Craig Kelly (Hughes, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

My good friend the member for Kooyong mentions mathematics. That is what I would like to raise, because the sustainability priority across the curriculum is actually embedded in all the mathematics subjects. It actually says here that in the Australian for mathematics:

… the priority of sustainability provides rich, engaging and authentic contexts for developing students' abilities in number and algebra, measurement and geometry, and statistics and probability.

It goes on:

The Australian Curriculum: Mathematics provides opportunities for students to develop the proficiencies of problem solving and reasoning essential for the exploration of sustainability issues and their solutions.

Firstly, it could be very good that this is going to. But I think there is potential in mathematics, especially when it comes to economic sustainability. I would like to propose that we should have some of these economic sustainability concepts embedded in our mathematics curriculum. It could start with basic addition. We could ask children to add up the six Labor budget deficits.

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

I know it would be a big number. It would be $27.1 billion, $54.8 billion, $47.7 billion $43.7 billion $19.4 billion and, of course, the last doozy, $48.5 million.

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