Andrew Laming (Bowman, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Late on this Thursday afternoon, spectators in the gallery must be listening to this most important of national topics only to hear two sides of politics on completely separate lines of argument. To summarise where we have got to so far, we have had a very clear elaboration by the government of the actual facts of education funding. At the same time, you have heard a very shrill attack from the opposition that we on this side are not meeting their commitments to education and there is a very good reason why—because there is no proof in the pudding like the pudding itself.

When this lot opposite were in government, they were utterly fixated on pink batts and the wacky Green Loans scheme. But when it came to investing in schools, it was mostly school halls. There was not really a great deal of talk about anything other than Gonski reports for long into the future—where they would not be accountable for where that money would come from. That is why the Labor Party, when they are pressed on numbers, moved it all out of the important four-year forward estimates and stacked it in the five-plus years away because they do not want to tell you where the money was ever going to come from—it was five years or more away. Now we are in government, those opposite have these fanciful and elevated figures that were never fundable by any Australian government. Now they say that we are cruel, hard and inconsiderate for not meeting their ephemeral and vacuous promises back when they did not have to tell us where the money was going to come from in the first place.

I will cover the facts and summarise the two coalition speakers before me. The government are funding schools at four per cent—way more than the OECD average of 3.6 per cent. We are growing education funding every year but of course we are not meeting the vacuous and empty promises that Julia Gillard made up just months before her election loss in the hope she would win the election. Those figures of course were never funded—that means that Julia Gillard never told you where the money would come from to achieve those extraordinary increases in school funding. So you know that increases are between eight per cent and 11 per cent. You know that the Commonwealth is doing the bulk of the increase in school funding, not the states. You know that over a generation the contribution into school funding has been enormous and the growth in state school funding has way overshadowed the very tiny increases in independent school funding. That is what the gallery will understand from here.

Now I want a focus on what is a very broadly worded and emotive topic of debate today—that is, 'undermining the future of Australian children by attacking schools'—which basically could cover any topic you choose. I do want to divert to the area of the Safe Schools Coalition, which has been a true talking point this week. It is material produced by the former Labor government that, in the guise of preventing bullying, is basically bringing in a gender and sex education program for state schools around the country. That to me is a far greater attack on the values of Australians because what they want is an end to bullying but they did not ask for this package in particular.

I think it is very important today, without me taking sides, to look at the evidence base behind this program before we can actually, in this debate, work out whether or not we are undermining the futures of children in Australian schools. This is a package that has been developed by one or two academics and the extent of the evidence base behind it—I say to members of the opposition—is some focus groups with teachers. It was very qualitative, feeling related research on whether they liked the package. If you are going to change the curriculum, I would like a bit more than that as evidence. Particularly in these areas of morals, ethics and sexual issues, I think parents are an equal partner in the discussion. Parents have been completely isolated from the collection of that evidence. I think that is unacceptable. Call me a little extreme in this regard for saying that parents need to have some say, or at least an equal and collaborative say, in the education of children.

This coalition director, Sally Richardson, told media recently that this manual has now been picked up by about 350 schools and many of them are secret. It raises a very important libertarian question about whether parents deserve to know what their children are being taught. I think it is completely reasonable that, if you are going to introduce that material, you should be letting your parent body know. I am not insisting on that for history and geography, but I am saying that issues around gender and sexual education should be a matter that parents have a say in. I do not want to see the role of parents completely expropriated by schools, but I would like to think that they are focusing on those important core issues. Where they move into these, it is important to have an open discussion. You do not have the evidence. I do not think that getting 11-year-olds role-playing as queer is evidence based at all. From all the evidence provided, it is extraordinarily thin. I would like to see a way broader group of people involved in developing this material, including psychologists, psychiatrists and paediatricians, who understand what these children actually go through and the services available in this community to protect those children's future.

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