Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I notice again a reference to slush funds by those opposite. So, when these moneys from this fund flow to a university or a TAFE college in the electorate of the honourable member who was intervening then, I presume they will not welcome that injection of funds—is that correct? Is it correct that, when it comes to an investment from the Building Australia Fund to meet high-speed broadband needs in the rural and regional electorates of Australia represented in part by the National Party, I can take it that those opposite will say, ‘No, we don’t want the connection; we actually want to make sure that internet speeds in rural and regional Australia remain as slow as they are now’? Is that what you are saying? Are you saying that, when the Building Australia Fund is dedicated to dealing with the challenges of urban congestion, those opposite will say, ‘Oh no, we don’t want that investment here. We want people simply to stay in their cars, day in, day out’? I think those opposite speak with forked tongues. When it comes to these investment funds for the future, whether that investment is in education, health or infrastructure, we have a plan for the future—as opposed to an excuse for inertia, which those opposite have.

On the education revolution, the big challenge is this: what do we do to make sure that those kids attending schools across Australia have the best quality education possible? Our starting point as a Labor government is this: it does not matter where you come from, what side of the tracks you have grown up on, you should have, through the school system, the best opportunity possible to make the most of your life. That is what galvanises us as a Labor government.

How do we do that across the school systems of the country? You can either do as our predecessors did and say, ‘Not our problem; we’ll blame the states,’ or you can engage in a creative dialogue with the states about how you can make it better. And that is what I was outlining today in an address to the National Press Club. What we have said is that we intend to embrace a reform agenda for the future on quality education for Australian schools, quality teaching for Australian schools and quality leadership for Australian schools, to ensure that we have, also, proper transparency in the public reporting of the performance of Australian schools, and, on top of that again, that we have an ability to fund and to invest in those most disadvantaged schools, to ensure that they get the best teachers, the best resources possible, to lift them to the standards of other schools.

This quality education reform agenda, which I and the Deputy Prime Minister have outlined today and on previous days, is an important next step in the education revolution that we have planned for this nation. An education revolution is necessary because we have an ambition for Australia to have, with our workforce, the best educated, best trained, best skilled workforce in the world. But you cannot just pull that out of thin air. You have to put money to the task, and you have got to put quality reforms in place as well. And the qualitative reforms that we have put forward are robust and strong.

We will engage the states and territories in the months ahead on negotiations about two new national policy partnerships: one on quality teaching, the other on those financially disadvantaged schools in low socioeconomic areas. And, on top of that, through the proposed new national education agreement, we will make it a condition of that agreement to ensure that schools in the future are performing at an optimum qualitative level for the needs of kids right across the country.

These are well thought out, concrete plans for the future. These are planned proposals with money attached. There are conditionalities attached. But our end point is clear. How do we make sure that kids in schools across the country—in the rural and regional electorates of Australia, in outer metropolitan Australia and in inner-city Australia—have the best opportunity possible to make the absolute best of their lives? We do not intend to say, ‘This is a problem for the states; this is a problem for the territories; this is a problem for anyone else apart from us.’ Instead, we are putting our shoulder to the wheel: more funds to be addressed to and injected into the school system, but based on clear-cut quality benchmarks, to ensure that we have the best teachers possible, that we have the best school leadership possible, and that we have the most appropriate funding injection possible for the most disadvantaged schools, because that is part and parcel of securing our country’s long-term economic future.

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