on the Commonwealth Grants Commission’s Report on state revenue sharing relativities: 2007 update. The importance of this report is that it talks about the sharing out of GST revenues to the states. One determinant of the calculation of that distribution is the commission’s assessment of how much the states and territories are spending on education, including vocational education and training. I listened intently to Senator Barnett’s contribution yesterday, as I was in the chamber at the time. I was quite shocked when he made that statement, which Senator Marshall has quoted from Hansard. I have a copy of that in front of me. For those who may have missed Senator Marshall’s contribution, Senator Barnett made the disparaging comment:

Parents considered themselves failures if their children did not leave high school to go on to a university degree.

I am on the record as having proudly stated a number of times in this chamber that I did not go to university. It was not because I did not want to face the challenge of studying and going through tertiary education; it was because I did not want to go to university. There are many thousands of Australian children whom we do not expect to go to university. They do not have to go to university, because they have the desire to chase skills in different areas. The part of Senator Barnett’s comment that really annoyed me was that parents were seen as failures. My parents certainly do not see themselves as failures. They proudly put two of their children through university. In fact, one of their children got two university degrees. The oldest one did not go to university but chased the life of a truck driver. I had better qualify one statement that I made. Actually, I have been to university; I forgot. I seek leave to continue my remarks.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.