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

I am so glad you have re-entered the chamber, Senator Carr, so I just want to reiterate this about the argument you are making. Why wouldn't Premier Barnett sign up when you were offering $920 million more than the government is? The reality is that it was because he was not prepared to trade away his state's sovereignty. He was not prepared to accept the fact that—

Senator Kim Carr interjecting—

the former government, despite offering more money, was not actually going to deliver better educational outcomes to WA's students. Additionally, one of the issues that created the whole malaise that we find ourselves in is that strategic appropriation of money towards educational funding occurred when promises were made that the system would be reformed—even though the chair, David Gonski, was walking away from the mess that that model became under the politicisation of the former government, racing towards an election that they were never going to win—and that nobody would lose. No state would lose, no school would lose and no student would lose—and it was absolute fallacy. If you are going to construct a model based on need, then those with the greater need should get the greater money—hence, somebody has to lose. By making that promise, we set up a public discourse in which we saw state pitted against state, school system pitted against school system and student pitted against student. One thing that has come out of this debate is that we do absolutely need greater transparency in understanding what went wrong, what was actually agreed to and where we need to go from here. I think Dr Ben Jensen articulates that beautifully in some comments around how we can ensure that the funding model we come up with is one that actually delivers on what we all want.

In terms of the coalition's promises, we do want a system where we will put more money—$230 million—back in for states in 2014. I have been fascinated by the public debate on this. I was listening to, I think, Radio National a couple of days ago and there were principals talking on, I think, the Breakfast show, complaining about the uncertainty of funding for 2015 and what a travesty this was going to be. I have sat in Senate inquiries about this, when principal after principal, from sector after sector, had to start employing their new teachers within 2½ terms and had no idea what their funding envelope was going to be. This was under the previous government. And here we are, over 18 months away from a similar point, and principals are out complaining, concerned about the uncertainty under the government's proposal, when there was no such noise from the AEU and from principals associations under the previous iteration.

We want a needs based model, we want it to be truly national and we want it to be fair. As a National Party senator, I understand that geography does matter. Lines on a map, Senator Carr, do matter, and under your government our youth suffered too much— (Time expired)