Page 2909 - Week 10 - Tuesday, 16 October 2007
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It is fascinating that members opposite would seek to highlight education as an area where perhaps there has been a need to make some significant structural changes. The government undertook those structural changes, with the particular objective of ensuring that we deliver services more efficiently, more effectively, and that we maximise our investment in education to get the highest possible quality education system. Despite all of the rhetoric from the shadow Treasurer about that being a desirable thing in public policy terms, what do we get from the Liberal opposition? Outright opposition to a sensible measure to improve efficiency and to improve outcomes in our education system. I need only look at the comments of the Leader of the Opposition when he was education minister back in 1995:
Obviously, our government school system has to change and its programs have to be modified to meet emerging priorities. We do need to spend our education dollar where it is most needed. The education budget is not a magic pudding which will grow and grow to meet every conceivable single demand made on it.
In the context of the school closure debate that occurred in 1995, Mr Stefaniak went on to say:
You sat on your hands and did nothing. You did not want to face up to the problem. The decline has been apparent for a number of years, and it should have been apparent even to you. However, sometimes it is difficult to determine exactly who the community is.
It is interesting to hear from those opposite. Again I quote from a no more reliable source than the Leader of the Opposition, who said of the then education minister, Mr Humphries, going back a little earlier to a previous school closure debate in 1990:
I think Mr Humphries should be commended for the very hard, agonising and difficult decisions he has to take—and indeed that this government has had to take.
No-one likes closing schools. It would be lovely if we could keep that system. We cannot, unfortunately. We are standing on our own two feet now and, unfortunately, just as in the rest of Australia—just as … those Labor States … recognise the same problem … rationalisation has to take place.
He went on to say that Mr Humphries “is doing all he can to ensure that this is as painless as possible and that the excellence of the education system remains”. So that is what Mr Stefaniak had to say—on two occasions, in 1990 and in 1995—on the substantive issues that this government sought to address last year. We are now being accused again of mismanagement. The government have addressed these issues. We are now investing a record amount of money in our public education system, investing in quality. But no, no; the opposition oppose that.
Mr Mulcahy: You’re collecting a record amount of tax, too, aren’t you, Andrew?
Mrs Dunne: Yes.
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