Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Commonwealth Grant Commission’s Report on state revenue sharing relativities: 2007 update. This is an important aspect particularly when we talk about education, which is one of the major areas of revenue sharing between the states and the Commonwealth. Where that money ultimately gets spent is derived primarily from the policy parameters of the various levels of government. In the case of the federal government, those policy parameters are derived from the attitudes of those in government. While listening to the debate yesterday on the Australian Technical Colleges (Flexibility in Achieving Australia’s Skills Needs) Amendment Bill (No. 2) 2006, I was rather distressed and angry to hear some of the attitudes expressed by Senator Barnett. Senator Barnett said in his speech, and I will quote from the Hansard:

For too long in Australia, a technical or trade education has been considered a second-class option to a university degree. This is exactly what happened under the Labor government before the Howard government came in about 11 years ago. Parents considered themselves failures if their children did not leave high school to go on to a ... university ...

These comments show an extreme case of arrogance and intellectual snobbery on the senator’s behalf. His comments are an insult to parents and an insult to every person who did not go to a university. As someone who also did not go to university but was a very proud person engaged in a trade as an electrician, I know that my parents did not feel like failures. They would have felt like failures only if I had felt like a failure. I can assure the Senate that I certainly did not. I was very proud to engage in a trade, to be responsible for building our cities, our homes and our infrastructure, and to be part of the manufacturing base of this country. It was a terrible insult not only to me but to every single parent whose child did not go to university and to every individual that did not go to university. Let me say Senator Barnett’s words again. He said:

Parents considered themselves failures if their children did not leave high school to go on to a ... university ... .

He then tried to throw that back as if to somehow—and this is so typical of this government’s opportunistic rhetoric—blame the Labor government for that attitude. But of course Senator Barnett is wrong: that attitude never existed; it has certainly never existed in the Labor Party. It is not the view of the Labor Party, and we actually recognise the valuable contribution that all workers make to this country regardless of whether or not they attended a university, whether or not they embarked on a trade or whether or not they left school at 16 and work in a factory or do any other sort of work. We value all that work; it is important for its contribution to our society.

I suggest no parents have considered themselves failures if their children did not go to university. I suggest that this is probably the attitude of Senator Barnett himself. It is that two-bob, elitist, intellectual snobbery that we get from the other side that has this view that if you did not go to a university you were in fact somehow a failure and therefore your parents must have been failures too. I find those comments absolutely objectionable. It is a view that could only have come from someone who must have had it pretty easy all their life. I am clearly sick of the elitist, pompous, superior attitude of Senator Barnett in respect of education. The failure here is not by parents and not by workers who have not attended a university; the only failure here is Senator Barnett, who has failed all hardworking Australians with these egotistical comments.