PM: I'm here today at Turner Primary School and I'd like to take this opportunity to thank the Principal, Jan Day, and also thank the School Captains Anika and Charlie, who have shown us around today
I'm joined by the Deputy Prime Minister and Treasurer Wayne Swan, by the Minister for School Education Peter Garrett and by our local Federal Member Andrew Leigh. We're about a week and a day away from the Federal Budget. The Federal Budget is important, it's an important way of demonstrating that the nation can live within its means and that's why we are determined to bring the budget to surplus in 2012-13, as promised. But the Federal Budget is also important as a statement of value and priorities. You put taxpayers dollars behind the things you think are most important for the nation today and for the nation's future. And in this budget we will be continuing the priority I have put on education, I have consistently said that demography is not destiny and that our nation has to make sure that every child in every school is getting a great education. We're already implemented a number of important policies to make a difference to schools today, including My School to give parents and teachers more information that they've ever had before about the performance of their school, including our national curriculum, to make sure that kids around the country are studying a high quality national curriculum, including our investment in school buildings, in school libraries, in classrooms, in trade training centres, in school halls, to make sure that schools have the best possible facilities. And for many schools this was the first real investment they'd seen in a new building for decades. And also our investments in literacy and numeracy and to lift the standards in low socio-economic schools that are teaching our most disadvantaged children. We've invested in all of these things to make a difference for education today, because what's happening in schools today determines our future as a nation, our economic future, because the kids in schools today are the workers of tomorrow, but also our future as a fair society. In making all of those investments we've recognised that there's nothing more important to a child's education that the quality of the teacher standing in front of the classroom, we're met some great teachers today. And we've been investing in those great teachers, including through news schemes, one already operating in New South Wales, where the best teachers are being paid more to go to the disadvantaged classrooms that need them the most. We're investing in programs like the one in Western Australia, where state schools can become more independent - independent public schools, able to better deal to determine their own future. Today I want to confirm with the Federal Treasurer and the Minister for School Education that the forthcoming budget will deliver on our promise to invest in rewarding great teachers around the country. This is the next step to build on our education reforms. What that means is we will design a system where teachers who are performing well can get additional pay and additional reward to recognise that great performance. The number of teachers to be rewarded will be around 25,000 - that is 10 per cent of the teaching workforce. The level of the rewards will be around 10 per cent of salary, depending on the seniority of the teacher, that can be around $5000 or around $8000. We will build the system to measure great teaching, we will monitor teacher performance in 2013 and the first rewards will be paid in 2014. $425 million will be allocated in this budget to building this system and rewarding teachers. This will be an investment of $1.3 billion to 2018. This is our way of saying to Australian teachers we value what they do, we want to reward great teaching so that the individuals who are doing it experience the benefits of those rewards and so we can model what great teaching is to the rest of the teaching workforce. Academic studies have proved that quality teaching and monitoring and showing quality teaching does make a difference to the quality of education. That if you monitor and give feedback, so that you identify great teaching that does put you in a virtuous circle where great teaching becomes more and more prevalent and that's what we want to see. So this is another important tranche of something very important to this government, making a difference to school education. I'd also like to thank Turner Primary School for letting us watch kids today learn with some of the new interactive technology. I do want to say in addition to our other education investments, we're very proud to have provided more than 400,000 computers to children in secondary school and that program remains on track. Now in accordance with his usual negativity, of course Mr Abbott rejects this reform agenda. He went to the last election promising $2.8 billion of cut backs in education. He wanted to cut back computers in school - so 120,000 kids would miss out. He wanted to cut back our trades training program - so 1,800 secondary schools would miss out on the opportunity for a trades training education. He also wanted to cut our quality teaching investment and cut our money to low socio-economic schools. This would have put at risk the real reforms that are making a difference to Australian education today. So there is a real challenge for Mr Abbott, as we approach budget week as well - for him to verify, does he still believe in ripping $2.8 billion out of Australian education. I'll turn to the Minister for School Education for some comments and then we'll take some questions. MINISTER GARRETT: Thank you very much, Prime Minister. All parents know that the quality of the teaching their kids gets makes the biggest difference to their education, and today's announcement is confirmation that the investments that we want to see make a difference in the education that our kids get will particularly, in this instance, be directed towards recognising and rewarding those great teachers who do a great job in the classroom. This comes on the top of a number of reforms and national standard setting priorities that we have already delivered, as the Prime Minister pointed out, and in particular the decision by the ministerial council in December for national teacher standards and a subsequent decision just a couple of weeks ago when we met in Melbourne for national pre-service standards for teacher training at universities. So, what this Government is doing is placing quality teaching at the heart of the effort to make sure that our kids get a great education, and we're doing this by recognising that for teachers, if they are recognised for the great job that they do, we know from some very recent research they become more effective teachers. The community wants to recognise great teaching. The teaching community itself knows that it has teachers that make a huge difference to their kids, and today this announcement provides this Government's commitment to making sure that those teachers get rewarded. We will consult very widely with the education sector, with the school community, with a variety of experts, non-government organisations and others, and it is intended that the work to develop an Australian teaching performance management and principles system will be done by the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership, and I expect that work to start unfolding in the future. And in terms of a model for assessing who is a great teacher, I think it's likely that we'll be looking broadly at those factors that take place in a classroom, not only the kind of education achievements that teachers may be producing for their kids, but the kind of work that they are doing in extracurricular activities, the way in which they relate and cooperate with their colleagues, and a range of other issues. They will be determined through extensive consultation with the Australian Institute of Teaching and School Leadership, but today this is a strong statement from this Government that we understand how important great teachers are, and we will recognise and reward them. PM: Thank you. Any questions? JOURNALIST: This bonus will be paid, we've just heard the criteria, with NAPLAN (inaudible) particular weight be given to the NAPLAN result? How will that work? PM: Well, on the weighting of the individual elements, that will be worked through in the consultation process that Minister for School Education's just spoken about. I know that there's some publicity about NAPLAN in today's newspapers, and I think we've got to be very clear that Australian NAPLAN is our own system. We didn't get it from anywhere else. In fact, our design of national testing is world leading, and our use of it on the My School website is also world leading, because we have on the My School website very important value-added measures. So, we're not looking at raw scores, we're not looking at just saying ‘well, how does an advantage school compare with a disadvantage school on raw scores'. We are actually able to see on NAPLAN the difference that a school is making to child, the value added to that child's education. JOURNALIST: Given this Government's commitment to educational outcomes, and in light of the review of the funding system, do you anticipate that reduction of funds to private schools, that would achieve a beneficial, good outcome at the end of the day? PM: We're a Government that believes in increasing funding for education. We've almost doubled the amount of money going into school education, and we've taken the view that this is about every child in every school. We aren't talking about school systems. We're talking about every child in every school getting a great education, so whatever school a parent determines to send their child to, they can be satisfied that it's a school that offers a great education. So, we're not interested in these old debates about public versus private. We're interested in improving standards and qualities and outcomes for every child in every school, right around the country. JOURNALIST: The teachers union, correct me if I'm wrong, weren't too happy about this plan at the time. Have they warmed to the idea (inaudible) PM: Well, this is the right thing to do. It's the right thing to reward good-quality teaching. I mean, making sure that teachers in classrooms are the very best that they can be is vital to a child's education. That's why it's so distressing that, for example, Mr Abbott has promised to cut away the money that's created Teach for Australia, bringing the best-performing graduates into teaching. Why on Earth would you do that? To cut away the money that has enable us to pilot programs to enable the best teachers to be paid more to go to disadvantaged schools; to cut away the money that enables public schools in Western Australia, in a pilot we funded, to have a greater degree of education and self management - these are important things for Australian children. We value them. We prize them. That's why we will put a priority on them in this Budget, and why are challenging Mr Abbott to walk away from his plans for these destructive cutbacks. JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, on another issue, the Government talks tough about sending home asylum seekers who aren't actual refugees. However, figures out today show that 70 per cent of failed asylum seekers are actually having their cases overturned on review. How is that actually sending asylum seekers home? PM: Well, we've got to make sure we're not confusing two issues here. First, we do properly and rigorously assess whether or not people have a legitimate claim to be a refugee. I believe that as a country we do want to extend our compassion to people who are legitimately refugees, so we need a robust system to assess people's claims and to work out who is legitimately a refugee. We've actually amended that system. There were some streamlining amendments in March this year, and the figures you refer to pre-date that change and that streamlining. On return of people who are not refugees to their country of origin, we work hard to return people who do not have legitimate claims to stay in Australia. The former government, the Howard government, also worked hard to do so. It requires international agreements and work with source countries so that returns can be made, and we've done that kind of work, for example, with Afghanistan. JOURNALIST: Is the AFP well resourced enough to investigate this criminal activity? Do they have the manpower to investigate all of the incidents that take place in the detention centres? PM: We're a Government that's been investing in additional resources in the Australian Federal Police, including additional officers, sworn officers. The Australian Federal Police work with their State counterparts. There is consultation and collaboration on dealing with any unlawful acts in detention centres. JOURNALIST: So you're confident nothing goes by the wayside, nothing (inaudible) PM: Anybody who has committed a crime in any circumstances - whether it's in a detention centre, whether it's in a suburb, whether it's in a regional town, whether it's in a capital city on a Saturday night - anybody who has committed an unlawful act should be caught and prosecuted. JOURNALIST: Just for the Treasurer, the Budget predicts falling unemployment and the creation 500,000 jobs. Where exactly are the jobs going to come from and (inaudible) a squeeze on other sectors in the economy our resources regions. Are you planning to relocate people at all? TREASURER: Well, the first thing is that we are forecasting an additional 500,000 jobs over the next two years and a bit, and that comes on top of 750,000 jobs during our period in Government. This is simply an outstanding result for the country. We have a very strong investment pipeline over the next few years and whilst the economy is soft at the moment, in the years ahead it will grow strongly and we will see that job growth reflected in wide sectors of the economy. Naturally we'll see it in resources but we'll also see it in associated areas such as construction. We will continue to see it in the services sector as well. For example in the past year there's been over 300,000 new jobs in Australia, 98 per cent of those have been full time jobs. So we will expect to see it spread widely across our economy. Now the challenge for us is that we don't have a person to waste. If we have an unemployment rate in a couple of years of 4.5 per cent and we have a very strong investment pipeline we are going to need more people and that's why the Government is focusing so closely on workforce participation, on making sure that those that are unemployed have the opportunity to get a job, to work a few hours, get the access to the training and the work experience, and there may be those that are out of the labour force who wish to come back in. So we're really focused on making sure that those people who can work more do work more and in that way we spread the opportunities that flow from the mining boom more widely across our economy. The Government absolutely understands that there are sections of our economy and there are people living in areas of the country where things are still soft, for example I spent some time in Cairns over the break. Unemployment there is high. What we have to make sure is the opportunities that arise from this boom and the investment that comes with it goes to all corners of our country. That's what the Government is really focused on. We've got a fantastic opportunity here in the medium term to make sure that everybody participates in the results of this investment which is coming through and to turn the investment boom in to an opportunity boom. JOURNALIST: (inaudible) has also warned about the impact of the high dollar and she's suggested that intervention with the exchange rate might be an option. What's your response to that? TREASURER: Well, first of all I don't speculate about the level of the Australian dollar but I do want to make some very important points. The first point is that the strength of the Australian dollar reflects the strength of the Australian economy relative to other developed economies. It also reflects the price that the world is paying for our commodities which at the moment is quite high and of course it reflects relativities with other major economies particularly other major developed economies. We understand that a high dollar does put pressure on sectors of our economy. It puts pressure, for example, on the tourism sector and you can see that in areas like Cairns. It puts pressure on the manufacturing sector, in particular that sector which is exporting, and that's why we have been focused for a long time on making sure we deal with the consequences of what some people have described as a two-speed economy but which we describe as a patchwork economy. That is why we were so focused over the past year or so on putting in place a resource rent tax so we could use that to cut the tax for many of the small businesses in our economy that are doing it tough. So we could build our national savings. So we could invest in our infrastructure. These are the objectives of the Government in the context of the structural change which flows through our economy from having a higher dollar. That's why, for example, it's pretty important we come back to surplus in 2012-13. And I noticed Mr Abbott over the weekend slipped out very quietly the fact that he wasn't going to provide any savings in his response to our Budget. Well, Mr Abbott's out there with a wrecking ball trying to wreck a lot of positive plans for our economy. We've already heard what he's contemplated in the past in terms of education, but if he sets out in this Budget to wreck our surplus that will have dramatic consequences for the cost of living and price pressures in our economy which will flow if we don't bring our Budget back to surplus in the years ahead. JOURNALIST: Do you have concerns that the dollar is overvalued?TREASURER: I don't speculate about the level of the dollar but what I can say, and everybody knows, is that the strength of the dollar reflects the strength of our economy relative particularly to our major trading partners. That's what it reflects and it also reflects the fact that there are very high prices for our commodities and it also reflects the relativities with other economies. JOURNALIST: Can I just ask one question on the carbon tax as well? PM: Yep, last one. JOURNALIST: If the Government has ruled out compensating steel based on fluctuation of the exchange rate, are you considering any other sort of special circumstances for the steel industry? TREASURER: I've made some commentary in this area today. We are involved in discussions with industry more broadly about the introduction of a carbon price which industry generally supports. They understand the need to put a carbon price in place. I notice that Mr Abbott's carbon price advisor couldn't find anybody in industry that was going out there to support his alternative proposals - if you could call it that - in any positive way.Industry understands the need, the need for our long-term prosperity to put a price on carbon in this country and to do it in a way that we make the transition which takes into account the various needs of various industrial sectors. And we are involved in a discussion, the Climate Change Minister and myself and the Prime Minister are involved in discussions with a range of industry associations and companies about how we go about doing that. That's what we're doing at the moment and when we've concluded those discussions we will announce the product of them.