Mary Aldred (Monash, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise today to respond to the ministerial statement on the Better and Fairer Schools Agreement. As the daughter of a primary school teacher, I've been raised in a family that appreciates how important better educational outcomes are, and improving education outcomes in my region is something I, as someone who was proud to serve on the inaugural Gippsland Tertiary Education Council some 15 years ago, am particularly passionate about. I strongly believe that your postcode should not determine your educational outcome in life. In my region, at that time, we dealt with a number of challenges, including having little more than half the state's average for higher education participation rates. May I add we've got some wonderfully gifted teachers and some dedicated teacher support aides and staff in the Monash electorate who I'm very proud to represent. I want to commend their ongoing work to lift and strengthen education outcomes.

But this statement, I really have to say at the outset, deserves a resubmit, because what we've heard in the statement provided is a story and it's riddled with inaccuracies, omissions and a fundamental failure to level with the Australian people and, indeed, face up to the challenges that I and families across my electorate deal with every single day. Let's deal with the first central claim that seems to be on repeat by the government, and that is that the coalition cut funding to public schools, which is just not true. Under the coalition, school funding increased. It increased every single year. In fact, it nearly doubled, from around $13 billion in 2013 to over $25 billion in 2022. The coalition support investment in education. We support lifting standards. But what we do not support is a narrative that rewrites history, because what matters is not just how much is spent but what is actually happening in our schools today—where that money goes, how it's spent and the objectives that it seeks to support.

Right now, particularly in my home state of Victoria, we have serious problems. The Prime Minister has claimed every state and territory is on a pathway to full funding. This is simply not correct. Victoria remains the only jurisdiction without a clear pathway to reach the Schooling Resource Standard. There is no certainty. There is no long-term agreement. As a result, Victorian government schools are now the lowest funded in the country outside of the Northern Territory. This has real consequences. This has a lasting impact, and my fear is that it will have intergenerational consequences for young people, families and people seeking to get the skills and qualifications they need to attain a job or a career and stay within the Gippsland region that they grew up in or, indeed, have moved to.

In 2026, Victorian students will receive hundreds of dollars less per student than their peers interstate. This could be up to $1,700 less than students in Tasmania. This is not a theoretical gap; it is a gap in resources, in support and in opportunity, and it is Victorian students who are paying the price for the failure of both the Albanese and Allan Labor governments. But funding is only part of the story, because outcomes are going backwards. The minister claims reading is improving, but NAPLAN data tells us a different story. Schools have declined in recent years, including a year-on-year drop under the current government. International data shows the same trend. Australia's reading performance has fallen over time.

In Monash, getting an education isn't just about what happens in the classroom; it's about distance, access and the pressure that growth is putting on our local schools. Rapid population growth in Warrigal and Drouin, which Bernard Salt, the demographer, notes are the fastest growing towns anywhere across Australia, is driving significant growth in school enrolments in those schools, with classrooms reaching capacity, portable buildings becoming more common and growing pressure on shared facilities like libraries, playgrounds and specialist learning states. I want to commend my state Liberal colleague the member for Narracan, Wayne Farnham, who's been working with a range of schools in the west Gippsland area, particularly Drouin Secondary College and the marvellous principal and teaching staff there, to address some of those challenges. Schools are working hard to absorb the growth that we are seeing in population, but it is placing a real strain on teachers, with larger class sizes, increased workload and less time available for individual student support.

I'm very proud to represent a region that stretches all the way down to the southernmost point of mainland Australia: Wilsons Prom and Foster. We've got some remarkable schools there. I was at the Foster Primary School not so long ago. In South Gippsland, access to education is shaped by distance, with families often travelling long distances to access secondary schooling and subject choice. In towns like Foster and Korumburra, I talk to families and students who are regularly commuting daily to larger centres for schooling, adding hours to their day and limiting their ability to participate in extracurricular activities. In many parts of my electorate, you can't jump on a train and there are limited bus services, so, with the cost of fuel going up, this is placing additional pressure on families moving around their community, certainly families taking their children to school of a morning. For many families, this also means managing additional costs and balancing work commitments around school access. In today's economy, I hear so often that you've got to have a dual-income household to be able to meet the cost-of-living challenges, and that places additional pressure on parents who are trying to juggle job demands as well as giving their children all of the support they need in and around their schooling.

Access to specialist subjects, support programs and pathways can be more limited in smaller regional schools, and that means that students often have to leave their local community to access the same opportunities that are available to students in metropolitan areas. In South Gippsland, education is shaped by geography as much as it is by policy, with distance playing a huge role in access to opportunity. Families in towns like Foster and Korumburra, which I've mentioned, have a significant challenge in being able to meet those demands. I regularly talk to families where the daily commute is easily over an hour each way, and I know that this has had a real impact on student wellbeing in participation and outcomes. It limits involvement in after-school activities like sport, tutoring, music or part-time work. We've got some very gifted athletes and young people in all parts of my electorate, but there are quite a few in South Gippsland as well. I really do take my hat off to their determination and commitment because they have to meet a higher hurdle to be able to engage in that training and those activities than perhaps students and athletes from metropolitan areas in the same situation.

I want to also acknowledge the challenge that smaller regional schools face in offering the full breadth of subject choices, specialist programs. This can mean fewer pathways in areas like advanced science, VET programs or emerging industries requiring students to relocate, to travel, or compromise their study options. We have a great number of great TAFE campuses, but we have a terrific TAFE in our region that I know works very closely with industry and high schools to engage young people in a range of skill offerings. Our workforce pressures are felt locally, with schools competing to attract and retain teachers in those regional areas, particularly in specialist subjects.

I was at Ripplebrook Primary School recently in West Gippsland, where they really have gone above and beyond to provide Japanese as a language offering to their very small school. I just want to commend the ingenuity and creativity and determination of the principal and the teachers at Ripplebrook for being able to deliver that. This is an important topic, but let's not rewrite history. I'm proud to be part of a coalition that has and will continue to invest very strongly in better educational outcomes for young people across Australia and in my electorate of Monash.

Debater adjourned.

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