Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by ministers to questions without notice asked today.

I would like to commence with Senator Carr’s answer to my question relating to the Queensland state election and standards in Queensland schools. The sad fact is that the literacy and numeracy results of Queensland students are today the worst in this country, by far. The neglect of successive Labor education ministers has been a disaster for the children of Queensland. Ms Bligh herself was education minister for several years.

Just this week Anna Bligh announced $72 million to help tackle this crisis—a crisis, I might add, largely of her and the Labor Party’s making, a crisis she helped to create. Of the $72 million put forward by the government, in fact, only $5 million was from the Queensland state government. Most of the money had to come from the coffers of the federal government—about 90 per cent of it. This is the type of cynical treatment that the Bligh government has shown towards Queensland students—and it is quite ironic, it is cruel and it is pathetic.

Labor have the absolute audacity to describe Queensland as the smart state, but they have done everything they possibly can to dumb it down. Why is it that there is only $5 million left in the state coffers to correct the appalling standards in Queensland schools? I will explain why. Labor have been in power in Queensland for 18 of the last 20 years. After 11 years of economic sunshine the Bligh government has left us with government debt of $74 billion—getting very close to the $96 billion that the previous federal Labor government left this country. That $74 billion state government debt was delivered in times of economic sunshine, I might add. We enjoyed the greatest postwar boom in our nation’s history and still we have $74 billion of government debt. At a time of record mining receipts, we still have $74 billion of debt. At a time of record land and property tax receipts, we still have $74 billion of debt. I might add that, if it were not for the creation of the GST by the Howard-Costello government, it would be far, far worse in Queensland, because this year alone there is $830 million more going into the Queensland state government coffers than would have gone in if we had not had the GST.