Josh Burns (Macnamara, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

This is the first time I'm speaking in this chamber as the new member for Macnamara, and there's no better motion to be debating than my good friend the member for Moreton's motion on schools. It's a shame that we seem to go from Labor speaker to Labor speaker because the government simply isn't interested in speaking about schools. I note in the chamber we have my good friend the member for Berowra, who has spoken on the motion but who seems to be without friends on this one. That is certainly noted in the first speech.

I wanted to start my remarks on this motion—a really important motion—by talking about a school close to my home, Glen Eira College. Glen Eira College is a fascinating study in the difference between cutting funding to education and providing investment to schools. When I was in year 7, Glen Eira College wasn't an option for my family. It was a school where a lot of students had a range of behavioural difficulties, behavioural issues. It was a school with, quite frankly, a drug problem, and it was a school that had about 250 students who basically didn't have any other choice. It was a really difficult choice for a lot of parents. Over time, that school has been invested in, has had some outstanding principals and teachers, and the culture of that school has completely changed. Now it is a school that I would be so proud to send one of my children or my daughter to—I only have one child, and I'm glad I have got this on the record as well. But it is a fantastic school and one we can all be proud of.

During my time at university, I also worked as a teacher's aide inside the classroom. It was clear at that time that you only needed to spend an hour in the classroom to see that, with 21 different students running around, there were 21 different lessons going on. That requires the effort and the attention of outstanding people and those people are our teachers. They put so much time and effort into making sure each and every student has what they need to get a great education. I think that is what goes to the heart of this motion.

In 2013, Julia Gillard had an idea that schools should be funded on the needs of the child to learn. It was the National Partnership Agreement; we all know it as the Gonski reforms. It was a profound idea that in Australia a school is not funded based on its postcode or its achievement but on what we need to provide Australian schools in order to make sure our students can get the best education. We all remember, going into the 2013 election, the famous lines by the then opposition leader Tony Abbott, who said there would be no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no cuts to the ABC or the SBS, and we saw nothing but slash, slash, cut, cut, cut.

Leading into this election there was also a further reform of the National Partnership Agreement by the current Prime Minister, where a deal was done with the Catholic and independent schools to return some of that funding by the initial National Partnership Agreement back to the Catholic and independent schools. To be frank, I supported that move. I think there are a number of those schools that absolutely needed that funding. But that doesn't mean that you shouldn't be providing that funding to our public schools. And quite frankly, I think it is un-Australian to have a situation where we are putting funding into our private and independent schools and not putting it into our public schools.

In McNamara, my electorate, we had a situation where the Labor Party was coming to the election with a vastly different set of commitments to the coalition. It was going to mean another $11 million to schools in my electorate, which included $580,000 extra for Albert Park Primary School, $460,000 for Caulfield Junior College, $840,000 for Elwood Primary School, $590,000 for St Kilda Primary School and the list goes on. That is all funding for more teachers' aides, smaller class sizes, literacy and numeracy support, and a range of other things to give teachers the support they need in order to provide for the needs of each and every student.

It wasn't just for teaching and learning outcomes; we also came with a range of building upgrades that I was pleased to support for Ripponlea Primary School, Windsor Primary School, Glen Eira College and Port Melbourne Primary. We came with a very full and ambitious education plan. One of the many frustrations of the election was that, while obviously we didn't get everything right and we accept this result was the choice of the Australian people, I was really proud to campaign for our ambitious schools policy. I commend the motion of the member for Moreton to this place.

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