Trevor Evans (Brisbane, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

Well, they're still at it—or, maybe more accurately, they're at it again. The member for Sydney—apparently now fully recovered after a public shaming last year by the ABC Fact Check for her misleading statements on education funding—is back and, it appears, is as undeterred by the facts as ever.

Last year—it was only six months ago, I think—Labor was here trying on these same misleading lines about billions being cut from schools and education funding. Here's exactly what ABC Fact Check had to say regarding those claims:

RMIT ABC Fact Check takes a deep dive into the figures.

The verdict

Ms Plibersek's claim is misleading: the Government is not cutting $22 billion from schools.

Commonwealth budgets set out spending over a four year period.

According to the 2017-18 budget handed down on May 9, Commonwealth schools funding will continue to rise every year.

So the Labor claims here are misleading, according to ABC Fact Check. It really is quite remarkable to hear the member for Sydney—and so many of her South Australian colleagues, for some reason!—coming back here today to repeat those same old discredited lines. Australians are now on high alert, sadly, when it comes to Labor misleading them: 'Mediscare', school cuts, and the list goes on. There's a pattern there of lines which have been found, again and again, to be misleading by ABC Fact Check.

We know that those on the opposite side know nothing about business. Barely any of them have set foot inside anything other than the union movement, and even fewer of them have been into that half of Australia that exists in the small business sector. So it's going to come as news to them—

See this speech in context