Deborah O'Neill (NSW, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

I am delighted to have the opportunity to speak on this, quite unexpectedly. I believe we were advised that there were only 30 minutes to speak. But having the opportunity in 60 minutes to put some important facts on the record, I think it is important that we pull the debate back from the precipice to which those last two speakers have taken it with the incredible misrepresentation of the facts that were very much uncovered by this important report. It was undertaken with great leadership, might I say, by Senator Jacinta Collins from Victoria. She played a significant role in achieving some consensus in a highly-contested field over very many years in this country, regarding equitable funding for this nation.

I do want to put on the record that, in the brief time that I have had a chance to look at some of the comments in the dissenting report, there are errors of fact in that dissenting report. Claims that there is a high-equity education system in Australia are simply erroneous. They attempt to come in here and reconstruct reality but the fact is that the last government worked in concert with committed educators—not educational commentators who have no life commitment to education. Commentators—that is who their experts were. We actually went to the source—real and genuine people committed to education, who came and put on the public record the facts of what the reality of funding in Australia is. People will find out what they had to say when they read the majority report of this very important committee.

I want to refer to two key witnesses who put on the record vital facts included in the dissenting report. We have just heard from two members of the government who are on this committee, but what has been put on the record by the people who came in and gave us proper and accurate information is totally different from what those opposite tried to convey this afternoon. I refer to Professor Stephen Dinham, no less than the National President of the Australian College of Educators—a man who has dedicated his life to the service of education in this nation. He stressed that the consequences of the Abbott government changes, if implemented—the ones that those who have just spoken would support—would be highly detrimental to Australia as a nation. He said:

It is hard not to conclude that what we are seeing is a deliberate strategy to dismantle public education, partly for ideological and partly for financial reasons …

He was right on the money. They have an ideological opposition to access to great education for every Australian kid in every Australian school. In addition, they are trying to rip $30 billion out of the education budget. What we just heard from the government was an absolute cover-up; another expression of the lies and misrepresentations that are coming to characterise this government—10 months old and day after day they come in here and try to lie to the Australian public. But people are seeing through it.

This report is so important because of the good contributions of people like Professor Dinham, who are ready to put on the record the facts about what this government is going to do. It is a marker in the Australian education landscape about what is right about education, what is wrong about education, and the disgraceful path that those opposite want to take us down—building in inequity, seeking to disadvantage those who have the least and to advantage those who have the most. That is not the kind of country that Australians thought they were getting when they elected this government.

Dr Zyngier commented about previous school funding models. Those on the other side told us all about choice. Dr Zyngier could not have been more eloquent in his comments:

Choice is only available for those who have the wherewithal to make that choice. We have heard about the end of the age of entitlement. However, when a person on the basic wage of $55,000 a year pays his or her taxes, that person does not have a choice, but their taxes go to enable someone who is on a salary of $150,000 or more per annum to exercise that choice. So it is a bogus choice.

And it is a bogus piece of writing that we have seen in the dissenting report. It is a bogus government and it is a bogus set of words that we hear every single day as they pretend that they care about all Australians. This is a government for the privileged few, make no mistake. In every policy area we discuss in here, from health to education to financial services, they look after their mates and prop up the big end of town. They look after those who have the most and the devil take those left behind.

It is important to understand what Gonski actually did. Prior to Gonski, the complexity of the organisation around funding made it so obscure that Australians could not see where the money was going and they could not understand why inequity was so rampant in our system. The agreement and goodwill that was achieved in the last parliament amongst jurisdictions that covered approximately 80 per cent of Australian school students throughout the implementation of the National Plan for School Improvement was revealed again in evidence collected by the committee. We know, from the evidence on the record now, that there has been an incredible level of disruption and confusion amongst educators in every single state, in every single sector, because of the change that this government has decided to undertake, moving from the National Plan for School Improvement to their Students First blue book mythological plan for Australia. It is a modesty skirt that is about ripping $30 billion out of education.