Andrew Broad (Mallee, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

I was appreciating that this was a matter of public importance and that people on different sides of the chamber were having that debate quite respectfully, until the member for Brand made overstatements such as that every student in every school would be worse off. I would encourage the member for Brand—it is probably one of her first MPIs—to try and approach these things with a level of detailed discussion rather than just trying to throw mud.

he government, of course, is not the Liberal government; it is the coalition government. I might just point out that they would not be here without the National Party. It is a point worth making and worth making well.

One of the roles of government, of course, is the education of our children. It is something we take with a level of gravity and seriousness. There are two systems in place across Australia. There is, of course, federal money that goes directly to private schools and federal GST money that goes to state governments, and those state governments deliver our state school system.

I was educated through the state school system. I am a product of Bridgewater Primary School and Kangaroo Flat Tech, thank you very much. I did not know how to tie a tie until I was 30 so I did not go to one of those schools. The electorate of Mallee, which I represent, has a lot of those state schools, and we have some very good schools. But I just want to bring to the attention of the House that there are three things, in my opinion, that are very important if we are going to give our children a good education.

School facilities are one of those things. It is important that we have good school facilities, and the federal government, as we have heard, has been substantially increasing funding for better facilities from $13 billion in 2013 to $20 billion in 2020. That is not the only thing that is important. The school's culture is also important. I am very pleased that one of the things that members of parliament get to do is deliver flags into our schools, because it gives me a chance to talk to teachers and get a feel for the school's culture. The third thing is the home life of those students.

On school culture, we have a couple of schools in my patch that are stand-out schools. Robinvale Secondary College has 415 students and 54 first languages. Just think about that for a moment. It is one of the most multicultural schools in Australia. We have a strong Indigenous community and the Clontarf Foundation, which originated in Western Australia, are running things with young Aboriginal students using AFL football to bring people into school. Tyrrell College is another one. It is in a farming community and the students can do very good subjects that are relevant to people's future career choices in a farming community.

I want to touch on the issue of home life, and this comes from my personal experiences of being a foster parent and of having a child who missed out on breakfast and had to deal with eating issues. I think that there is a legitimate argument, when we think about how we fund schools, that we had better fund an ongoing breakfast program. Now, anyone who works with children will know that if a child has not had breakfast then they will not be able to learn.

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