Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Prime Minister. Prime Minister, can you confirm the $5 billion as recommended in the Gonski review is available if required, and that decisions taken over the coming three months in response to the Gonski review will put long-term national educational and standard-of-living outcomes above any short-term political strategy around the budget?

Alby Schultz (Hume, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

No, no and no!

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Hume might be no, no and no in a minute too, if he is not careful. The Prime Minister has the call.

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

I thank the member for his question and I know that he has a keen interest in the Gonski review reforms. I understand from the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth that both he and the member for Lyne attended a forum at Port Macquarie High School on 3 May, and that there was a very good discussion amongst local community members there about the Gonski recommendations.

To the member, can I say this about the way in which we are approaching the Gonski review: what David Gonski and his very eminent review team did was produce a comprehensive report about a new way of approaching school funding including a school resources standard, and loadings on top for things like educational disadvantage and for students with disabilities. They did produce a figure of $5 billion, that is true, but they themselves indicated in their report that that was working with older data, and they also indicated that there were some things that we needed to do for education which were very important reforms for which they did not have the tools to do any modelling.

To take one example of that, they indicated that there is no common assessment, or definition, of students with disabilities and so, if—as the Gonski review recommends—we were to put a loading on top for students with disabilities, we currently have no national platform or data sets which would enable us to do that. A lot of work is now happening through very collaborative working groups between the federal government, state and territory governments, the Catholic education system and the independent schools. It is only when we see the outcome of that work that we can start to make a set of decisions about how the government will resource school funding.

Of course, the government's objective is for the budget to be in surplus and we will hold to that, but we also believe people can judge us on our record about school education. We as a government have almost doubled the amount of money going into school education, because it was so shamefully neglected by the Howard government. Questions of educational disadvantage, for example, were not even considered or debated by the Howard government. We have acted to remedy that and, of course, we will take that set of Labor values into consideration in making the next decisions, following the work being done now on the Gonski review.

Robert Oakeshott (Lyne, Independent) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Madam Deputy Speaker, I do have a supplementary question. In light of the answer, and to be as clear as possible for the House—and for the many in school uniform in the gallery—will the Prime Minister agree that responding to the Gonski review is the leading issue for the Commonwealth right now, is an issue that she as Prime Minister must lead on, and is the most important issue this 43rd Parliament will deal with?

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

The member would be aware that there is nothing dearer to my heart than making sure we have the best schools in this nation and that I am very concerned that, as a result of a decade of neglect by the Howard government, in international testing we are seeing ourselves starting to slip behind the standards of the world.

Mr Simpkins interjecting—

Ms Anna Burke (Chisholm, Deputy-Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member for Cowan is warned.

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

But, as the member would also be aware, this government has a series of objectives that are important: bringing the budget to surplus, building the future economy, investing in Australian schools, continuing to invest in health care services and, of course, creating the National Disability Insurance Scheme. We will continue to make the difficult choices in the government's budget to help us reach those objectives while making sure that we bring the budget to surplus. None of this is easy, but if you are clearly guided by your values as to what is important then your set of priorities becomes clear. People know that this government's priorities are about supporting and creating jobs and creating the economy of the future which will bring us more prosperity whilst giving working families the services and support they need—and, of course, great quality schools for their kids to go to are pivotal to the services and support they need and pivotal to our nation's economic future.