Tony Zappia (Makin, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Manufacturing) Share this | Hansard source

I say to the member for Wannon that Labor's education policy has been very well received by the people I have spoken to since we announced it, including as recently as this week, when I met with the principals of the Primary Principals Association here in Canberra. They made it very, very clear that they welcome this policy, as does every other education commentator whose reports I have read.

Before the election the member for Sturt, who was then the shadow education minister, said, on 29 August:

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

The then opposition leader, just before the election, said:

… 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.

Included in that was 'no cuts to education'. The promises were clear. After promising that there would be no cuts to education, time and again this government cut $30 billion of education funds. And I say again to the member for Wannon that he does not have to listen to this side of parliament to accept the $30 billion of cuts. Every education minister across Australia has acknowledged that there has been $30 billion cut from future education funding in this country. That is a reality that those opposite cannot walk away from as much as they try.

The $30 billion of cuts were particularly bad for South Australia because the cuts were made to years 5 and 6 of Gonski education funding. For my state of South Australia, that meant that we lost most of the Gonski funding. That cut hit the hardest. Not only would South Australia miss out on years 5 and 6 of Gonski education funding but also forward funding increases would then be based on the lower value figure. It is interesting that we hear today that the government is trying to negotiate $7 billion of relief funding prior to the next election. It was $7 billion or thereabouts that was cut from years 5 and 6 of the Gonski education program that was announced prior to the 2013 election. Not surprisingly, we are facing another election in only a few weeks or perhaps a few months.

It has also been said by members opposite time and time again—and we heard it again from the member for Aston—that education funding simply does not matter, that other things affect education outcomes. It is the same line that was used in the USA, where they tried to cut education funding in different places. There was a report put together by the Albert Shanker Institute which looked at whether education funding matters. That report concluded that education funding does matter. Yes, there might be other considerations but education funding makes a difference. If it did not make a difference, why would David Gonski have recommended in his report that funding should be increased for the education sector?

The truth of the matter is that cuts to education funding are another example of the cruelty of this coalition government because most of the funding that was cut, which was Gonski funding, would have gone to disadvantaged families across Australia—families from low-socioeconomic areas, Indigenous communities, schools with high levels of children with a disability or children from overseas with limited English and children in remote communities. These are the communities where education outcomes are well below average, as other members have said and are fully aware of, and these are the communities that would have benefited most had the funding not been cut.

This government has a track record of hitting the most needy in this country the hardest. Contrast that with Labor's 'Your Child. Our Future' policy which was announced recently, a policy that picks up on our 2013 election commitments, which is absolutely clear and which the government that we now have in place tried to link itself to. It is a policy which will reinstate $4.5 billion in education funding over the years 2018-19. It is $37.3 billion of additional funding over the next decade. For my state of South Australia, it means an additional $415 million over years 2018 and 2019.

Labor's plan would mean an additional $2 billion in dedicated support for low-socioeconomic students around this country. We all know that there are children with disabilities across the country. What is concerning is that the number of students currently that have a disability is nearly 200,000 and the number is increasing. The cuts made by this cruel government hit those students the hardest. Those students are the ones who are going to miss out because most of the funding that would have been allocated had we been elected would have gone to the students that needed it the most.

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