Zed Seselja (ACT, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

We have kept our promise. And the fundamental problem that the Labor Party seem to have is that they do not apparently trust their state and territory colleagues when they get the same amount of funding from the Commonwealth. When it comes to school funding, the Labor Party's position appears to be that they cannot trust the Tasmanian government to deliver fairly for the people of Tasmania. When it comes to school funding, the Labor Party's position in this place appears to be that they cannot trust the governments of South Australia and the ACT to deliver. That is the position of the Labor Party that they are putting to us today.

The coalition has agreed to honour the amount of funding that was committed to those states, to honour the agreement with the independent schools and the Catholic sector and to provide additional money that the Labor Party had committed to ripping out from the people of the Northern Territory, Queensland and Western Australia. That is the fundamental difference.

Minister Payne, I believe, could not have been any clearer in answering these questions during question time today, but, in fact, those very clear answers from Senator Payne have led to such a confused attack by the Labor Party in the Senate this afternoon. We saw the confusion from Senator Carr; we saw the confusion from Senator Wong. They cannot get their story straight. So let us just summarise what they are now criticising. They are criticising a coalition government for delivering the same amount of money to the four states and the territory that signed up and for delivering extra money which the Labor Party had ripped out and would have continued to rip out had they been re-elected. Those are the fundamental differences.

The coalition will not be lectured to by the Labor Party, whose record on trust is below par and whose record on education funding is below par, given they wanted to rip $1.2 billion from the Northern Territory, Queensland and WA. (Time expired)