Joanne Ryan (Lalor, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That this House:

(1) acknowledges the start of the 2026 school year and the Government's record investment in Australian public schools through the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement;

(2) notes that this agreement represents the largest Commonwealth investment in public schools by any Australian Government ever and is tied to important reforms to lift student outcomes;

(3) recognises the importance of teachers and the steps the Government is taking to tackle the teacher shortage;

(4) further notes that new data shows more Australians are choosing to study teaching, supported by important measures to help more people start and finish teaching degrees including through:

(a) Commonwealth Paid Prac for teaching students;

(b) Commonwealth Teaching Scholarships; and

(c) reforms to strengthen teacher training;

(5) further acknowledges the national effort being undertaken with states and territories to prevent and respond to bullying in schools; and

(6) affirms that the Government continues to invest in schools, support teachers, and is committed to building a better and fairer education system.I stand here a proud Labor member, the member for Lalor, representing community in the outer west of Melbourne, in a seat where I follow Julia Gillard, our first female prime minister, who gave her public life to being a champion for public education in this country.

I follow her as someone who spent 27 years in state education in Victoria, who finished as a school principal before coming to this place. I stand here proudly with the member for Bass, another teacher colleague, on my right and the member for Makin on my left. I'm proud because we are doing something to build that fairer education system that we know will transform our country, because education transforms lives, individual lives, the lives of our communities, our civil society, our economy. Education transforms our productivity. It is therefore a central pillar of any federal Labor government. I'm really pleased to see that the minister, the member for Blaxland, has been getting busy on making sure that we have a fair funding model for our schools. I note that, in the start of the 2026 school year, we can proudly say that we have delivered on national agreements to make sure that our public schools are getting the funding that they need and that our public schools are getting fair funding.

When we came to government, of course, we followed the Morrison government, who had made sure that private schools had all reached fair funding but had ignored what was happening in the public sector. This was not only to that government's detriment but it was to our country's detriment. We also know that there was a chronic teacher shortage. Again, we can proudly say that our education minister and our caucus have taken up with both hands to ensure that we have scholarships to attract people to teaching, and the results are already on the board, with improvements in that area and more people signing up every day with the introduction of paid paid prac, which will assist those people doing their teaching degrees to do their prac placements and not be out of pocket—all things to make sure that people are attracted to teaching.

As someone who spent decades in classrooms teaching our young people, I know how complex this work is. I know how much support every school, every system, every child needs to ensure that every young person in our school system reaches their potential, because this is what drives improved society and improved productivity for our country. There are lots of good economic reasons why there needs to be a significant spend to ensure fair funding in schools. As a Labor government, we don't need an economic reason to do the right thing; we only need to know that every child deserves the right to a quality education, and that's what this government is hell bent on delivering.

We have the national agreement across the country getting things right. What we took up when we came to government, what we found were: attendance rates were going down, high school completion was going down—this century—teacher shortages were getting worse, and the gap between advantaged and disadvantaged students was getting wider. Only Labor had a plan for Australian students and teachers. It's what our $16.5 billion Better and Fairer Schools Agreement is all about, and that's why it's so important. When those opposite scream 'spending!', I want them on the record to say they're not going to cut education funding. I want to know that up front. My community deserves to know that.

We're addressing the teacher shortage. It's the most important job in the world, but we don't have enough teachers. We need to attract more people to this great profession, a profession that gives you feedback every minute of the day. It's a profession that lets you see smiling children's faces, or watch children struggle with something and then come to their understanding of it in your presence, every day. I can't say this enough: those golden moments in classrooms are what our country is built on the back of. Forget the sheep's back; it's those moments in our classrooms where young people grasp a new skill, grasp a new idea, come to a new understanding, and that's why Labor supports public education.

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