Mark Furner (Queensland, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am pleased, at the start of this motion to take note of answers, to hear from Senator Ryan his point of view on the school halls program, a signature program of the previous Labor government.

Senator Kroger interjecting—

Senator Cash interjecting—

There are children sitting up there in the gallery who are from primary schools that, as a result the Labor government, had the good fortune of being successful in gaining a hall, a science centre or a library. Those opposite, when they were in opposition, condemned that policy, notwithstanding the fact that they turned up to every opening for a photo opportunity—smiling, being prepared to be there hand-in-hand with the duty senator or whoever was opening it. They condemned it and wanted to block that program of funding for school halls, science centres and libraries that those schoolchildren up in the gallery now enjoy. That would have been denied by the then opposition.

But that is not what we are here today to talk about; we are here today to talk about the backflips of the government in school funding—and what typical backflips we have seen. For the last two days in question time we have seen here firsthand the Minister representing the Minister for Education in this chamber not being able to answer questions as to why certain things have occurred. In a second supplementary question today she failed to answer why the government backflip on school funding was only discussed by cabinet after the Prime Minister's announcement. This is a typical sign of the disingenuousness of this government—the reason why people are not trusting them. That is the reason why this particular issue on school funding hit the social media like a rash to a—I will not say what I was thinking about. It hit social media over the weekend and led to the situation we are in today of exposing their broken promises.

It is a broken promise that continues into this week. You will hear it in their doorstops and you will hear it in the chambers—this humiliating backdown of Mr Tony Abbott and Minister Pyne. They have done absolutely nothing to fix the broken promise that no school would be worse off. I can remember when the previous education minister the Hon. Peter Garrett and I were involved in many forums discussing not only with students but also with teachers—going round the countryside explaining to people in their schools—maybe the schools that these children in the gallery attend—what the Better Schools Plan, better known as Gonski, meant. That was the consultative process that we went through as a government. This government now are loath to go out there and discuss these issues associated with their backflip, where they are going to cut people short in schools like in my state of Queensland.

What captured the whole issue was a cartoon I saw in the media today. It was a cartoon of Mr Abbott and Mr Pyne in a car swerving around a corner and Mr Abbott says, 'We will now honour our promise we didn't make but the public thought they heard'. That is typical of the media when it comes around to picking up issues that this government is doing in terms of backflips.