Subjects: education
E&OE..................
Thank you very much David, Charles and Valerie Collins, Michael and Kate Ronaldson, my other friends and my fellow Australians. Can I start my remarks, because this launch takes place in the city of Ballarat in the electorate of Ballarat, can I start my remarks by expressing my gratitude to Michael Ronaldson for the tremendous way in which he has represented the electorate of Ballarat since being elected in 1990.
I would like to wish Michael and Kate and their family good luck and good health and much happiness in the years ahead. You have been a great servant of the people here Michael. But in Charles we have a great successor and today is not only about launching the Schools Policy of the Coalition. It';s also about making the very simple and obvious and I hope politically compelling point that we need to hold on to seats like Ballarat if we are to hold onto government. You can';t have a Howard Liberal Government unless you have a Charles Collins held seat of Ballarat. So if there is anybody out there, I don';t mean right here, who sort of thinks you can have a Coalition Government without having a Liberal held Ballarat, please disabuse them of that notion. This is historically a marginal seat and it';s a seat that has moved around very much according to the quality of its representation and we have to work and fight very hard in order to retain the seat of Ballarat at the next election and I am delighted Charles has been chosen as the Liberal Party candidate and the standard bearer to replace Michael Ronaldson.
In launching this policy document today which deals with the schooling aspects of the Government';s far sighted educational programmes can I say that our educational policies so far as schools are concerned are really based on two great principles. There is the principle of high standards and there is the principle of maximum parental choice. Standards and choice are fundamental to the Liberal way so far as education is concerned. Uniformity and standards imposed only in accordance with union permission is the hallmark of the Labor Party';s alternative approach to education.
Over the last five and a half years this government has spent record amounts for a federal government on both government and independent schools. The Labor Party seeks to turn the debate on school education in Australia into an envy-driven debate. Their incessant attacks on so-called privileged or elite schools are a campaign from a party that is still fundamentally, in this area of policy, driven by their trade union affiliations. Our education policy is built on the principle that all Australian children are entitled to a quality education to give them the skills they need to participate in employment or further training and study. It';s based on fairness, on recognising there is a public benefit in the education of all of our children whether in the government or the independent sector.
It';s also built very heavily on the concept of lifting standards and when the Coalition came to office, almost 30% of year 3 and 5 students did not have the literacy skills that they needed. And the acquisition of literacy and numeracy skills is a fundamental right of each and every Australian child. And by making literacy and numeracy his priority, and I thank David Kemp for the tremendous work he';s done in recent years to lift public understanding of the need to have higher standards of literacy and numeracy, by making it our priority over the past 5 years we have delivered the first measurable improvement in the literacy skills of early and middle primary students in almost 30 years. We have invested over $1.1 billion since 1996 to enable schools and teachers to help all students improve their literacy skills.
Labor, as David pointed out, has tended to see post secondary school education exclusively in terms of the 30% of Australians who seek to go to Universities, and ignoring the 70% of school leavers who don';t go to university. And I';m very proud of the fact, and I mention this although this is a schools policy launch it';s still very relevant, I';m very proud of the fact that one of the great things my Government has done is to double the number of Australians in apprenticeships and traineeships over the last five and a half years.
What we have succeeded in doing is to give to the sons and daughters of the working people of Australia a far better opportunity to get a career in a trade through an apprenticeship or the like. Far better opportunity than any Labor Government did in the course of 13 years. We';ve lifted the number of people in apprenticeships and traineeships by something in the order of 150,000 five and a half years ago to more than 305,000 in 2001. And we';re very very proud of that and we';ve introduced many new initiatives as part of this programme to boost apprenticeships. We';ve introduced about 6000 school based new apprenticeships around Australia. We';ve established the Enterprise and Career Education Foundation to link schools, business and the community to help students become work ready before they leave school. And over 50,000 businesses and 90,000 students are participating in that programme.
Without any argument the most socially and educationally disadvantaged group in Australia are indigenous students. And the Coalition';s National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy, which the Labor Party plans to throw out, is producing real results for Australia';s indigenous students. In 1999, less than 2 years ago, 66% of indigenous year 3 students had met the national reading standard which is a massive improvement since 1996. Year 12 retention rates for indigenous students have also improved up from 29% in 1996 to 36% in the year 2000.
As I mentioned at the beginning of my remarks the Labor Party';s education policy, reaffirmed today by the Leader of the Opposition, launching it in Brisbane, is based very much on the politics of envy. It seeks to cut funding from a so called hit list of schools formally classified as category 1 under the Labor Party';s old flawed funding system. The Labor Party argues that all of these schools are rich schools, in fact nothing could be further from the truth. Certainly some of them are well endowed, but many of them aren';t. I understand for example there';s a school on the Darling Downs of Queensland which is apparently the only category 1 school in the whole of the state of Queensland, where Mr Beazley is today, and it';s resources are by any description really meagre compared with the resources of many other schools both Government and independent in the city of Brisbane and throughout the rest of Queensland. But apparently a school like this school at Warwick, the Warwick Community School is on the hit list but many other schools such as say Churchy and so forth in Queensland, not that I';m suggesting that they should be on any hit list, they are not. And I mention that comparison to drive home the point that this policy of the Labor Party of saying ‘Ah, you';re on this list, therefore automatically you are wealthy schools'; is completely flawed.
And could I say, and I say this particularly in a regional area in Australia, and it will resonate all around country Australia, that more than half the schools on the hit list are boarding schools that serve rural Australia. And this envy driven, discriminatory policy of the Labor Party will strike another blow at country people. Many country people have no alternative, if their children are to get a good education, than to send them to boarding schools. And if the Labor Party wins this election and is able to implement this envy driven policy of theirs, which discriminates against tens of thousands of Australian parents who work very hard, often taking on an additional job in order to afford the fees to send children to the school of their choice that those people will be very heavily penalised. These schools will lose up to $2000 a student under a Labor Government and it will mean that the parents of boarders, many of them living in rural areas that have gone though very difficult economic circumstances over recent years will have to make up the difference through much higher fees.
Labor is also going to end our funding guarantee. And that';s our guarantee that no independent school will lose funding. And there are 254 schools around Australia including independent schools, non-systemic Catholic schools and Jewish day schools that will be in the firing line as a result of that decision. Labor has refused to commit to the Coalition';s National Literacy and Numeracy Strategy which is delivering the first measurable improvements in literacy in decades. The Coalition, if re-elected, will continue to ensure that every young Australian achieves the literacy and numeracy skills that are the key to success at school in further study and at work. We will if re-elected expect to secure state and territory reporting to all parents of their child';s skills in literacy and numeracy against national standards.
We will have none of this union driven view that parents do not have the right to full access to details of their own childrens proformance against literacy and numeracy benchmarks. We';ll invest a record amount in schooling with Government schools to get $9.1 billion over the next four years. Non-Government schools will receive legislated increases in funding which will give them the certainty to plan under funding arrangements that reward them for taking students from low income communities. We have put in place funding arrangements for non Government schools which guarantee that no school will lose money over the next four years. And we';re going to invest $1.4 billion over four years to improve the learning outcomes of educationally disadvantaged students and the provision of education services for students with disabilities.
As many of you will know, school based new apprenticeships provide an attractive option for many school students. By providing them with work ready skills, school based new apprenticeships encourage many young people who may otherwise have dropped out to stay at school while they complete Year 12. I now announce that a third term Coalition Government will expand new apprenticeships in schools by encouraging more employers to offer apprenticeship places to school students. We will provide an extra incentive of $750 to employers who are willing to take on a new apprentice while the young person is still at school. And this will help some 30,000 young Australians to get a head start in their career. The Coalition also wants to ensure that the transition from school to the world of work for these young people is as smooth as possible. We want to make sure that young people have as much stability as possible during what are very important years in their lives. A third term Coalition Government will also provide a retention bonus of $750 to those employers who continue to employ the young person as a new apprentice within six months of that person completing year 12.
It is expected that up to 27,000 people will be eligible for the bonus. The measures will cost $40 million over the next four years. Can I just make the observation that in the electorate of Ballarat there are currently over 2700 new apprentices in training and that is up from a figure of 1140 in 1995.
Ladies and Gentlemen, in seeking a third term the Government appeals to the Australian people across a very wide range of policies. We are very proud of what we have done to restore the economic strength and economic stability of the Australian nation. We do face difficult times ahead. Even before the terrible events of the 11th of September, the United States economy was slowing and many of the other major economies of the world were experiencing difficulties. And those dreadful events have compounded that process. Fortunately, Australia is better able to cope with these new pressures than most. Our inflation is low, our interest rates are low, we have repaid almost $58 billion of the $96 billion of Government debt left to us by the former Labor Government. We';ve had the courage to restructure our taxation system. We';ve reformed our workplace relations system, our exporters are doing better thanks to the new tax system, a reformed waterfront and the super competitive exchange rate environment in which they are operating. In other words, we do go into difficult times but we go there well prepared because of the policies of the Government that I';ve led over the last five and a half years.
And never forget, that over the last five and a half years, all of the things that we have done, almost without exception, to strengthen the Australian economy, prepare it for the difficult days ahead, virtually all of those things have been opposed by the Labor Party. They not only left us with a massive debt, they opposed all of our attempts to get rid of that debt. So my friends this is not only an opportunity for the launch of the schools policy, it';s also an opportunity to remind you of what is at stake on the 10th of November. This country, this electorate of Ballarat and the State of Victoria deserves at a national level, we deserve a government that has had the courage to do the difficult things to prepare Australia for the more difficult times ahead. It needs a government that is prepared to govern in the interests of the mainstream of the Australian community. It needs a government in areas like education that will advocate the maintenance of high standards, that will support and promote the great principle in education of parental choice. We have a mixed school education system in Australia, something in the order of 30 percent of our children are educated in independent schools. At a secondary level here in Victoria almost 40 percent of children are within the independent system. Throughout the nation the remaining 70 percent are educated in government schools. And despite all the propaganda that comes from the Labor Party to the effect that we favour, and the system favours, non-government schools, the reverse is the case. 78 percent of total government funding from all sources goes to the 70 percent of students that are in the government sector while 22 percent goes to the schools that educate 30 per cent of children in the non-government sector. Now those figures alone disprove this miserable attempt to introduce the politics of envy and division back into the education debate in this country. We want good government schools, we want independent schools. They are both part of our system and I speak with some feeling on that subject as somebody himself who is the product of the state government education system in New South Wales. Government education has always been important to the Coalition but so has education within the independent sector and I say with a great deal of feeling how strongly I am opposed to this attempt by the Labor Party, by Mr Beazley to reintroduce the politics of envy and the politics of division back into the education debate. Those days are long gone I had thought and hoped yet the policy announced by Mr Beazley today seeks to reintroduce them back into the education debate in Australia.
Ladies and Gentlemen, once again can I warmly commend Charles Collins to you. Just go out and tell all the people of Ballarat one very simple thing. If you want a Howard Liberal Government after 10 November, the only way you are going to get it is to vote for Charles. You can';t sort of vote for me or vote for somebody else away in Canberra and exercise some kind of other option right here in Ballarat. I can only win if he wins. If you don';t get him, you won';t get me. If you vote for him you will get me and you will get a continuation of the Coalition Government.
Thank you very much.
[ENDS]