Lin Thorp (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It has become so clear over the last weeks and months that those opposite simply do not understand what education is; they really just do not get education at all. However, quite cynically, they do understand the value that Australians put on education. Australian people do get education, they do know what a valuable thing education is. That is why the Australian community embraced the review of school funding and education in this country and they embraced the outcomes of that review that became known as the Gonski report. The Australian people know that the most valuable thing we can do with our time and efforts in this country is make sure that every one of our children has the opportunity to have their full potential realised. They are our future and that is something that the Australian people know. That is why those opposite could not afford to go to the election threatening to undermine all that work and its endpoint, the Better Schools plan. They knew they could not do it. What happened? Our Gonski became their 'conski'. It is absolutely shameful.

The coalition went into the last election saying 'every single school in Australia will receive dollar for dollar the same federal funding over four years whether there is a Liberal or Labor government'. This was a cynical exercise designed to comfort voters that, whatever election decisions they make on any other issue, that very important issue, the most important issue of all, the education of our children, was one issue on which they could say, 'It doesn't really matter whether I vote Labor or Liberal, I'm going to get the same outcome.'

Honestly, what a backflip! Was it a Nadia Comaneci? It is a backflip of those proportions. I think it is probably the second perfect 10 of a backflip. That promise became a commitment to the overall envelope and quantum of funding and then it moved from honouring the signed commitments to honouring the deals for a year prior to the introduction of a new funding model. Those opposite are even trying to say that there was no deal negotiated with my home state of Tasmania, which is completely and utterly untrue. The leader of the government knows that to be a fact, because he knows that that agreement was made between the state Labor government and the then government. Of the weasel word backflips that I have heard from the Prime Minister, this must be the best one of the lot.

We are going to keep the promise that we actually made, not the promise that some people thought we made or the promise some people would have liked us to make. It is quite unbelievable. 'Stupid Labor, stupid journalists, stupid voters: you should have listened more closely because without forensically looking at every slippery word we said you could not really understand what we meant.' The now Prime Minister may as well have stood up and said, 'Sucked in, because you actually believed us.' But unfortunately—unfortunately for the kids of Australia—the uproar has been too great, and the Prime Minister has already had to step in, reinstate the agreements with the signed-up states and territories and come up with some hastily put together agreements with the couple of states and the territory that had not signed up. As for those 'sucked in' states, who thought that hanging around for a new government might get them better money, how wrong they were. Now, the coalition has found the lost $1.2 billion they claim we had removed from the education budget and they are still in very hot water.

Let no-one be in any doubt about this: the current government has abandoned the Better Schools Plan. They want to revert to a broken model that was examined forensically through a very thorough school review of planning, programs and funding that demonstrated that it treated schools differently and it treated well-off schools too well. They have not even made sure that the states that have most recently signed on cannot use the money that they will receive to prop up their own budgets. How appalling is that when we had this wonderful opportunity to really transform the nature of education in this country? It is absolutely appalling and an absolute waste of time and opportunity. (Time expired)