2UE

E&OE................................

Paul Murray: Christopher Pyne is the Shadow Education Minister and he joins me now, Mr Pyne good morning apologies for the distraction but an Australian is about to do well on the world stage.

Hon Christopher Pyne MP: That’s no trouble. Good morning Paul.

Murray: Now, key point that the Minister has just admitted to me is to me the central reason why people should be very sceptical of these Gonski education reforms. I asked him a pretty direct question; the Prime Minister yesterday says it’s a two for one money deal, well if the States can’t find the $1 will you still spend the $2? His answer, no, it’s linked to the States in New South Wales we have a budget that is in deficit and we have a Government that needs to do things like close hospital beds, where the hell are they going to find an extra $1 billion dollars when the federal Government is offering money but they’re just not going to spend it based on a political standoff.

Pyne: Well it’s not just $1 billion, New South Wales has to find $1.7 billion and that’s why this model is a ‘conski’ not a Gonski. The problem with this model is that the Government is apparently spending $9.4 billion federally, but it’s actually saving $11 billion in education spending through cuts and redirections. So amazingly the federal Government is making a $1.6 billion saving in education through this new school funding model, it’s not new money from the federal Government, in fact it’s a savings measure. So the new money has to come from the States, the States are being asked to stump up any new funds. $600 million a year across Australia when the Gonski model suggested that $6.5 billion would be necessary. So this is delivering one tenth of what David Gonski suggested and its why of course he’s slammed what the Government has announced. It’s another one of the Governments incompetent shambles and if the States sign up to it on Friday well that’ll be up to them, but this is not a positive step it’s a retrograde step.

Murray: Well I’ve got to say the part also that I found unbelievable was that on Saturday when pretty much everyone’s spending time with family not really paying attention to the news they make an announcement that they’re going to withdraw the discount that you get for paying your university fees upfront. So now we’re going to have according to this federal Government a belief that every kid should go to university that’s what Gonski is about, trying to get as many kids to tertiary education as possible, but we’re saying that we want every kid to leave university with a debt. I mean how ridiculous that you would get rid of the discount, not for rich people but just people who want to pay for an education up front and not owe the damn Government.

Pyne: It’s robbing Peter to pay Paul. And what they’ve also done offcourse is said that the start-up scholarship, so the attempt to get people from disadvantaged backgrounds into university which used to be a scholarship will now be a loan, they’ll have to pay that back as well. So in fact they’re hitting apprenticeships, traineeships, universities, laptops/computers programmes, a whole range of programmes so that the Prime Minister can have an election plan, not an education plan and its why parents will be very sceptical of what they’ve announced on the weekend.                                                                   

Murray: Yeah I agree. Christopher I know you got to go, so ill leaves you there Mr Pyne, thank you so much.

Pyne: Thanks Paul.

ENDS.