Mark Butler (Port Adelaide, Australian Labor Party, Shadow Minister for Environment, Climate Change and Water) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to support this matter of public importance and to condemn this government's failure to plan for the jobs of the new economy. This is a failure that starts with this government's approach to education—a failure to plan for our schools, a failure to plan for our TAFEs and a failure to plan for our universities. In the long-term, we know that the jobs of the future depend on the quality of our education system today. In contrast to a complete lack of vision from those opposite, Labor in government had a clear plan to make sure our kids had the skills they needed to get the jobs of the future. After the biggest review of our schools in 40 years, we put in place the Gonski reforms. Australians liked what they saw. With nothing of their own to offer, even the Liberal Party recognised that Australians liked what they saw, and they jumped on board. The Prime Minister said during the last week of the election campaign that there would be no cuts to education, because he knew that cuts would be terribly received by the Australian people. Earlier, he promised an 'absolute unity ticket when it comes to school funding.' The now Minister for Education, the member for Sturt, promised:

So you can vote Liberal or Labor and you'll get exactly the same amount of funding for your school …

But they never really meant it—and this year's budget locked in their $30 billion cuts to schools over the next decade. The consequences will be far reaching. By cutting education now, this government is failing Australians on the jobs of the future.

Even though we are not in government any more, Labor are still the ones coming up with the ideas. It is only Labor that has the vision to make sure Australia and Australia's kids are not left behind. In coming years, three out of four jobs in the fastest growing industries will rely on science, technology, engineering and mathematics skills. When it comes to making sure our children have these skills—as even the member for Bradfield acknowledged in a soaring speech in the budget reply debate—the Leader of the Opposition has set out our ambitions: firstly, we will ensure that our children in primary and secondary school across Australia are learning coding—computational thinking and programming, the language of the future, so they do not just use technology but can make technology work; secondly, we will invest in the skills of our teachers, by upskilling 25,000 existing teachers so they fall in love with maths and science and can help their students do the same; thirdly, we will provide scholarships for 25,000 STEM graduates to study teaching; and fourthly, as the member for Bradfield outlined, we will provide over 100,000 HECS-free STEM degrees so that more people thinking about a university education choose science and maths as a profession.

Labor will not sit by and wait for the future to come to us. We will embrace it and we will ensure our children are able to make the most of it. In comparison, this is a government resolutely stuck in the past. All you need to do is look at their priorities. Estimates proceedings this week confirm they are planning to cut even more programs, including the maths and science olympiads,    Scientists and Mathematicians in Schools, the Australian Maths and Science Partnerships Program, and    improving the quality of maths and science teachers. The minister himself, as the member for Bradfield outlined, has been caught-out playing catch-up on maths and science after the power of the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply speech. Just last week he surprised the states and territories by saying that maths and science should be compulsory in years 11 and 12. Superficially, that is a very attractive proposition. The problem is, he has been immediately undermined by his own Liberal Party colleagues and by experts. The Western Australian Liberal education minister, Peter Collier, said only a couple of days ago:

… I'd be the first to object to the idea that we must make this compulsory.

Ian Chubb, the Chief Scientist, said:

… it is difficult to make these subjects compulsory, but they should be made so compelling that everyone wants to do them.

That is exactly what the Leader of the Opposition's budget reply speech and the policies outlined in that speech do—try to make maths, science, engineering and technology qualifications as attractive as they possibly can be for young Australians so that they have skills for the future. This is why we are so committed to the education system—it is why we introduced the Gonski reforms; it is why we remain committed to a needs-based, sector-blind school funding system that really looks to the skills our children are going to need in the future. (Time expired)

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