Gavin Marshall (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Let me tell you, Senator: there is a lot of light between four and six years. That is two years worth of light. If you say there is not a sliver of light between Labor and Liberal in terms of educational funding but then leave off two years worth of light and say you are delivering on your promise, let me say: keep reading the notes that the minister gives you. Keep yourself in the dark if that is what you want to do, but you ought to try and understand these issues, because education is too important for the games you are going to play.

You found $1.2 billion and you have not funded education for six years. What did Mr Abbott say today? He said, 'Over the weekend we found $1.2 billion worth of cuts.' We know those cuts are going to come from the education sector. So you will cut $1.2 billion to try to make the Australian public believe that you are living up to the commitments you made before the election. People are not stupid, no matter what Tony Abbott says. He said they were stupid last week because they did not understand what he meant when he said the words 'no school would be worse off'. He said the same about the press. He said, 'You shouldn't listen to what I say; you should only listen to what I thought I was saying.' Of course, he has form on that. He has been on the public record before, saying that you cannot trust anything he says unless it is read from a script. Unfortunately, when he made these promises on education they were not read from a script. (Time expired)