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

I am talking about when you make these contributions, Senator Kroger. Take some advice and actually think about the issue before you simply parrot what the minister has asked you to say. This is the same minister sending you notes who called the Gonski reforms a con—he called them a 'conski'.

The Liberal Party would have to be the only organisation in the whole of the country that did not appreciate that the schools funding model we had in place in this country was not working. It was failing our students. It must be the only party in the country that does not understand that education is the absolute key to our future economic prosperity. It is the cornerstone of all innovation and enterprise. If we do not get education right for our kids and for our future, it is the economic prosperity of everyone in this country that will fail. Everyone—the private school sector and the government school sector—knew the funding model was a failure and was not working. So the Labor government undertook massive reform to create a schools funding model that would take us through to the next generation by providing billions of dollars in extra funding where it was needed most: in delivering the education society that we need if we are going to compete on the global stage into the future. If we want to keep our economic prosperity in this country, we must get education right.

I think it is a shame that you finally worked that out only during the election campaign. After calling the Gonski reforms a con, you realised that you were alone—that parents, teachers, the private school sector, the public school sector and everybody else knew that we needed to move forward with extra funding, proper tied funding, proper responsibility and commitments at state and federal levels to improve government funding here. You finally came on board and you realised you were out of touch with the views of the rest of the community. So you desperately tried to make promises. Mr Abbott made the promise that there would be no difference between Labor and Liberal. He promised that, if you voted Labor or Liberal, you would get the same package of educational reform. But, of course, that did not happen. I remember Abbott saying: 'There is not a sliver of light between Labor and Liberal on this policy.'

What did we see today? There was this massive backflip where they found $1.2 billion, which they could not find on Friday but found today. But, of course, that only takes us up to four years of funding in this space. When you are talking about future generations, four years of funding is not enough. Our model went to six.