Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

How is it fair that honourable members have to have such an exercise in hypocrisy and cant inflicted on them? This is the Leader of the Opposition who said again and again, 75 times, that needs based funding was a commitment of the Labor Party, and the Liberals and the Nationals had abandoned it. Again and again he went on about needs based funding. That is exactly what we have delivered. He said, 'Labor is absolutely committed to the Gonski needs based funding formula. We believe fundamentally that needs based funding will give our children across Australia the best start in life.'

The fact is that they corrupted the Gonski vision. We are delivering the Gonski model of needs based funding as David Gonski and his panel recommended, consistent and transparent across Australia. More importantly than anything, we do not need the endorsement of the Leader of the Opposition, because he swings from one side of the fence to the other. We have David Gonski's endorsement. David Gonski stood up with the education minister and me and confirmed that the policy that we were presenting, the $18.6 billion of additional funding over a decade, the needs based formula that was being applied to every school in Australia, regardless of what state it was in and whether it was a government school or a non-government school—David Gonski confirmed that fulfilled the recommendations he had made.

He confirmed need based funding, fair, equitable, right across the country, additional funding for every school—and, as the minister confirmed a moment ago, not least the schools in the Leader of the Opposition's electorate. The Leader of the Opposition's nonsense—his hypocrisy, his inconsistency, his secret deals—have run out of credibility. The time has come for Labor to honour and live up to the rhetoric it has been mounting for years and years, and to back the Gonski needs based funding formula that my government is delivering.

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