MINISTERIAL STATEMENTS

Senator O'SULLIVAN (Western Australia—Deputy Manager of Opposition Business in the Senate) (17:57): I move: That the Senate take note of the statement. I give the minister an 'A' for delivery but a 'resubmit' on their content. There were several material errors in the statement that the minister gave just then, and I will spell them in detail.

Before I do that, there are two things that I need to say right off the bat. The first is that it didn't even take the minister in the other place eight sentences to repeat the falsehood that the previous coalition government cut public funding from public schools, which is something that even the ABC—no apologists for the coalition—have repudiated. ABC Fact Check said that this claim about cuts to public education, which we're hearing quoted both here in the Senate and in the other place, was completely misleading.

The original claim about a $30 billion cut was made by Kate Ellis, and let me quote from ABC Fact Check in 2014: Ms Ellis is spouting rubbery figures. The ABC are no friends of the coalition, so they don't have a bias toward saying things that might benefit the coalition. They of course will take any opportunity they can, we find, to run us down.

But, in this case, the ABC defended the coalition's record, and that is a remarkable thing. The minister should not repeat these figures and should not be reporting figures that ABC Fact Check have found to be rubbery. Labor revised its claim in 2017.

It said the cut was only $22 billion. They changed their figures. The ABC Fact Check also repudiated this figure.

Let me read directly from the ABC Fact Check: Based on Labor's stated commitments and the Government's own document, Labor intends to spend more on schools in the future than the current Government. But this does not change the fact that school funding continues to rise year on year. Did you hear that? 'School funding continues to rise year on year'—again refuting this claim that we're hearing peddled here in this place and in the other place, which has proven to be untrue.

Let me quote ABC Fact Check again from 2017, reflecting on the coalition's period in office. They said: … school funding continues to rise year on year Australians expect better from the Minister for Education and, indeed, the Minister representing the Minister for Education here in this place, Senator Walsh. They should not be repeating these falsehoods.

It's not right. It's improper. The second thing that I want to say about the minister's statement is that it only takes two sentences into it for you to realise that they've got some problems with what they're saying when they're talking about Thriving Kids.

This speech could have been an opportunity for the minister to alleviate the concerns across the education sector that people are going to be moved from the NDIS to the education sector without adequate support, resources or funding. On this side, every principal that we speak to on this side—certainly the shadow minister for education, Mr Leeser, hears this as he gets around the country and speaks to school principals—is worried about this.

They are worried about what this means for their students, their teachers and their school. The minister did not take this opportunity to address those concerns or worries. We didn't hear it in the other place when the statement was given, and we haven't heard it here in this place.

There was an opportunity to correct it, maybe, when the statement was spoken to and spoken of here in this place. Let me turn to some of the details in the minister's statement. The minister spoke about reading, school attendance and school completion.

When children are improving in reading, writing and arithmetic, we want to celebrate this—we truly do as a coalition. But it helps no-one to cherrypick data or present a false picture. Let me address the minister's claims in turn—firstly, on reading.

The first materially incorrect claim is this: the average eight-year-old is a year ahead in reading compared to 20 years ago. The minister said this: NAPLAN data tells us that the average eight year old is reading about a year ahead of where eight year olds were when NAPLAN testing started … 20 years ago. NAPLAN data has been published since 2008.

We've had a look at these figures, and we know that the minister must have looked at them as well, but the figures that I'm about to cite are drawn from the NAPLAN national report for 2008, the NAPLAN national report for 2022 and the NAPLAN data tables from 2023, which have been published online. You can check them for yourself—you can fact-check it. They are not consistent with the statement the minister has made in the House or the statement that's been made here in the Senate by the representing minister.

The results from the first NAPLAN test for eight-year-olds—that is, year 3 students—are published in the national report for 2008. The report gave a nationwide mean scale score for reading of 400.5. The national report for 2022 gave the score as 437.8.

But the average NAPLAN score for year 3 reading in 2025 was 402.2 points. In other words, the biggest single drop in eight-year-old reading scores came between 2022 and 2025—after the current Labor government came into power. On the face of it, it's a 35-point drop from the historic highs achieved under the coalition.

Labor has presided over the biggest single drop in NAPLAN scores in reading for eight-year-olds since testing started 18 years ago. It directly contradicts the minister's point. The other point I can make here is that NAPLAN hasn't been around for the '20 years' that he talked about; it has been around for 18.

But that's, I guess, a minor point to make. In fairness to the minister, I will say this. Unfortunately, since Labor came to office, the reporting of NAPLAN results has changed, so the results from 2023 onwards are not directly comparable to those pre 2022.

But it's not right for the minister in the House, or the representing minister here, to make that comparison in the way that they have. Maybe there's an adjustment that he has chosen to make. But we can say this: if you compare apples with apples, and look only at publicly available post-2022 data for reading for eight-year-olds, what we see is this: in 2023, the average NAPLAN score was 404.6; in 2024, it fell to 404.1; and in 2025, it fell again, to 402.2.

Again, this is a year-on-year decline under this Labor government, based on publicly available data. So it's not consistent with the impression that we have been given by the ministerial statement here in this place. Now, I could go on.

There's much more—and I know my colleague in the other place Mr Leeser has given a much more comprehensive response to the ministerial statement, and I refer you to that, because he makes some strong statements about the inaccuracies of what the minister is saying and their reflection on this report. The government needs to come clean, because—let's face it—we all know that, as to the education of our children, our most precious resource is not the minerals in the ground; it's not the value of the workforce and the economy; it's our children.

Nothing is more important for this nation than the education and the welfare of our children. So we've got to be honest about things, if we're going to make advancements. If we're going to progress, we need to be honest about where we're at.

Simply making statements that just put the blame onto previous governments doesn't actually address the significance of the issue that is before us right now. We know that we're seeing declining standards of educational attainment across the country, across multiple levels. We've got to fix our early childhood system, so that we're preparing kids for when they actually get into school.

We've got to fix our primary-school system. There's so much that needs to be resolved. And simply coming in here and making false statements about the status of where we're at is not aiding; it's not assisting with addressing the real, substantial issues that we face as a country.