PRIVATE MEMBERS' BUSINESS
Ms JORDAN-BAIRD (Gorton) (18:50): At 8.45 every morning, two children walk into two Australian classrooms. One walks into a classroom with modern technology, specialist teachers and necessary supports for each and every student. The other walks into a classroom that has not met 100 per cent of its Schooling Resource Standard, the base amount needed to educate each student successfully.
Resources are stretched thin and individualised supports are limited. The difference is the child's postcode, and this disparity is not good enough. Education has long been at the heart of the Australian Labor Party.
It was in the early seventies that the Whitlam Labor government transformed education by making university free and dramatically increased funding for public schools. It was in 2010 that the Gillard Labor government commissioned the Gonski report, and in 2013 we adopted this report. Today we are finishing Gonski, making sure that all Australian students, whether they go to a public, independent or Catholic school—and choice is really important for families across Australia—will have the choice to go to a school that is fully funded.
At every step of the way, we've been guided by one simple belief: that a child's future should be decided by their ability, not by their postcode or their parents' income. Like many others in this chamber, I've put on a public school uniform. Mine was green and white, and I was in Red House at school.
But, whether we look at state governments or federal governments, properly funding our public schools has always been an issue. We went to the 2022 election committing to get every public school in Australia on a path to full and fair funding, and now we're making this happen. We've struck some really important agreements with every state and territory across the country to fix this funding problem through our Better and Fairer Schools Agreement—$20 billion for our public schools across the country over the next 10 years, the biggest new investment in public schools by the Australian government ever.
This will see the Commonwealth increase its contribution to the Schooling Resource Standard to put every public school on a path to receive full funding. That's an extra $3.5 billion for Victorian public schools over the next 10 years. That's not a blank cheque.
This money is tied to real reforms, the sort of reforms we need in our schools to help more kids who fall behind to catch up and to keep up, and to help more kids to finish high school. That's what we need because, in the years ahead, more jobs are going to require young people to finish high school and then go on to take on university or TAFE. This budget is all part of our huge reforms to build a better and fairer education system, and make no mistake: full and fair funding for every Australian public school is an absolute game changer.
We're a growing community in Melbourne's western suburbs, with families moving in every single day. Right now in my electorate of Gorton, for over 14,000 people aged over 15, the highest level of school completed is grade 10. For families building their homes in the western suburbs and for kids growing up in the western suburbs, we need to look after their futures.
We really do have some incredible schools in my community, where proper resourcing makes a huge difference. Last year, Albanvale Primary School was one of the top-performing NAPLAN schools in the state. Under the fantastic leadership of principal Michael Uzunovski and assistant principal Luisa Liong, this school is one of the great schools in our area.
I recently visited St Padre Pio Catholic Primary School, which opened just this year in Thornhill Park under the stewardship of Principal Daniel Bermingham—a fantastic Catholic school in our local community. This is what happens when we invest in good teachers and good school infrastructure: we get great outcomes for students who are setting up their futures and getting the very best start in life.
It's thanks to the incredible dedication of our wonderful local teachers that we see our kids succeed. Teaching is the most important job in the world, and it's why we're backing them with more funding to build a strong and sustainable workforce and rolling out paid prac for teaching students and Commonwealth teaching scholarships. This is making a huge difference.
Under the previous coalition government, between 2017 and 2023 the number of people starting teaching degrees dropped by 22 per cent. In the last few years it has bounced back up to 20 per cent. And just as we saw the former Liberal coalition government cut funding from Medicare, they ripped $30 billion from our public schools.
They left behind a system in which non-government schools were fully funded but no public school outside the ACT was. We are here to fix that. We are here to finish Gonski.
On this side of the chamber we believe that a good education, a good school and a good teacher is transformative. Only Labor will fairly fund all public schools.