Rob Mitchell (McEwen, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Please, potato head, be quiet. Every time you speak you just make things worse. It means that $4.5 billion will be invested into the education system over the 2018 and 2019 school years and a total of $37.3 billion for the package over the decade. The 'Your Child. Our Future' plan focuses on children's needs by ensuring there is more individual attention and support for students with special learning needs. It means targeted resources and better equipped classrooms. It means our teachers will have greater support with access to quality resources and training. The Liberals will argue that we cannot afford to invest in education and only cuts will do. But I argue that we cannot afford not to invest in education, in our kids and in our future.

In the 2014-15 budget the Abbott-Turnbull government revealed a $30 billion cut to all Australian schools over the next decade by abandoning the needs based funding model beyond 2017. For schools in the electorate of McEwen, these cuts are equivalent to sacking one in seven teachers, cutting the average school budget by $3.2 million and providing about $1, 000 less support per student per year. The impact of these cuts is real. They would be enough to employ 221 extra teachers every year over the next 10 years in the seat of McEwen alone. The Turnbull government's school funding policy not only means that our schools will not be resourced to improve standards but also means that schools will actually go backwards. Without investment in our schools, TAFEs and universities, the Prime Minister's waffle about innovation and the future economy is just all fluff. The Turnbull government has no plan to fix the crisis it has created in schools.

Improving Australia's education system is the most important prerequisite to building innovation and preparing Australians for the jobs of the future. Already 75 per cent of the fastest-growing occupations today require skills in science, technology, engineering and maths—STEM. And employment in STEM occupations is projected to grow at almost twice the pace of other occupations. Modernising our education system is essential so that our kids can be empowered and can be productive and active participants in the global economy, which is facing rapid technological change; 3-D printers, automation and robotics are advancing at an ever-increasing pace, creating enormous opportunities for economies that make the right policy choices.

But this environment of rapid technological change also presents significant risk for countries and economies that do not make the right choices, that do not understand the challenges and that do not invest in the right things for the future. Labor has accepted the risk and has released its plan to ensure that we are in a position to meet those future workforce challenges head-on. That is because Labor understands that, without comprehensive investment in education, advances in technology will see a further hollowing out of middle- and low-level jobs, further increasing inequality. And that is unacceptable to Labor. We are committing to fund a permanent and ongoing shift to needs based funding in our schools because every child in every school should be equipped with the basic skills to secure the jobs of the future. It is what parents want, it is what teachers want and it is what students need.

Labor's 'Your Child. Our Future' plan will drive opportunity, innovation and the economy through education. The 'Your Child. Our Future' reforms will ensure that all children, no matter what their socioeconomic background is, will get the best start in life and the opportunity to succeed in the rapidly changing global economy. Labor's 'Your Child. Our Future' plan gives families a clear choice, because only Labor will invest in our children's futures to ensure that they have the opportunities going forward as we move further into the 21st century. What we have is a clear choice: an opposition that is prepared to stand up for kids, stand up for families and stand up for education, or a government that is consistent in only one thing: saying one thing before an election and doing something completely opposite after.

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