Chris Evans (WA, Australian Labor Party, Leader of the Government in the Senate) Share this | Hansard source

The Gillard government has transformed education at all levels in Australia. Labor understands that to continue our prosperity in the future we need to invest in education. That is why we have invested in everything from childcare centres to primary schools to trade training centres to universities. We have doubled funding for schools and built new facilities all across the nation.

We know that that record of investment will be stopped in its tracks if the coalition is to be elected at the next election. In its desperate scramble to find $70 billion worth of savings to fill the black hole, the coalition would have to take the scalpel to our childcare centres, our schools, our universities and our training centres. They have form in seeking to cut education. What we know is that if they are to make sense of their terrible economic policies—if they are going to pay back the millionaires the mining tax—they are going to have to cut education to the bone, removing services to ordinary Australian working families. (Time expired)