Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the document.

The Report on financial assistance granted to each state in respect of 2007 provides a detailed breakdown of expenditure in 2007 from funds appropriated by the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Act 2004 and a brief description of how funding is allocated in line with the objectives for Australian government programs for schools. It mentions on page 12 the national projects in relation to literacy, numeracy and special learning needs. The prime objective of the national projects element of this program is to support strategic national research projects and initiatives aimed at improving the learning outcomes of educationally disadvantaged children and school students.

The sad story is that we now know that the literacy and numeracy results of Queensland students are the worst in this country. It is a disgrace and it is one hell of a shame. Successive Labor education ministers in Queensland have failed young Queenslanders. We now have the worst standards in this country. The Queensland Premier herself, Ms Bligh, was an education minister. She also failed. She has announced this week, in a hype of audacity, a program for $72 million to help tackle the crisis in literacy and numeracy in Queensland, a crisis that of course she helped to create.

George Brandis (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Attorney-General) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

This is the audacity of hype.

Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Quite right, Senator Brandis. There was $72 million announced, but guess how much the Queensland government is putting forward—only $5 million of that $72 million. Why? Because there is no more money to go around. Why is that? Because, as Senator Brandis has just outlined, the Queensland budget is a shambles. The state is in debt to $74 billion.

I cannot believe—and I mentioned this earlier in the chamber—that Queensland debt is now $74 billion. This has occurred in boom times: when Queensland had record receipts from mining royalties and record receipts from property taxes and associated taxes with hundreds of thousands of people moving to Queensland. More importantly than all that, over the last 12 years, since the implementation of the GST, billions of extra dollars have gone into the Queensland state government coffers that otherwise would not have gone in. Despite all of that—despite the best economy in Queensland’s history, the best economy since Federation, the best conditions, the mining boom and the greatest land and tax receipts—the Queensland state government has landed the people of Queensland with $74 billion of debt.

There was $96 billion of debt after the last Labor federal government. We and the Australian people were rightly outraged about $96 billion of debt, but there is $74 billion of state debt for only one-fifth of the nation’s population. It is an absolute and utter disgrace. How much is that costing? The interest bill alone is about $10 million per day. It will have cost $35,000 in interest in the five minutes of this address to the Senate. That is how much it is costing the people of Queensland.

Those kids in Queensland have the poorest literacy and numeracy results in the country because the standards and the schools have been run down. Why? Because the government can no longer afford to pay for schools and programs. It is an absolute disgrace. Queensland was the first state in this country to get a AAA rating and now it is the first to lose it. The interest bill is enormous and it is going to be four or five times per Queenslander what it was per Australian at the end of the Keating government. It is an absolute disgrace and yet Ms Bligh still seems to think that there should not be a change of government, that she is doing okay and that the LNP are hopeless. She has placed Queensland in a debt rut because Labor is addicted to debt. She has failed the children of Queensland. I seek leave to continue my remarks later.

Leave granted; debate adjourned.