PM Transcripts

Transcripts from the Prime Ministers of Australia

Gillard, Julia

Period of Service: 24/06/2010 - 27/06/2013
Release Date:
14/04/2013
Release Type:
Video Transcript
Transcript ID:
19232
Released by:
  • Gillard, Julia
Transcript of Joint Press Conference

Canberra

PM: I'm here with Minister Peter Garrett and with Parliamentary Secretary Jacinta Collins.

Today, I am launching the biggest changes to school education in our nation for 40 years.

Today, I am announcing a plan. Today, I am announcing a plan to properly resource teachers, classrooms and kids for generations to come.

And these new resources, this new money, comes with new ways of working to ensure that every child in every school reaches their full potential.

For me, it was education and getting every child a great education that brought me into politics as a moral cause. That drove me into politics to start with, and it's what drives me today.

But as Prime Minister too I have had many insights into how important education is to the future of our economy. I've been able to travel our region of the world; I am very familiar with how countries in our region and around the world are improving their education systems.

Put simply, we cannot have the strong economy that we want tomorrow unless we have the best of education in our schools today.

That is why the plan that I'm announcing today is a plan to ensure that our schools are in the world's top five by 2025, to make sure that our children are getting a world-leading education.

The plan means better resourcing and better schools. It means a stronger, smarter and fairer Australia for the future.

Today, I will explain what we are doing, what we are asking the states and territories to do and why it matters so much to our nation's future.

But before doing so I do want to acknowledge that we have only reached this day because of a lot of hard work done to date.

That hard work, that went into creating My School so every Australian could know what was happening in every school and the resourcing available to every school.

The work put in to create a world-leading curriculum, the new Australian National Curriculum; the way we have worked with principals and school communities in many parts of the country to prove that if you join new resources with new ways of working, then you give kids a better education.

The new buildings and new equipment we have brought to schools around Australia; the work of David Gonski and the eminent Australians who served on his panel to give us key insights about the best way forward on school funding.

And all of the work that has happened since through the work of the Minister, Parliamentary Secretary Collins, the work of public servants here in Canberra working with education stakeholders around the country. I thank people for that spirit of endeavour, and that hard work.

So what are we doing? Well first, we are creating a school resource standard. That is the amount of money we know is what is needed to ensure that kids get a great education; the amount of money necessary to ensure kids do well at school.

Over six years, we will start moving to that school resourcing standard.

We will increase school funding so that in every school in our country - state schools, Catholic schools and independent schools - we have funding around the school resource standard for the education of children.

The base amount of that funding in the school resource standard for primary school students is $9,271 per student, and for secondary students is $12,193.

But that money is also joined by loadings - extra resources to cater for the fact that we know some kids need more effort if they are to succeed at school.

So extra funding, new loadings, as part of the school resource standard will be made available.

For those kids that come from poorer homes, for Indigenous children, for children who are educated in small schools or remote and regional schools. For children from non-English speaking backgrounds for whom English is a challenge, and of course for students with disabilities too.

We know that this combined - the school resource standard and the loadings - are enough to enable kids to get a great education. And we also know overwhelmingly schools have less resourcing available to them today than that.

The school resource standard means that the way we are treating funding is based on children's needs. It's children that are at the heart of the system - their needs and what is necessary for every child to reach their full potential.

The school resource standard will be fully publicly funded in state schools.

Non-government schools will get a proportion of the amount per student which is adjusted according to the capacity of those school communities to make private contributions, as is currently the case.

All loadings will be publicly funded in every school, so every student who needs extra support can get it.

Now the extra base funding necessary to get us to this school resourcing standard over six years is $14.5 billion. It's a lot of money, but I believe it is a wise investment in our children's future and in our nation's future.

Getting there will not only require that base funding, it will also require the Australian Government to index its contributions at 4.7 per cent, which we are prepared to do.

We will be calling on states and territories to index their contributions at least at 3 per cent.

So, to get there, today I make an offer to premiers and to chief ministers around the country, which is for the extra money required to get us to the school resourcing standard for every $1 they are prepared to put in to get there, I am prepared to put in $2.

The Federal Government, prepared to put in a 65 per cent share, basically a two-for-one offer; $2 from the national government to $1 from state and territory governments in their jurisdictions to get our kids to where they need to be with the resources at their disposal to have a great education.

A two-for-one offer to ensure that around the country we are properly resourcing teachers, classrooms and children for generations to come.

In addition, I will be saying to state premiers there's the two-for-one offer, you must index at at least three per cent, and you must stop your cuts to education.

No more taking money out of schools as we have seen around the country.

I will also be saying to premiers and chief ministers when they meet here in Canberra on Friday that these new resources must be joined to our national plan for school improvement.

What should people expect to see from that national plan? Well, they should expect to see changes in their child's classroom, like children having personalised learning plans.

What does that mean? It means that the child who's at risk of falling behind gets the extra help he or she needs to catch up with the rest of the class. Things like reading recovery.

For the child who is doing so well that they're finding the work of the classroom boring, a personalised learning plan which keeps extending them and adding to their knowledge and their capacities for the future.

It means making sure we get the best into teaching and then we support them during their teaching career so that they can always be at their best as a teaching professional; supporting them so they can be truly great teachers.

It means working with their teachers to help them deal with some of the newer challenges or some old challenges that show in new ways today, including bullying in classrooms and disruptive behaviour from some students which mean the rest of the kids don't get a chance to learn.

It means schools having access to specialists, people like librarians, people like language teachers and certainly embedded in our improvement agenda for Australian schools is students having access to a priority Asian language so our kids can have to ability to speak to languages of our region.

It also means the best of equipment; the smart boards, the iPads, the learning tools of this century.

And it means that every school must have a school improvement plan and there must be complete transparency about how schools are striving to improve and how well they are doing in acquitting themselves against the school improvement plan - how much better they are getting.

Now, if we fail to get this done, where does it leave our nation?

Well it means our nation is left with the old Howard model for funding of schools.

It means our schools will be $5.4 billion worse off in contributions from the Federal Government and that will be joined by cutbacks from state governments around the country.

It means a future of underfunded schools.

It means a future where school systems - state schools, Catholic schools, independent schools - continue to have to fight amongst each other for the limited resources that are available on the table.

This, in my view, is a recipe for educational disadvantage, for social division and for, at the end of the day, a weaker economy than we would otherwise have as an Australian nation.

It is therefore vital that we get this right for the future; that we are increasing funding for our schools, not cutting it.

That we, as an Australian Government, seize our responsibilities to every child in every school; independent schools, Catholic schools and public schools.

It's vital that we as a nation seize this moment to make a difference for every child in every school for the long term. This is a plan not just for school year 2014, but for generations to come.

I turn now to Minister Garrett for some comments.

MINISTER GARRETT: Thanks Prime Minister, and there's no question that education is the great enabler.

And today, what we're saying is that the nation needs a plan to make sure that kids around the country get the support they need to do the best they can and of course correspondingly for both those children and their families, and the nation to benefit in the future.

A National Plan for School Improvement means that we're putting education right at the front of our vision for Australia; an Australia that is well-trained, highly skilled and where kids in schools now get high-paying jobs in the future, not only here but of course in the increasingly important Asian region.

If I look at schools, in all of the schools that I visit, I know that we can provide targeted additional resources and investment that will make a big difference to the kids in those schools.

And if we look at an average figure of $4000 per student that is the kind of money which might help that kid read or write better.

It's the kind of money that might mean that when he or she goes into the library, there's a specially trained person there to help them as they research for their assignments or for their exams.

If we apply these additional resources, we know on the back of the investment that we've made in our literacy and numeracy national partnerships, that we will see kids lifted off the low bands towards the national minimum standard and beyond.

And that's so important for them; it's important for them and their wellbeing.

It's important for us and our nation.

The National Plan for School Improvement has been the subject of considerable work with state governments, state officials and the non-government schools sector.

And I want to put on record my appreciation, as well as the Prime Minister has, for all of the long-term hard effort that has gone into bringing us to this point.

It's a very big day for school education in Australia, this announcement, and I think there are many, many mums and dads, many teachers, many principals and many people involved in schooling around Australia who will recognise that.

Importantly, given that we have provided investment over time, targeted at making sure we apply those resources to the things that make a difference - quality teaching, lower socio-economic communities and literacy and numeracy, we are now in a position working with the states to make that we have a national plan which applies those resources on the basis of need across school sectors and across states as well.

What else will happen with the National Plan for School Improvement? Well as the Prime Minister said, for each school to have a school improvement plan, for the principal to have additional power and autonomy to determine how their school is teaching effectively.

For teachers coming into the school to be the best and the brightest in our classrooms, teaching our kids as well as they can; providing them with that terrific teaching opportunity.

To make sure that we're targeting on literacy and numeracy in the early years - on literacy especially with the reading blitz - and of course on engagement with Asia and access to Asian languages is absolutely essential.

And as well as that, the provision of transparent information so that schools, parents and the community can understand how their schools are travelling and can interact and have good strong and positive relationships with the school as a whole.

I think we're laying the foundations for Australia's economic security today, but equally we're laying the foundation for each young Australian to be the best they can, to live the happiest and most fulfilling life they can, and that happens primarily if they get those opportunities in education and that's what a National Plan for School Improvement is all about.

PM: Jacinta Collins will say a few words about students with disabilities.

PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY COLLINS: Thank you Prime Minister and thank you Minister, I too would like to add my thanks to the many people that have been involved in bringing us to this place today.

Students with disability are an important part of the National Plan for School Improvement, an important area where we need to provide better support for these students and this plan will achieve that.

The Gonski review recommended that we needed to build a national data set so that we could better understand how to implement a loading for these students within the broader model.

And states and territories and the Commonwealth are well on the path of developing that information.

We anticipate a loading for students with disability will be in place in 2015.

But what will occur in the meantime is that states and territories will need to maintain their existing support for students with disability and the Commonwealth will extend the very popular More Support for Students with Disability program to ensure that the work that is occurring, not only in developing the data, but better supporting those students right now, continues until the loading is available.

PM: I'm conscious there is a lot of information there and so I do want to say to teachers and parents who want more information, that it is available on our betterschools.gov.au website.

There will also be information available on the associated Facebook page and on Twitter.

People will want to know what this means for their child's education, and so there is reliable information there for people to absorb. We are talking about an increase of $14.5 billion of resources, on average $1.5 million for each school, on average $4,000 per student.

It's a big day, it's a big announcement and I know many parents will want to personally get the details of it.

We will turn to questions now.

JOURNALIST: PM, your share of the funding over six years is $9.4 billion. Craig Emerson announced some cuts yesterday to help pay for this.

Is that all the budget cuts that you have planned to help fund Gonski or will you do other things in the May budget and are you going to discontinue things like computers for schools, for example and roll that money into this?

PM: To be clear, just in terms of savings announced by the Government in recent times, there were savings across the forward estimates as a result of our package to make superannuation fairer and more sustainable for the future.

So those resources are available to support the work we now want to do in schools.

Minister Emerson yesterday did announce some changes for higher education, and let me make that very clear, we as a Federal Government, since being elected, have increased funding to universities by 56 per cent. Let me say it again - 56 per cent.

We are asking universities for an efficiency dividend of two per cent in one year and 1.25 per cent in a second year.

What that means is that every university, having seen a 56 per cent increase in university funding, will continue to see university funding rise.

But yes, we do believe that those changes announced are appropriate to have the resources necessary for this new work in schools which is so pivotal to our nation.

And from the point of view of universities, we have focused a lot on equity, we will continue to see places grow, we will continue to see kids be the first in their family to ever get to university and as a result of improving schools, we will continue to see opportunities spread throughout Australian society.

Yes, we are rolling into this money, money that that is in a number of plans for national partnerships for schools, including the one you refer to.

JOURNALIST: You paint yourself as the education Prime Minister and you stand here today. Why didn't you stand alongside Minister Emerson yesterday?

PM: We thought it was appropriate to do it like this.

JOURNALIST: Can you confirm you will sign up on Friday whichever states and territories you can get, in other words it's not an all-in or none-in system? And what is your read at the moment of whether you can get all those governments?

PM: I'm not prepared to give a state of play around the states, but you are right.

We are making offers to states. We have been in discussions with states, officials have been sitting together for quite a long period of time now and we will work to secure agreements with states.

If we can't get everybody in, then we will execute and implement agreements with individual states.

JOURNALIST: You have just demanded the states that the states not cut their education budgets any further. You have virtually in the same breath acknowledged that you are cutting your education budget, your universities budget to fund this. How does that anything other than completely hypocritical?

PM: I think that is a complete misunderstanding of how we fund higher education.

Every university in this country will see more money next year than they got this year. They will see more money the year after and more money the year after that and more money the year after that, provided of course, this Government is re-elected in September.

Obviously, what will happen if this Government isn't re-elected in September is it will be back to the bad old days before we increased funding by 56 per cent.

So putting the two together, the plan we are putting before the nation today sees funding in every university rise and sees funding for schools changed for all time into a system that will last for generations and genuinely meet students' needs.

JOURNALIST: You are saving money from the education sector to fund this, are you not?

PM: We have got university funding going up like that. If you go from the base we inherited from the previous government, up like that. We are going to moderate the rate of growth to that. Yes, that's true.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, you have made other cuts, the teacher bonus, the computers in schools and some of the national partnerships have been delayed or cancelled as well? You've redirected a lot of this funding haven't you?

PM: You wouldn't want to believe everything you read in various newspapers and Liberal Party press releases.

But yes, it is true, what we have done with school funding. We came to office and we inherited a dreadful situation from the previous government.

No one could even tell you where the most disadvantaged schools were.

The previous government had played a cunning and vicious game of putting sector against sector; independent schools, Catholic schools, public schools all fighting against each other for limited resources available.

Since then, we have basically doubled the amount of money going into school education and now, across the nation, we are seeking to move to this school resource standard and to end for all time the need for schools and school systems to come and fight their corner for a limited pool of funds.

As we work for that process, we have put in national partnerships to drive change, teacher quality, low SES schools, national partnerships on literacy and numeracy.

Yes, now we are completely changing the school funding system, that money will be part of the new funding system as you would expect it to be.

You don't build a new funding system for the future and then say that there will be miscellaneous streams of funds outside it.

Of course you bring it together in a way which makes sense for the long term and that is precisely what we have done.

JOURNALIST: Can you give funding, how each sector will end up better off out of all this? Have you got the figures?

PM: We have made available to you some figures today about the shares out of the $14.5 billion increase we are seeing here, or we are aiming to see here.

Obviously we have got to reach agreements with states and territories around the country.

And then on top of that, and I would specifically refer you to this, we are committing to a 4.7 per cent indexation rate for Commonwealth funds.

Now that is a very important thing because where we are at the moment is if we just sat with the old model, the Howard Government model, we would be seeing indexation reduced to a figure like three per cent.

So in order have Commonwealth funds flow to assist schools, to get to the school resource standard, we will be indexing at 4.7 per cent.

In terms of final arrangements, we need to be there at the table with states and territories striving to get agreement and then obviously figures can be made transparent for each jurisdiction.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, have you set a deadline for your talks with the states and when you hope to have this agreement locked in?

PM: Obviously I am aiming for progress during the course of this week and progress at COAG. If that progress is not possible, for whatever reason, then we will continue to push states and territories to sign up.

But yes, there will be a deadline for people to sign up and that will be 30 June this year because people need to know what circumstance they are going to be in for the 2014 school year.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, the Gonski model called for an extra $6.5 billion a year in funding. By 2019, how much additional funding compared to what you currently put into education will you be putting into education?

PM: We can show you those figures. There is the addition in the base we are looking at, $14.5 billion where we are paying two thirds of it on a two-for-one share.

And then the indexation rate which we are talking about, 4.7 per cent, which obviously generates an additional flow of funds too.

What is the alternative? The alternative is to have the old Howard Government model.

So instead of going forward by $14.5 billion and going forward by an indexation rate of 4.7, you would actually go backwards in money, backwards by $5.4 billion and have a lower indexation rate. That's the difference.

JOURNALIST: The $14.5 billion, you've just admitted, that's not all new money?

PM: That's not what I said. It's $14.5 billion to work to get us to the school resource standard around the country.

We can obviously give you more details of the money flows here but you would be making a grand and grave error if you suggested this was anything else than new resources for education. It is.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, given you don't yet have figures for the disability loading and still collecting the data, in the event that turns out to cost more than the $100 million you're committing now, isn't it possible the $14.5 billion will have to rise? Isn't it possible that could be a larger figure?

PM: We will continue to work through on disability definitions. This has been tremendously complex and I will get Parliamentary Secretary Collins to say a few words too.

Tremendously complex because different jurisdictions use different descriptions; they have capped systems, so some kids get help, some kids don't and we are trying to work through for a rational system there.

But we, in the meantime, are prepared to put into new resources, as Parliamentary Secretary Collins has described.

JOURNALIST: Before you do that, it's a yes-no thing. Do you expect it will potentially cost more than $14.5 billion given that is an unknown in the equation?

PM: I can't give you a figure and I'm not prepared to guess that one.

PARLIAMENTARY SECRETARY COLLINS: The Prime Minister is right; we can't anticipate the outcome of that data collection work.

What we can say though, is establishing the school resourcing standard will also assist students with disabilities in schools.

The personal learning plans the Prime Minister referred to will also assist students with disability, but on top of that, the program of more support for students with disability is a down payment on that reform and is already out there.

We have shown our bona fides to the states and territories by extending that program to indicate that the Commonwealth will maintain its contribution until that data collection is finalised, and we will expect the states to at least maintain their existing expenditure in areas where we have seen some of it removed in recent times.

JOURNALIST: How do you put the budget together if you don't know by mid-May which states will be in the scheme?

PM: We will provision as necessary for the Commonwealth contribution.

JOURNALIST: On the budget, the School Kids Bonus is that going to survive or is that going to be rolled into this as well?

PM: The School Kids Bonus is a flow of money to parents and that will stay as it is now.

JOURNALIST: Quickly, in the briefing material this morning, you said the money would be phased up over the period. So is it safe to say we are going to see the majority of the spending, Commonwealth spending on Gonski, back-ended in the budget or is it the end of the forward estimates and beyond or would it be more equitable?

PM: Because we are engaged in a two-for-one offer with states, we need to agree profiles with states and I can't therefore, whilst we are still negotiating, give you state-by-state and financial year-by-financial year breakdowns when we are still in this negotiating period.

But what you do know is what the end point is. We are very clear about where we want to get to and we are very clear about the size, the considerable size, of the Commonwealth's contribution to get us there.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, on the base level of $9,271 for primary students, and $12,100 for secondary students, that will be reached in 2019 or that will be reached next year?

PM: That is the base in the school resource standard. The school resource standard also has the loadings that I've described, the six different loadings.

That is where we want to get to in 2019. I spoke about that at the Press Club last year.

A six-year transition is nothing new here. That has already been announced publicly.

JOURNALIST: Under this model, WA only gets an extra $300 million. What do you say to the likely criticism that it's Canberra dudding WA again?

And secondly, where exactly is the incentive for someone like Colin Barnett to sign up when it's only $300 million and the argument could be we are already funding schools properly, there is not much need for a catch up there?

PM: I don't know when we woke up in a world that says $300 million for kids' education isn't a lot of money.

If you went stood outside a school in Western Australia and said to the parents dropping their kids off, do you think it would be good if there was an extra $300 million flowing to schools across your state, including your child's school, I think they would say yes.

I think they would say more money for their kids' school is a good thing.

The distributions here reflect the fact that some state governments are closer to the school resource standard than others.

So some states have done better over time. There is no doubt about that, and Western Australia is one of those states.

Where I went to school in South Australia is one of those states too.

But we have got to ask ourselves a question as a nation and the question is this.

Do we want to know that every child in every school, in every sector, in every corner of the country goes to a well-resourced school that can give them a great education, or do we want to keep the disparities and inequities that are in our system now?

It's a question the nation needs to answer.

You could put in extra money and just build on top of every disparity and inequity that's in the system now and have a better resourced, still disparate, still inequitable system. You could do that.

But if you did that, you would never be able to say to yourself that every child in every school has the resources available to them to get a great education.

Well I say every child in every school has that right.

Yes, some jurisdictions have got further to travel than others, but let's work together to get every child that right, whether they live in WA and their parents take them to the public school at the end of the street, or they live in Queensland and their parents want them to go to the local Catholic school, or they live in New South Wales and their parents want them to go to the local state school or independent school or them public school.

Wherever they choose to go, whatever the predispositions of their parents for their education, whatever part of the country they are in, we as a nation should know they have got the resources in their education, which will enable them to have a great education.

That, I think, is not only a moral question, though it's certainly a moral question, it's an economic question.

Because if we keep every disparity and every inequity for the future, that means you are saying that tomorrow's workforce will never be as highly skilled or highly attuned to the age in which they will work and live as they could have been.

You are saying you are content to have a weaker economy tomorrow than you could have had.

Well, I say let's go out on and grab that stronger economy.

I can tell you what they are doing in Korea and in China and other parts of our region to get kids a better and better education.

We can't afford to have our kids slip behind the standards of the world. We won't have the strong economy tomorrow if we do that.

JOURNALIST: Is that Gonski overall funding, six years (inaudible) $39 billion, less $14.5 billion going in as part of the announcement today, is that just an acknowledgement that $39 billion is too much, is unreasonable?

PM: I think you are completely, one, underestimating what is being announced today, and we will be happy to take you through that and through the figures.

Number two, you are completely misunderstanding the federal-state dynamic here. Two-for-one, which means the states have to step up too.

And yes, we get it that finding money in today's budgets isn't easy. We have shown we are prepared to do savings in order to find money.

We are now turning to our state colleagues to do the same. So there is the model itself and the way it works and the extra that it requires and generates and we have given you the figures for that.

There is the shares; who needs to step up and do what, we're going to step up and do more.

There is the ability of the system to make the best use of the money and I spoke about this extensively at the Press Club last year, in terms of transforming of how schools work and who is employed there and what they are doing and what the resources are available, for a kid's education, I think it's just common sense that you can't go from here to here.

You have to change over time, which is why we announced the six-year transition last year.

JOURNALIST: Is that $14.5 billion in existing 2012-13 dollars or does it include inflation over the period?

PM: It's in today's dollars because we are dealing with the indexation separately. That is the figure before you deal with the indexation.

JOURNALIST: The states have already made cuts to their school spending. So you are ruling off at that level the current bottom line or are you requiring them to undo the cuts.

PM: We will be working with states for additional contributions into education. I can't stand here and say we can necessarily undo all damage that has been done by state governments.

What we can do is ensure that for the future, we don't continue to see state government cutbacks.

This is an important thing and one that needs to be understood. When state governments cut education under the current model of school funding we inherited from the Howard Government that cuts federal funding to all schools - to independent schools, Catholic schools, public schools, because it cuts the indexation rate.

Now that means that if people walk away and say, let's not seize this moment in our nation's life, let's not do anything, we will see school funding go backwards.

Not steady-state, backwards.

Now, for our nation, the last thing that we can afford is that plan to see school funding go backwards, rather than seize this historic opportunity.

It's been a long time, 40 years, since anything as big as this has been done in Australian education.

It's taken five years of work to get here. If we missed this opportunity, then you will see Australian schools go backwards and our economy for the future will necessarily be weaker than it otherwise could have been.

JOURNALIST: The states known about the two-to-one offer before today?

PM: We are making that offer public today. Yes, there has been discussions between officials where various views have been taken about what are appropriate shares in terms of an offer to all jurisdictions. I am making that offer today.

JOURNALIST: Prime Minister, in fully funding the loadings for the SRS, are you hoping that will encourage non-government schools, Catholics and independents to enrol more disadvantaged students?

PM: My hope out of all of this is wherever a disadvantaged child is educated, that that child gets a great education.

We do see in many parts of the country very low-fee Christian schools and Catholic schools, some who have absolutely made it their mission to enrol disadvantaged kids, to enrol indigenous kids.

And for those schools, I want to make sure that that disadvantage is recognised and that there are the resources available to educate those kids.

But I also understand, and this is one of the things that is a complete break with how education has been viewed in the past, that in many communities around the nation, disadvantaged kids, the only real option they have is going to the local state school.

And when we go to the local state schools, we see those disadvantaged kids; we often see schools in areas that have pockets of disadvantage; so it's not just one child that is disadvantaged, it's the majority of the school cohort, or overwhelmingly the school cohort comes from disadvantaged circumstances.

We, the Federal Government, need to respond to that too.

And that's the difference between our approach in terms of state schools and the approach of the Howard Government and earlier Liberal Governments.

I genuinely believe we are a Government with a responsibility to all children in all schools; not saying we are the Government for independent and Catholic schools and someone else can worry about the vast numbers of children that go to state schools.

We worry about them too, which is why we want to make a difference for those kids, particularly the disadvantaged kids that go to those schools.

JOURNALIST: Have you put David Gonski in a difficult position by linking his educational reforms to cuts in university funding. He is the chancellor of a major university as well as the author of this report?

PM: David Gonski can speak for himself.

I can understand if I was a chancellor or vice-chancellor, I wouldn't like to see even a moderation of growth in the amount of money that is going into my university.

I'm not a vice-chancellor or a chancellor, I'm Prime Minister, and I've got to make the right decisions for the nation, and moderating what has been a huge rate of growth in universities to fund this for kids is the right decision.

Okay, thank you very much.

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