George Christensen (Dawson, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

'We're not in government,' they say. If you get in government you have to find that money. That is what Labor does not understand. Their so-called funding was never ever there. It will be interesting to see if the noisy fringe will still 'give a Gonski' and continue to attach such political placards to school fences now that a funding model truly reflects the needs of all schools. I caution that Catholic schools are now out there campaigning about this issue, the new model based on student needs, which is supposed to be blind to the nature of the school being public or private. The Catholic and Christian schools tend to take in students from families with limited means as well, and this will be reflected, I hope, in the funding. I will be watching it very carefully. Every child is a student and it is unfair to discriminate against one, and every parent of those students is a taxpayer.

While I welcome more funding, I acknowledge also that money alone cannot produce results. I do not believe that a teacher who might receive $250,000 in classroom resources will get a markedly different academic outcome than one that had $1 million in classroom resources. The great differences come from teaching. I look forward to what recommendations Mr Gonski will make with regard to getting those better teaching quality outcomes.

Labor continues to spruik about cuts to funding, even though funding continues to increase and the size of those increases, in dollar terms and percentage terms, are huge compared with other areas of the budget. I note the Labor lions now criticise cuts to Labor's policy. There are many ways the government can listen to the forgotten people. In particular, we can allow Adani's Carmichael coal project to create 10,000 jobs, and stop GetUp! and one lone Indigenous protestor from holding the whole country to ransom. We can implement recommendations from the parliamentary insurance inquiry to fix the problem of sky rocketing premiums in North Queensland. We can implement recommendations from the food certification inquiry to deal with the concerns that many have about halal certification. We can implement recommendations from the child support inquiry to deal with the concerns of many, many parents out there who think that that system is robbing them blind. We can deal with the family law system, again, where there is concern from many parents about this system encouraging parental alienation—a great form of child abuse. We can expedite work on water infrastructure in North Queensland, including Townsville's water supply and the construction of Urannah Dam. And we can commit to clean coal technology to power the north with a coal-fired generator in North Queensland.

The future of Australia does not lie in pandering to the indulgent whims of extremist fringes who bounce about the echo chambers of the media. It lies in the strength, determination, good nature and hard work of the forgotten people—the people who Sir Robert Menzies talked about and who I wholeheartedly support as a representative in this place.

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