Senator McKENZIE (Victoria—Nationals Whip in the Senate) (16:22): I too rise to speak on the urgency motion before us. It is hard to stand here listening to the rhetoric of those opposite as they outline the need to stick to promises of needs based funding models, of funding models with integrity, of ensuring that signatures are on the bottom line of any contracts—applying the Catherine King model, if you like, of contractual arrangements that was so commonplace in the past government's approach to their dealings with states and local governments: promises made, funding promised but not allocated, signatures not attained, and then we are in the mess that we were left with. I am a great believer in the strength of education and, indeed, public education as the birthright of every single Australian. The coalition recognises the need to reform the education system. We have 10,000 schools and millions of students—over a million located outside of capital cities, I might say, and 660,000 of those are in state schools—so getting it right is important to those of us who are interested in the future. But there is one key factor in this debate that we do need to consider, and I would just like to quote Ken Boston, who was a member of the Gonski review panel. He said: Public expenditure on education has never been higher. It has been wasted because it has not been distributed strategically according to need and has not been spent on the things that really matter. I think we could go through a litany of funding proposals in education by the former government which show the unstrategic allocation of funds in terms of educational outcomes—maybe in political outcomes it was very strategic to allocate their school funding where they chose to. But the reality is that there is one bucket of money and we need to make sure it is spent in a way that has educational outcomes. I think we are committed to doing that. One of the issues that the opposition fails to recognise time and time again—and the Greens completely reject the notion that we live in a federation—is that the states are responsible for education funding. It is not the Commonwealth's role to ensure that state governments, no matter which colour they are, remain unaccountable for how their state school systems are functioning. When we looked at the critique from the states when we were doing the Senate inquiry into the Australian Education Bill, there was a significant amount of concern from states around the lack of autonomy that they would experience under the model as it was proposed. That is something that, in government, we on this side understand. We understand that we live in a federation and that we need to work collaboratively with our state governments, no matter who they are, to ensure that every child in our nation receives an education, which is their birthright. I just want to attack one of the assumptions that have so often been made in this debate and that really gets to the heart of the matter, and that is that more money equals better education. That is simply not the case. The Senate Education, Employment and Workplace Relations Committee headed to China last year to look at a range of success measures that the Chinese education system has had internationally and to work out what was done. I can tell you: the student resource standard that they were getting per student in Chengdu, Shanghai or Beijing was a lot lower per student than our students get— Senator Kim Carr: We want Chinese standards now? I am pleased to hear it! Senator McKENZIE: No, Senator Carr. More money does not equal better educational outcomes, and we know that. Senator Kim Carr: Tell them about Geelong Grammar! The ACTING DEPUTY PRESIDENT ( Senator Stephens ): Order, Senator Carr! Senator McKENZIE: I am so glad you have re-entered the chamber, Senator Carr, so I just want to reiterate this about the argument you are making. Why wouldn't Premier Barnett sign up when you were offering $920 million more than the government is? The reality is that it was because he was not prepared to trade away his state's sovereignty. He was not prepared to accept the fact that— Senator Kim Carr interjecting— Senator McKENZIE: the former government, despite offering more money, was not actually going to deliver better educational outcomes to WA's students. Additionally, one of the issues that created the whole malaise that we find ourselves in is that strategic appropriation of money towards educational funding occurred when promises were made that the system would be reformed—even though the chair, David Gonski, was walking away from the mess that that model became under its politicisation by the former government, racing towards an election that they were never going to win—and that nobody would lose. No state would lose, no school would lose and no student would lose. It was an absolute fallacy. If you are going to construct a model based on need, then those with the greater need should get the greater money—hence, somebody has to lose. By making that promise, we set up a public discourse in which we saw state pitted against state, school system pitted against school system and student pitted against student. One thing that has come out of this debate is that we do absolutely need greater transparency in understanding what went wrong, what was actually agreed to and where we need to go from here. I think Dr Ben Jensen articulates that beautifully in some comments around how we can ensure that the funding model we come up with is one that actually delivers on what we all want. In terms of the coalition's promises, we do want a system where we will put more money—$230 million—back in for states in 2014. I have been fascinated by the public debate on this. I was listening to, I think, Radio National a couple of days ago and there were principals talking on, I think, the Breakfast show, complaining about the uncertainty of funding for 2015 and what a travesty this was going to be. I have sat in Senate inquiries about this, when principal after principal, from sector after sector, had to start employing their new teachers within 2½ terms and had no idea what their funding envelope was going to be. This was under the previous government. And here we are, over 18 months away from a similar point, and principals are out complaining, concerned about the uncertainty under the government's proposal, when there was no such noise from the AEU and from principals associations under the previous iteration. We want a needs based model, we want it to be truly national and we want it to be fair. As a National Party senator I understand that geography does matter. Lines on a map, Senator Carr, do matter, and under your government our youth suffered too much— (Time expired)