Senator McKENZIE (Victoria) (16:33): It gives me great pleasure to contribute to the debate on the Gillard government's dismal record on education reform and the missed opportunities that this government has had—for the entire period of time that it has been in government—to actually attain real change in our Australian schools. It was interesting to hear Senator Thistlethwaite's contribution in which he brought up the Building the Education Revolution. When we look at my own state, Victoria, and the waste that that program delivered on the ground—and I see Senator Thistlethwaite shaking his head as he leaves the chamber—that waste was not evident where the school system was able to choose their own method of spending. For state schools, they had a prescribed list of educational resources they could access, and they had to go for it. When I think about missed opportunities and real education reform, I think about the first missed opportunity. As a former lecturer in education training, I know that our universities' capital infrastructure needs have been severely lacking. The former government recognised that and set up a fund to take us forward: the now-defunct Higher Education Endowment Fund. I think that the first missed opportunity of this government was to not spend it all on capital infrastructure for higher education. Similarly, in another missed opportunity, there was a federal Labor commitment of $16 million to stem the shortage of maths and science teachers by fast-tracking bankers, accountants and engineers into classrooms. By the way, those three particular cohorts of people—we have all got friends in those cohorts—are in classrooms now. Think about it. There is a reason that they did not choose education as their first choice of career. It has been an incredible, expensive failure with just 14 participants recruited. Those who are experienced in banking and who are highly successful engineers and accountants may be able to perform certain types of arithmetic, but I would doubt their capacity in terms of flux equations and partial differentiation. Prime Minister Julia Gillard announced the Teach Next scheme during the 2010 election, promising that Labor would over four years recruit 450 mid-career professionals to teach. However, just 14 participants have been placed into schools, after two intakes, and every state and territory, except Victoria and the ACT, has either not participated in the scheme at all or has pulled out. The computers in schools program blew out by $1.4 billion. The school hall program, mentioned earlier, blew out by $14.7 billion to $16.2 billion. The blow-outs in these two programs alone are more than double Wayne Swan's projected 2012-13 now-dumped surplus— The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Fawcett ): Order! I remind you to address members in the other chamber by their correct titles. Senator McKENZIE: Thank you—Minister Swan. Senator Carol Brown: Mr Swan. Senator McKENZIE: 'Minister' will be fine. Taxpayers' money was spent on these programs instead of on real education reform, and that is because of waste. Just throwing a lot of money at a problem does not mean you are actually going to fix it, and when we look at educational outcomes in this country over the whole period of time that this government has been in power we can see that money definitely has not fixed the problem. The air bubbles, thought bubbles and media releases to tackle the perceived educational issues have not actually fixed them. If the government is serious about improved learning outcomes for students, the rhetoric has to end. We saw that in MYEFO the government actually cut money out of education. So there are missed opportunities throughout this federal government's tenure. With the Prime Minister being the former education minister and purporting to have such a strong and passionate commitment to education, I am befuddled as to how we can have so many botched schemes. As a Nat, I am predominantly concerned with the close to a million students—young Australians—studying at private and public schools throughout our nation. Over 687,000 of our young Australians outside our capital cities are studying at public schools. So I am excited by the thought of a highly equitable and effective education system being delivered to our students attending public and private schools, and I note we have some fine young Australians up in the gallery watching this debate at the moment. I talk specifically about the Gonski legislation before us. The lack of detail in this bill is incredible. There are aspirations galore but not a shred of detail on how it is going to happen and what metrics are going to be used in certain sections of the legislation. The areas that we are targeting are areas of disadvantage, and the coalition is so supportive of ensuring that the taxpayers' dollar is well spent and spent in areas of need, on students that are experiencing disadvantage, but we do not know what the metrics are. But the AEU, in evidence before the Senate inquiry into the bill, were very confident that it is all going to be fine. But, from my perspective, this government has form in not getting it right in education and not getting it right for regional Australia. So, when I talk about the over 600,000 young Australians attending government schools outside capital cities, I want to ensure that the loading mechanism in the Gonski legislation actually delivers for them. Given this government's poor track record on the youth allowance debate and its inability to draw lines on a map that result in effective public policy, you can sense the concern of many stakeholders in this debate. Similarly, there is no idea about the other loadings. We have only just come with a definition of 'disability', and this is for a funding model that is going to fund our schools next year. It just does not wash, and it is so very typical of Labor. (Time expired)