Russell Matheson (Macarthur, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. I refer the Prime Minister to the fact that the government of Western Australia has now joined with the New South Wales government in ruling out adopting the national curriculum until all of its problems are resolved. Given that the government has been unable to get delivery of the national curriculum right, how can she now be trusted to implement other policies such as the $43 billion National Broadband Network?

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

I thank the member for his question. Unfortunately, the assertions in the question are wrong. Education ministers, including the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth, are working through the national curriculum. We have determined to deliver the national curriculum—

Joe Hockey (North Sydney, Liberal Party, Shadow Treasurer) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Hockey interjecting

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

and the shadow Treasurer is bellowing. Of course, he never knew anything about this matter or the time frames for delivery, so I suggest he actually checks some of those time frames. I suggest to him, too, that he reflect on his 12 years of failure, being a member of a government that never did anything profound in school reform but was content to see disadvantaged kids in disadvantaged schools get a subquality education. They could not even be bothered getting a list of the most disadvantaged schools.

To the member who has asked the question, the national curriculum is a policy which we are delivering, working with state education ministers. Inevitably, when you are engaged in a national reform of this nature individual states engage in a bit of pushback. States say that their system is the best. We have seen that played out in Australian politics before. I suspect we will see it played out to the end of time, and what that means is that you need fortitude, determination and patient work to deliver these reforms. That is exactly what the government has done and the minister for school education continues to do. We are determined to deliver the national curriculum because we want every child in every school to study a great quality curriculum and we particularly want to make a difference for those around 80,000 children who change school systems each year in the sense that they move interstate. It is hard enough to move interstate, hard enough to get used to a new school without walking into a classroom and not even recognising the curriculum.

There are great efficiency benefits, too, as we move to a national curriculum. I have remarked before that we probably have more curriculum agencies and curriculum writers per head of population than any other nation on earth. It obviously makes sense to have a national curriculum, which means then that tools to teach the national curriculum and professional development programs can be shared. I also say to the member who asked the question that I am always in the market for listening to good ideas about education. If the opposition ever has one, feel free to give me a call, but I can confidently say that from 2007 to 2010 we did not see one from the opposition, and we certainly have not seen one since the election.