Bridget McKenzie (Victoria, National Party) Share this | Hansard source

Minister, you may say, 'Exactly!' but then you are expecting stakeholders and states to back the slogans without being able to go through the detail. It is not an appropriate way to govern and it is not a once-in-a-generation reform.

Finally, I would like to reject outright any aspersions that the coalition does not back, as the birth right of every single citizen of this nation, the right to a quality education, private or public. For people across the way to assume that, because we want to scrutinise this—because state governments that are governed by parties that are on our side of politics are not rushing to sign up, because we have some questions we want to prosecute, because we do not want potentially to throw $100 billion away, because we want to get right—we do not think it is the birthright of every young Australian to receive a quality education, is offensive in the extreme.

Those of us on this side of the chamber know that, of the million young people that attend school in this country outside metropolitan cities, 660,000 attend state schools. So how can we back our communities without backing quality education in the regions in state schools that are focused on student outcomes? That, again brings me to the objectives in part 3(1)(i). As an educator I have real issues with a quality education being determined by a PISA result. That concern is actually shared by the AEU and the IEU, and I suggest you check out their quotes in our report to this bill. A quality education cannot simply be measured by statistics. The top five, by 2025—what a ridiculous measure to ascertain the quality of our education and—