Senator TROETH(4.46 p.m.) —Every word that we have heard from the now opposition on the other side of the chamber on this education debate has been total speculation and scaremongering. They know very well that any responsible government that is 10 weeks into its term obviously must take time to reassess the projects that are under way and see if they can do them in a better way. It has all been speculation.

I have been very interested in the comments that have been made by Senator Carr and others on the Victorian education system. Senator Carr is a great one to talk about this because in his role as senior adviser to Joan Kirner, when she was Premier, he had a hand in successfully ruining one of the best education systems in Australia, if not the world. It has taken a great deal of effort by the Kennett government to give the highest priority to children's education so that Victorian educators can once again hold their heads high. Senator Carr spent his short time in the federal Labor government in an attempt to ruin the federal system.

Under the Labor government the Victorian government education system became an absolute shambles, not devoted to the best interests of students and parents. In the four years of the Kennett government we have seen a return to excellent levels of achievement at every level. The changes that have been made have not affected the quality of education. In the last years of the Cain-Kirner Labor government in Victoria we saw parents marching with their feet and going in large numbers to the private school system. Since the Kennett changes in education have been made, we have seen parents voting with their feet in reverse. There has been a return of parents and students to the state school system in Victoria, which speaks for itself.

In our coalition education policy, which was introduced by us for this last election, we did detail to some extent the shambles that education had become under the 13 years of Labor government. I will very briefly mention some of those things. As the Senate will be aware, in 1989 the then Labor government reorganised higher education in Australia. It replaced the existing binary system with what it described as the unified national system. Under this, colleges of adult education became universities, forced amalgamations occurred and the number of Australia's public universities increased to 36.

The 1989 reforms were, in many ways, simply a redefinition of existing institutions but, as a consequence, the number of students within the higher education sector increased massively to over 600,000 students. The expansion in those numbers was not matched by a commensurate increase in per capita student funding. Since Labor's election in 1983, universities have experienced a 13 per cent per equivalent full-time student unit decline in Commonwealth funding. That is not what you would call a very good treatment of education. The coalition certainly hope to reassess some of those goals in what we aim to do.

I think Senator Margetts mentioned one of our election promises, which was to support Austudy to financially assist students to improve equity and access. As a first step, our election policy mentioned that we would increase the discount in the assets test for Austudy from 50 per cent to 75 per cent for farm and business assets in businesses in which the parent is substantially engaged. I would point out to Senator Margetts that this was a recommendation of the all-party Rural and Regional Affairs and Transport Committee last year. It was not just the coalition that was indicating that that position should be looked at; it was all parties.

I would also imagine from her comments on this that Senator Margetts has no experience of the reasons why farming families cannot afford to send their children on to tertiary studies. Unfortunately, she spoke about middle-class farming families. I do not know where she gets this idea from. Not all farming families are middle class; they occupy every level of the socioeconomic spectrum and all of them have equally hard decisions to make when it comes to sending members of their families on to tertiary studies. This is what we want to change.

Similarly, secondary schools were overburdened by monitoring requirements imposed by the last Commonwealth government. The Labor government at that time promised to streamline the administration of funds for targeted programs and to remove some of the burden of reporting requirements. Senator Carr spoke about the millions and millions of dollars spent by the last government on education. The money may have been spent, but it did not reach the classroom and the schoolyard. That is where the coalition aims to target the money much better. Many school administrations have spoken to me about the complexity of paperwork and administration that they were forced to undergo.

You cannot have it both ways. Just as you said before the election, `You haven't any policies; show us your policies,' you are now saying, `You're not going to do anything, but you're breaking your promises.' You cannot have it both ways; it is either one thing or the other. We will be maintaining the programs that will work. We will be providing the youth of Australia with an education that will equip them both for life and for work, which is far more than the previous Labor government did.