Melissa Price (Durack, Liberal Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise today to speak about the children from the Nullagine remote community school who visited me last week here in Parliament House. When these children visited parliament last week, they delivered to me, by hand, some letters which they had written to the Prime Minister. Nullagine remote community school is a very, very long way from Canberra, some 4,500 kilometres, to be exact, but the students of Nullagine have some things they would like to say to the Prime Minister of Australia. Triston Francis and Dio Booth would like the Prime Minister to give them a new house. Sonia Francis and Ashton Francis would like a pool in town as there is no pool in Nullagine, despite it being in the middle of the Pilbara and is an incredibly hot place to live. There is, however, a river where the kids can swim but the dirty water sometimes hurts Ashton's ears—that is what she wrote. Nullagine remote community school provides education for children in one of the most remote locations in Australia.

The government's Gonski 2.0 school funding model will deliver a funding increase of nearly $7,000 per student by 2028 for the Nullagine remote community school students. That is what I call needs based funding. That is not pumping money into a Sydney grammar school in the member of Sydney's electorate where the fees are some $30,000 a year. That is not wilfully ignoring Western Australian schoolchildren, as those opposite have done so for many decades. WA schools are currently at the bottom of the league ladder in terms of funding from the federal government, and it is this government on this side of the chamber that is actually going to fix that. We have heard during the Gonski 2.0 debate some longwinded bluster from those opposite about how unfair our school funding model is. We have also heard about how the cuts that they expect to happen to their school are atrocious. Let me tell you a few things about fairness.

Fairness is not giving schoolchildren in government schools in very remote communities in the Pilbara like Nullagine less funding per head than children in inner city Sydney. How in anyone's world in anyone's universe is inner city Sydney a place in more need of help than Nullagine, a remote community in the middle of the Pilbara? It is absolutely absurd and yet that is quite unbelievably what those opposite are arguing. I have here a letter from Weston Stream, which I would like to read: 'Dr Mr Turnbull, my name is Weston Stream. I am 10 years old. I live in No. 5 house. It is old. I would like a better house. I would like a bedroom, a lounge and a kitchen. I love living in Nullagine'—that is the bit I love—'because it is my town. All of my family come from here. Love from Weston.' Thank you, Weston; beautifully written and beautiful handwriting. To the Nullagine remote community school, thank you for delivering me the letters and I assure you I will hand deliver them to the Prime Minister today.