Elizabeth Watson-Brown (Ryan, Australian Greens) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

While gas corporations get our gas for next to nothing, make billions exporting it and pay no tax, it is frankly disgraceful for kids at our public schools to get anything other than world-standard education. But that's what Labor and the Liberals want you to accept. For years they've let massive corporations pay no tax while chronically underfunding our public schooling system. Well, Queensland teachers are not accepting it. They've just voted against a pathetically weak enterprise bargaining offer from the Queensland state government. They're fighting for a better deal for all our kids.

Our amazing teachers are doing incredible jobs, but they're hamstrung. They're massively overworked, working weekends and on holidays to prep their classes and do marking and burdensome admin. Class sizes are way too big, too many schools are overcrowded and teachers are having to use their own money to pay for basics like stationery. There's next to no support for classes with kids with behavioural issues or for teachers experiencing workplace violence. On top of all this, teachers are not being paid enough for the work they do. So no wonder there's a teacher shortage. No wonder there's major teacher burnout—solidarity to the teachers who just aren't settling for substandard deals.

Sixty-seven per cent of teachers in the Queensland Teachers' Union just voted no to the state government's recent best and final offer. These teachers want a real pay rise—above inflation—but, more than that, they want real change in their industry. These teachers know that there's no shortcut to educating the next generation. There's no AI bandaid. There's no standardised testing system that will deliver better results. There's no little rule change to fix behavioural issues. There's no shortcut. But that's exactly what the major parties always look for, because they don't want to tax huge corporations like the gas multinationals.

Raising the next generation of people to become wonderful, flourishing individuals and community members takes actually investing in what matters: better conditions and pay for teachers, including reducing after-hours work to a minimum; smaller class sizes—Finland has an average class size of 19 while our teachers struggle trying to educate 30 kids at a time; free breakfast-and-lunch programs at all schools, so no kid tries to learn on an empty stomach; and dignified, readily available public housing for everyone who needs it, so every kid has a secure place to call home. The only reason Labor and the Liberals don't do this is that they think multinational gas corporations are more important than our teachers and more important than our kids.