Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the honourable member for his question. Schools in the honourable member's electorate of Bennelong will receive an extra $165 billion in Commonwealth funding over the next decade. That is part of our record investment in schools—an extra $18.6 billion over the next decade. We want every student in every region—in every town in every part of the country and in every honourable member's electorate—to get the very best start in life. They need a great education, with great teachers in well-resourced schools.

We do not just talk about giving a Gonski, as the honourable members opposite do; we are actually delivering on his recommendations. We are bringing the transparency, the consistency and the fairness—the needs based funding—to the school issue. Labor treated this as a political game. They did 27 secret deals, all conflicting and all giving different outcomes—running around the country with no consistency, no transparency and no attention to the needs based funding that the honourable member opposite said on 75 occasions was at the heart of his policy.

We have seen again and again that he substitutes rhetoric for substance. Australians know that we need to have a school funding system that is fair, that is transparent and that delivers schools the resources they need. Right now, the honourable members opposite have not only voted against $18.6 billion of additional funding—they have not only sought to deny Australian schools that—but they are also opposing fully funding the National Disability Insurance Scheme.

They talked about that for years too. They talked about it with empathy. They talked about it with compassion. They talked about it with pride, but they did not pay the price of funding it. The honourable member—the Leader of the Opposition—as we all know, failed to deliver the funding that our schools need and that our National Disability Insurance Scheme needs. We are ensuring that every Australian with severe and permanent disabilities can access the services that they need—so that parents with disabled children will know, now and in the future, into the years ahead, that the funding is there.

We are securing the future of the National Disability Insurance Scheme, just like we are securing the future of our schools. We have made the tough decisions. We are funding it. Labor should stop the politics, stop the complaining, stop the hypocrisy and back it. (Time expired)

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