Julian Leeser (Berowra, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Indigenous Australians) Share this | Hansard source

by leave—I rise to speak on the topic of investing and supporting schools. There are two things to be said on this topic. If a government cannot keep principals safe, it is not supporting schools. And, if a government can't adequately fund Victorian public schools properly, it's not investing in schools. On both counts, the Albanese government has failed.

Today's Daily Telegraph and Herald Sun reports are a disgraceful read. They report violence against school principals has surged by up to 150 per cent since 2011. They report some principals are too frightened to leave their offices at drop off and pick up. They carry the chilling warning that, on the current path, 'someone is going to die'.

The wider data is grim. Reporting today on the Australian Principal Occupational Health, Safety and Wellbeing Survey says 47.8 per cent of principals experienced violence in 2025, and 53.7 per cent faced threats of violence. Principals are being punched, kicked, pinned against walls, followed home, stalked by cars with headlights off and pelted with rocks. They're having chairs, tables and bookshelves thrown at them and are being threatened with death and rape, and forced to hide in locked rooms. Some have received broken bones, cuts and severe bruising in the attacks.

The ACT is the worst jurisdiction. The ACT, under Labor, had an increase in physical violence against principals of 150 per cent between 2011 and 2025. In the ACT, with it's 25-year Labor government, I'm told it's now safer to be an inmate in a correctional facility than it is to be a school principal. It's a disgrace.

Enough is enough. The coalition says enough. We back principals. We respect their authority. We believe a school leader should be able to walk the grounds of their own school without fear. We believe governments should empower principals. That's what we stand for: empower principals to enforce discipline, empower principals to maintain safety.

This government has, for the better part of a week, been congratulating itself on full and fair funding. But in Victoria the spin doesn't match the facts. The government has been constantly gaslighting. When the Prime Minister stood up in March last year and said every jurisdiction was on track to receive an increase in school funding and to receive the school full school resourcing standard, it simply wasn't true. It simply was not true.

The proof is publicly available. To get an increase in funding, what you need is a document called a bilateral agreement between the Commonwealth and the state. In March last year, there was no bilateral agreement with Western Australia and no bilateral agreement with Victoria. It was a falsehood. Labor must have been feeling the pressure of that untruth, because, in desperation, in December 2025, the Albanese and Allan Labor governments signed a stopgap funding measure that lasts for just 12 months.

There are two things to say about this. First, it expires at the end of the year. Second, it simply maintains the status quo; there is no increase on the table. If you put the Northern Territory to one side, as the Prime Minister himself has done, recognising the unique challenges in the Territory, then, thanks to the Allan and Albanese Labor governments, Victorian government schools have the lowest funding in the entire country. The funding for Victorian public schools is lower than the funding in New South Wales, Queensland, Western Australia, the ACT, Tasmania and South Australia, and this is entirely the fault of the Allan and Albanese Labor governments. Compared with New South Wales, in this year alone, high schoolers in Victorian public schools are shortchanged by $860 per student for every single one of the 667,000 Victorian students. Compared with South Australia, it's $900 less per student, and for Tasmania, it's $1,740 less per student for every single student.

Maybe if Victorian Labor hadn't paid $600 million for another country to host the Commonwealth Games, they wouldn't be falling behind under this funding agreement. Maybe if the Allan government hadn't funnelled $15 billion of taxpayer money to the CFMEU, kids in Victoria would have a chance at a better education. This is the CFMEU-Labor cartel in action. Labor's run Victoria's economy into the sand, and it's Victoria's schoolchildren who now suffer the consequences.

I want to finish by putting some facts on the table, because over the last week I've seen the falsehoods around cuts to education being peddled by Labor. The simple fact is that annual school funding nearly doubled under the coalition. Don't take my word for it. Look at the publicly available reports. Australian government schools funding is published each year on the Department of Education website. In 2014, total funding to the states and territories and non-government schools was $13.77 billion, in 2015 it was $14.95 billion, in 2016 it was $16.14 billion, in 2017 it was $17.63 billion, in 2018 it was $18.8 billion, in 2019 it was $21.37 billion, in 2020 it was $21.99 billion, in 2021 it was $23.8 billion, and in 2022 it was $25.59 billion. The coalition has increased— (Time expired)

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