Deborah O'Neill (Robertson, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

In my opening remarks I want to quote Sir William Deane. The quote was included in the newsletter from my son's school, St Edward's Christian Brothers' College, at East Gosford, on the Central Coast. Sir William Deane showed great leadership in this country and he articulated very clearly that we can tell something about a community by how we treat people. He said:

You can tell the worth of any community, any nation … by how it treats its weakest members.

We can talk about the weakest members in our society in a range of areas, but as a former teacher and as a mother, I think there is expertise about understanding very deeply that when your child is weak at school or performs weakly at school you know there is a life of disadvantage ahead for them.

Who indeed are our weakest members? From the Gonski review we have a much clearer picture about what that constitutes—it constitutes our weakest students. That presents a challenge to us as a government that seeks to enable people to have access to high-quality education.

In terms of what the Gonski review delivered—which I might say was the first major review of the whole of schooling in 40 years, and not surprisingly the last one was done under Gough Whitlam's Labor government—we found a very disturbing fact. Apart from all of the detail, this is right at the heart of the finding: Australia has a very significant gap between the highest- and the lowest-performing students. In fact, this performance gap is far greater in Australia than many OECD countries, particularly those with high-performing school systems. One of the most alarming statistics that came to my attention was that in the reading literacy area the gap between Australian students from the highest and lowest economic, social and cultural status quartiles were found to be the equivalent of almost three years of schooling. So, if you came from a low economic, social or cultural group you could attend school for all 13 years and finish year 12 and still be three years behind your counterparts.

I have heard much of what has been said by the opposition speakers—the member for Sturt, the member for Grey and the member for Aston. The member for Aston has claimed that the three simple things he articulated at the end of his speech will fix up the Australian schooling system and everything will be okay. The reality is that there is no simple solution to the challenges that have been discovered by Gonski and that are borne out when we compare our data with that of the OECD. A simple argument like teachers needing to be able to teach phonics as being the key for making successful readers exposes how inadequate the member for Aston's understanding is of the complex nature of teaching and getting kids to read. Teachers need every single tool in their toolbox, phonics certainly being one of them, but that alone is no solution to the literacy challenges we are facing in this country.

In addition to that miserly view of what needs to be done, we have had the fear campaign of the other speakers, particularly the member for Sturt, who in his usually strident voice has come in here with a litany of things to be frightened of. 'Be afraid of the future', he almost says—'Be afraid of increased funding. Be afraid of Gonski.' He articulated that the whole of education has 'completely and manifestly failed'—I think those were his words. This hyperbole, this exaggeration, this creation of fear and negativity is something we have seen before. We saw it in the lead-up to the carbon price, but we saw that reality land, and the fear that was generated by those opposite dissipated, because the reality of investing in that structural change has brought about significant positive outcomes for the Australian people.

In the same way, and using the same methodology, we see the opposition in here today creating fear, alarm and a sense of concern about this significant change, which is designed to put more money into education to assist students and enable them to be more and more successful, making sure that we do not leave young Australians behind.

So, in some of this time that I have been allocated to speak on the bill, I do want to get onto the record what it is that we are seeking to do, which is articulated very well in the preamble to this bill, 'A bill for an act in relation to school education and reforms relating to school education, and for related purposes', in the first comment:

All students in all schools are entitled to an excellent education, allowing each student to reach his or her full potential so that he or she can succeed and contribute fully to his or her community, now and in the future.

A pretty common statement that I reckon parents would be making as they are dropping their kids off would be, 'Yes, that is what we believe we should be getting out of education.' Yet those opposite are going to oppose this bill. In our preamble we also say that:

The quality of a student’s education should not be limited by where the student lives, the income of his or her family, the school he or she attends, or his or her personal circumstances.

And that is exactly what is proposed in the Australian Education Bill: to attend to those critical things.

For those who might be listening to this debate as they are driving home, maybe having picked up the kids from school and running around to try and do extra things with them—

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