Andrew Giles (Scullin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

There is a big question mark hanging over this government and its Prime Minister. The question mark goes to its purpose, its sense of the role, the point of a Commonwealth government. We have seen this in the federation green paper, which was much discussed in this place yesterday and which will continue to be discussed here. While we remember the promises made before the election—no cuts to health, no cuts to education, no changes to the pension, no cuts to the ABC or SBS, each one ticked off as it has been broken through the dishonest budgets of this government—we also think about this Prime Minister. The Prime Minister seems to think that the Commonwealth should walk away from any responsibility to health and any responsibility to education. We saw the sophistry and dissembling in question time yesterday as this government moved away from its pre-election unity ticket on needs-based school funding to a contemptuous and narrow vision of what our responsibility should be to children across Australia.

This is even more acute when we think about preschool. It is only in recent weeks that the Commonwealth government suggested that a lifeline might be thrown in to save four-year-old kinder. When I think about this, this is perhaps the most egregious assault, now that the government is flagging walking away from its support for preschool. We know that 90 per cent of brain development takes place in the first five years of life. To have a national government unprepared to invest in children is simply disgraceful.