Brett Raguse (Forde, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, the Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and the Minister for Social Inclusion. What is the government’s response to the Business Council of Australia report Teaching talent: the best teachers for Australia’s classrooms, released today, and the issue of teacher quality? What has been community response to this report and this issue?

Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Forde for that question. Today we have seen an important contribution to the education debate, a report by the Business Council of Australia on the vital question of teaching quality. Interestingly, the report proceeds from concern about where Australia has slipped to in international rankings. As a result of more than a decade of neglect by the former government, we have slipped in the international rankings which benchmark us against our competitors.

The report focuses on the vital area of teacher quality. This is the question of how we get the best and brightest to go into teaching, how we then have quality teacher education in our universities, how we retain the best and brightest in front of Australian classrooms. This is an agenda that the government is already hard at work addressing. Earlier this year the government entered a historic partnership with state and territory governments right around the nation to work towards improved teacher quality. In the recent budget the government allocated $400,000 to a research project to provide a shared evidence base which will feed into that work between state and territory governments and the federal government. It is the end of the blame game when it comes to teacher quality. It is the end of the blame game and it is the start of action. Governments around the country are committed to ensuring that we enter a new national partnership on improving teacher quality by December this year, meaning that the first part of the new policies and plans developed to improve teacher quality could be in operation as soon as in the next school year. There is nothing more important to a child’s education than the quality of the teachers in front of the classroom. As part of our education revolution, the Rudd Labor government is acting. Our policies will be costed, they will be well thought through, and they will be delivered in partnership with state and territory governments.

Whilst the Liberal Party today has also welcomed the Business Council of Australia report, and I thank them for that, I am somewhat intrigued that, despite their welcoming of that report, they really do not have anything to say about more than a decade of neglect of the vital area of teacher quality. The current Liberal spokesperson for education said on 31 January this year, when talking about the issue of teacher quality, that it is ‘not just a problem that has sprung up this week’. Never a truer word spoken. It was not a problem that had just sprung up in January; it is a problem that has been many years in the making. What has been the action or lack of action of the Liberal Party during those years in between? Interestingly, the Leader of the Opposition is a man who does not seem to be one who likes reviews. But when we actually look across the track record of the Liberal government on the vital area of teacher quality, what do we find? We find that the first review was announced in October 1996. What was done? Nothing effective was done. Then in 2002 the current Leader of the Opposition announced another review. Interestingly, when he decided he would announce publicly the outcome of that review, what was his policy for change? The policy for change was this, and I am going to quote it because it is so extraordinary:

Perhaps it is also time to reinvigorate school mottos. Some schools do not even have one.

The challenge of getting the best and brightest into teaching, the challenge of improving teacher education, the challenge of ongoing professional development, the challenge of rewarding excellence in teaching—and the Leader of the Opposition’s solution? It would all be better if we had a school motto! Interestingly, in 2004, when he was responding to this review of 2002, plus the motto, he basically announced exactly the same things that he announced in his budget reply. Announced in 2004, nothing done, then re-announced in 2008. Doesn’t this just sum up the attitude of the Liberal Party, whether in government or in opposition. It is a sorry tale of looking at a real problem, not being prepared to do the hard policy work to address it and coming up with a diversion or slogan like a school motto—the politics of the moment rather than the politics of the long term.

But perhaps I am being too harsh on the question of the ability of school mottos to change behaviour. If the Leader of the Opposition is really committed to the question of mottos, then maybe he can start using some for the opposition itself. Maybe he can have embroidered on the pocket on the member for Mayo: ‘Quidquid excusatio prandium pro,’ which, of course, means, ‘Any excuse for lunch.’ Maybe that would be a useful motto! Or maybe on the pocket of the member for Wentworth, ‘Disce pati’—‘Learn to endure’. In the meantime, the government will be getting on with the real work of changing teacher quality in this country.