South Fremantle Senior High School
PM: I'm absolutely delighted to be here at South Fremantle Senior High School. I've been here two times before, this is my third visit and we're here to celebrate the fact that this is officially Australia's first carbon neutral school.
I'm joined by Melissa Parke, the local Member who's been a great supporter of the work of this school and by Mark Dreyfus, the Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change.
We have the opportunity this morning to participate in a wonderful ceremony, marking this school as Australia's first carbon neutral school. Hearing about all of the things that this school has done to reduce carbon pollution. The kids in this school are leading the way for Australia and I hope that many schools around the nation follow the fine example of this school.
So thank you very to Gerri the school principal, to Kathy who's led this work, to everybody who's made it possible but most particularly a bit thanks to the kids. They are really leading the way.
Being in a great school like this really brings home how important it is that every school, all 9,500 schools around the nation are truly great schools. The announcements I made yesterday were about making sure that every school's a great school.
Yesterday, I announced a new national aspiration - a goal for 2025. For our schools to be in the top five schooling systems in the world. We cannot afford to let education in other countries get in front of education here. Or, put another way, if we don't win the education race, we cannot win the economic race of the future.
I also announced yesterday a national plan for school improvement. You can feel in a good school like this the combination that is making it great - good school leadership, quality teachers who are motivated to do the job, kids that are enthusiastic about their learning because of those high quality teachers, a school that is full of information and information to be shared with the local community about what it is doing for the kids. That is the combination that we want to see right around Australian - empowered school principals, better quality teachers, more information for local communities.
We also know to see school improvement schools need more resources and that's why yesterday I announced that we want a school funding system that puts a child and that children's needs at the centre of the system.
Yesterday, I spoke by phone with Premier O'Farrell in New South Wales and we've agreed to work together to have discussions on the new school funding system that I outlined yesterday. I will go from this great school to meeting with Premier Barnett to have the same conversation for the schools in West Australia.
Over the weeks to come I will speak to all of my state and territory counterparts. I will work with independent schools and the Catholic school system. I want to see agreement across our nation to put our kids first, to make a promise from this generation of adults to the kids of today and kids of the future that we will be investing in their education, we will be improving their education and we will be winning the education race.
I'm very happy to take questions.
JOURNALIST: Premier Barnett so far hasn't been very enthusiastic about it. What are you going to say to convince him?
PM: I'm looking forward to the discussion with Premier Barnett and there's a very simple proposition at the heart of this. Do you think we should be continuously improving our schools, do you think we should be keeping up with the standards of the world or slipping behind, and should we work together to improve education for our kids?
I think Premier Barnett and I will be able to have a good conversation around those questions.
JOURNALIST: He seems to have concerns, because Western Australia spends more money on primary and high school students than the Gonski benchmark, that you're going to take money from Western Australia and distribute it around to other states.
PM: I can absolutely rule that out. There's no way in the world that any dollar in Western Australia for school education is going anywhere other than to a Western Australian school.
JOURNALIST: You do it for the GST.
PM: GST is the subject of a long standing formula which WA, you know, for more than 30 of the past 50 years WA was a net recipient. There is no comparison here, no comparison should be made.
Any dollar that Premier Barnett wants to spend on state schools in Western Australia will be spend on state schools in Western Australia. But I'm asking him to do more and I'm prepared to say that the Federal Government will do more.
JOURNALIST: He says that a bureaucrat in Canberra won't know anything about running a school in Kulumbaru. Is that a fair assessment of what the reforms are going to equate to?
PM: The only people who will run schools in Western Australia will be the people of Western Australia. The whole reform drive here is to put more power and more control in the hands of school principals.
No one in Canberra will be running a school in Western Australia but what as a nation we will want to see for every school is a school improvement plan which is being delivered to year after year.
That is, we will want schools to be accountable for giving their children a great education.
JOURNALIST: What will happen about that accountability, will there be any funds withheld if they don't meet a certain benchmark?
PM: This is about improvement and this is about putting more resources into schools so that we can see higher standards. We know this works, we're not guessing, we're not making it up.
Since we were elected in 2007, we have almost doubled the amount of money going into education and we've used that around the country in national partnership schools. That means there have been schools around the country where we have put more money and we've driven change in literacy and numeracy, in better quality teaching, empowering school principals, in rolling out the national curriculum, MySchool, better buildings, new commuters and we can track for you that that combination has lifted standards.
Kids are getting a better education, we're saying that same powerful combination needs to be rolled out in 9,500 schools around the nation - every school.
JOURNALIST: So what about holding the benchmarks, how are you going to ensure these benchmarks?
PM: We will be working to put more resources in. One of the reasons we're going to have a six year transition time is it takes time to change something as big as what's happening in education in 9,500 schools.
To give you one example, we want the people who go into teacher in the future to be people who are very good at literacy and numeracy. They're going to go and teach kids to read and write so we want them to be good at reading and writing and maths themselves.
To get those new teachers in at that calibre, to teacher education and then out into schools takes some time. To lift the standards of more than, you know, hundreds of thousands of teachers around the country who are in service now takes some time.
So the new resources will be tied to making a difference where we see underperformance the whole aim is that we step in and we ensure that that underperformance doesn't continue. That's why there'll be school improvement plans and schools will be held to account for them and if they aren't meeting their goals for change and improvement then work will be done to ensure that they do?
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, are you concerned that FMG's deferred its expansion plans and it's cutting staff?
PM: I've heard that Fortescue has made an announcement today. The timing of its investments is obviously a matter for it but a little bit earlier today I did have the opportunity today to speak at a mining conference about the huge investment pipeline that our country is benefiting from.
So we will continue to see hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars invested in new resources projects. That will make a difference for our long term prosperity as a nation.
JOURNALIST: This is the second major project in a couple of weeks that have announced a restructure, Olympic Dam and now FMG. I mean, there's no revenue flow from those projects is there?
PM: And there wasn't going to be. I think you're confusing two things. We have enacted a Minerals Resources Rent Tax and that started on 1 July and that applies to projects that are in production now. That is, they are getting ore out of the ground, they're selling it and they're making super profits.
The decisions from BHP and Fortescue are about the timing of new investments, that is when you would start the construction works which would later enable you to get the ore out of the ground. So you shouldn't confuse the two about what it means for government revenue.
JOURNALIST: It goes further for Fortescue though because they're talking about job cuts whereas Olympic Dam hadn't got started, Fortescue's talking about cuts.
PM: Once again let's look at the whole picture and the whole picture in our country is of a huge resources boom - half a trillion dollars of investment projects in the pipeline.
This great state of Western Australia is seeing its economy rapidly growing because of the impact of this resources boom. The same is true in Queensland, the same is true in the Northern Territory and you've referred to projects in other parts of the nation.
We are seeing a resources boom underway which will continue for some time. The peak of commodity prices has passed but we've still got the investment pipeline, the amount of investment that's actually happening, continuing to grow and then we will move to the production phase.
This resources boom will be part of our nation's strong economy for a very long time.
JOURNALIST: On the iron ore prices, the state government here is looking at ways to address that in terms of the budget bottom line. Are you doing the same thing at the Commonwealth level?
PM: We update our forecasts twice a year and we'll update our forecasts in the Mid Year Economic and Fiscal Outlook.
JOURNALIST: Beyond the mining industry through, there's also the announcement that hundreds of jobs are at risk because retailer Ojay is possibly going into administration. I mean is the whole thing, the whole economy starting to get a bit shaky?
PM: Certainly not. Our economy is a world beater, it's the envy of the world. Our economy now and into the future will continue to see strong growth. We've got strong growth now, low inflation, low interest rates, low unemployment compared with other nations around the world.
There's not a country you can name in the world that you would swap economies with. Certainly not the US, not the UK, not any nation in Europe.
We came out of the global financial crisis strong, that's something we should all be proud of, we built if together. And we are taking the right steps now to ensure our economy's strong for the future.
And if I can go back to what I said about education, when we're looking at the long term future of our national economy, there's nothing more important than the skills and capacities of the Australian people.
If you want to be a high wage, high growth, high productivity economy in the future, you've got to be caring about the quality of education today.
JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, Campbell Newman says that he's trialling an NDIS of his own just weeks after not signing up to yours, has he spoke to you about this?
PM: No, he hasn't spoken to me about his and as I understand it Premier Newman has basically announced today that Queensland will still be at the back of the class for helping people with disabilities.
What he's announced today doesn't bring any new resources from the Queensland state government to supporting people with disabilities and Queensland per head of population spends less on people with disabilities than any other state in the nation.
So Premier Newman still needs to explain to the people of Queensland why he thinks it's good enough, it's fair enough that people with disabilities in Queensland get less assistance and support from their state government than anybody else in any other state in the country.
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