Dean Smith (WA, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The answer is none: not one teacher. Finally—because I do want to talk about the great things the coalition government has been doing with regards to education funding—you might remember that Labor promised a billion dollars worth of computers in schools. It sounds like a very, very noble idea. But what we saw consistently under the previous Labor government was an incapacity to design, fund and implement programs, so what we saw with regards to that program was a $1.4 billion blowout—a cost to taxpayers. So Senator O'Neill is quite right to run off random names of candidates in seats across the country, arguing that they're out there trying to draw people's attention to education issues and education-funding issues. She's right, and they'd be running around pretty hard because New South Wales electors, particularly—Senator O'Neill is a New South Wales senator—will quickly come to realise that what Labor says it will do is not what Labor does.

I was interested to hear Senator Polley share with the Australian Senate Labor's commitment to a historically large investment program for education. Well, let me tell you how that large, historical, significant education program is going to be funded: Labor's seven deadly taxes—a $20 billion tax on mum-and-dad investors; a $13 billion extra tax on capital gains tax for all assets; a $22 billion tax on wages, courtesy of Labor's plan to reimpose the deficit levy; a $22 billion tax on family businesses; a $25 billion tax on the saving we're already putting into our superannuation and $65 billion in higher taxes on Australian businesses. If that's not bad enough—I know what you're thinking: 'Senator Smith, that's six; that's not seven deadly taxes from Labor'—the seventh one is perhaps the cruellest of them all, Labor's retiree tax.

There's no doubt this coalition government has provided, at historically high levels, better education funding, giving families greater choice and flexibility. We're not just funding state schools; we're increasing the funding to independent, Catholic and state schools. What does that look like? The coalition government is providing an extra $37.6 billion in stronger, better education funding. That represents a 62.6 per cent increase for every student in the country, on average, and it's funded by a government that is about to deliver a surplus, not a government that is going to impose taxes on ordinary families and small businesses.