Mrs HULL (3:00 PM) —My question is addressed to the Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs. Would the minister advise the House about assistance provided by the Commonwealth to the states in the form of capital funding for new government schools in my electorate of Riverina and across the nation?

Dr KEMP (Minister for Education, Training and Youth Affairs and Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for the Public Service) —I thank the honourable member for Riverina for her question. The government recognises the importance of ensuring that Australian schools have good quality classrooms, school blocks and libraries. This year the Howard government is going to be providing some $222 million to support these kinds of capital improvements in government schools. This compares with $87 million that will be provided to the non-government school sector.

To date this year, the Commonwealth government has spent some $72 million on new and replacement government schools. I make the point that federal funding has been vital to the establishment of these new government schools. This year we have provided, for example, $2.25 million for the construction of the Cranbourne Special School in Victoria, $5½ million for the construction of the Mount Annan High School in New South Wales, $5.4 million for the Mawson Lakes School in South Australia, $8 million for Woodcrest College in Queensland and $10 million for the construction of the Great Lakes College in New South Wales. The member for Riverina will recall that we have provided over half a million dollars for the War Memorial High School in Hay this year for new works at the school.

Many of the new schools and replacement schools have been built in New South Wales. In fact, 18 of the 33 new or replacement schools funded by the federal government have been in New South Wales. No state government has had a worse record in recent years in investing in its public education system than the Carr government in New South Wales. It is the state government that has the principal responsibility, and those calling on the federal government for an even greater effort would do well to focus their attention on the Labor Party states whose funding is growing at a significantly lower rate than Commonwealth funding. Indeed, this very point is made in the editorial in today's Courier-Mail on the Queensland Teachers Union campaign. The editorial is headed `Teachers union fails funding test'. It says:

It goes on to say that the fact that the state government has failed to expand its funding for government schools—

It concludes:

Queensland Teachers Union—

And that is precisely what that union campaign is all about. In March this year I had the great pleasure of opening the Camden Haven High School in the electorate of the Minister for Trade. The Commonwealth contribution to the Camden Haven High School was $14 million, and $14 million is more than the total sum that the Commonwealth is seeking to appropriate for establishment grants for new non-government schools over the next four years. That investment in that one school is greater than the establishment grants we are seeking to appropriate for the next four years for schools in the non-government sector. Nothing could show more clearly the utter hypocrisy of the Labor Party and the political campaigns that are currently being run by the education unions in the states.

Mr Lee —Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I ask the minister to table the document from which he extensively quoted during that answer—both the documents.

Mr SPEAKER —Was the minister quoting from confidential material?

Dr KEMP —I would be very happy to table the editorial.