Sharon Bird (Cunningham, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Vocational Education) Share this | Hansard source

I hope the minister is going to protest against the cuts to CSIRO, as well. The Abbott government's cynical and desperate bid to proceed with these savings, despite opposing them just weeks earlier, will amount to $2.73 billion worth of cuts from education. The announcement of the additional savings the coalition is making shows beyond doubt that the policy intent of this bill has disappeared. They will not use the money to fund better schools; they will not use it to fund education. What will Tony Abbott do with these savings? Where is the money going? When in opposition, they cried foul of these measures and now they want to take the money from education altogether. Not only are they ripping off our school-aged children; now they are ripping off our university students. Labor is not going to support these cuts because this is a second-rate deal for students at all levels of the education system.

The purpose behind Labor's focus on education was to increase opportunities for all young people. This can be seen right through from our interventions in child care, aimed at making sure there were quality childcare services providing good educational experiences for our very youngest children, to our reforms in the schooling system. Our reforms under the Better Schools program were aimed at helping those who experience the most disadvantage and at ensuring that young people come out of our school system best positioned to take up the opportunities on offer—not only in our university sector but, more broadly, in our vocational education sector and in the world of work. That means giving them the 21st century skills they will need to succeed. That was the package we put together.

It is true that, in that context, we asked the university sector to make a contribution—to have a slower rate of increased investment than they had been expecting. But we did that specifically because it was part of a broader education task—to produce an outcome for young people that made better opportunities available to them.

That is not what this bill does. This bill cynically attempts to pocket the money after the government has had so many positions on the Better Schools program that no-one would have any confidence at all that their last position, as announced yesterday, will even last until next week. Indeed, if it lasted until next week, it would be one of the longest lasting commitments they have made on Gonski.

There was some suggestion in question time today that there were more conversations to be had. Heaven knows what will come out of those! If you valued the investment in education that was originally proposed, you would not, after this absolutely shambolic process, have any confidence that the outcome of those conversations will be any better for schools, students and their parents. The number of positions the coalition have held since before the election, through the election and up until now has been extraordinary. Having recognised before the election that the community wanted to see the Gonski reforms put in place, the now government presented to the public that they were no different to Labor on these issues. They did so in order to quell a problem for them with the electorate during an election campaign period. Almost immediately after winning government, they completely walked away from that. They said: 'We are going to have a whole new review. We did not like Gonski at all.' It was a shambles, a terrible proposal, they told us. 'No government with any sense would support Gonski,' they said. They said they were going to get rid of it, only grudgingly giving one year of funding because there had to be some indication of the money schools were going to get next year. Otherwise, they said, the Gonski model was such an appalling proposal that they were going to have nothing to do with it.

Clearly the Minister for Education has no authority, because yesterday, despite how adamant he was about the Gonski proposal being unacceptable on educational grounds, a political solution was put in place to try and avoid some pain in this place over the next two weeks. It would not surprise anybody that, in that context, I am pretty cynical about how long even this half-baked agreement will last. Beyond that, the bill before the House now reflects an attack on the university sector—one that is not being pursued for the greater good of the education system. There is absolutely no way we will be supporting it.

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