Ms RYAN (Lalor—Opposition Whip) (15:47): I'm pleased to rise today on the member for Sydney's matter of public importance. I am pleased to share this with the House. Many would have heard on radio this week the interview with Julia Gillard in which she reminded us that in this place we need to keep our eyes firmly on the purpose and the passion that brought us here. The purpose and passion that brought me to this place is education—not education for education's sake but quality education for Australia's children. I know that that passion and that purpose is shared by the member for Sydney and by the member for Cunningham, who just left the chamber after her great contribution. I echo the words of the member for Sydney today. We have a government that talks about education but has delivered nothing in six years but a decline in education across all the education sectors. We've been listening now for six years while they talk about the record funding that they are putting into education. I use the same statistic that the member for Sydney used. Expenditure on schools and non-tertiary postsecondary education in Australia fell from 10.4 per cent of total government expenditure in 2010 to 8.9 per cent in 2016. As a percentage, funding for education in this country has gone backwards. Those figures can't be twisted. It saddens me. We're watching our schools slip back. We're watching our Australian children slip back on the international benchmarks. We're watching that happen not because our teachers and those employed in the sector aren't working hard but because all the other governments in the world have figured out how important education is to building an economy and society. Everybody else is out there doing the heavy lifting in their countries to improve the education of their children—countries that are delivering on kindergarten for three-year-olds, countries that are working to improve teacher quality—while in this chamber we hear rhetoric about those things, but fundamentally nothing is delivered. As a former principal, I understand a school budget. I critically understand what a student resource standard means in my school. I understand what it means to be able to plan for the next year. So it is has saddened me since this government came to office that our early education sector cannot plan beyond the next year. How do you retain, train and build careers for people in early education when the funding model doesn't go beyond the next year. It is impossible. And this government is being tricky in this space—just like the way they undid Gonski. They turned Gonski from being needs based and sector blind into a funding funnel for private schools and independent schools, to cap funding for state schools at 20 per cent. That was an absolute crime. It was an absolute step away from our federal government's responsibility for school education. Just like they have done that, it is my firm belief that they would prefer to see the states take responsibility for all education. And, every year, I think this is the year they are going to walk away from early education. We will wait another year and see if it gets funding in the next budget. But what we do know is that there is no intention from those opposite to join other countries internationally and fund kindergarten for three-year-olds. It is an imperative, and it should be this government's imperative. Going to quality teaching, this government has done nothing about building the capacity of our teachers to continually improve in our schools. We have a testing regime that demonstrates where the gaps are, but we've done nothing about fundamentally supporting the sector that educates 75 per cent of our children. We've done nothing about providing them with resources or support, or asking them what they think we need to do about teacher training or how we might support graduate teachers. In an electorate like mine, some schools are turning over 30 per cent of their staff a year because they need another 30 per cent coming in—and they are in large schools that need experienced teachers around our young teachers to support them. This government's record is an indictment on itself.