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

That is absolutely right: it is a year 11 and year 12 course. This is one way that we could assist our children in mathematics. We could also assist them with the mathematical concept of simple interest. We could take Labor's debt and we could get our students to work out what the annual interest repayments would be. The answer at the moment is $13.5 billion. We could take that further, since economic sustainability is embedded in our curriculum, and on to the concept of division. Yes, our interest payments are $13.5 billion a year, but how much would it be a month? That could be a question for our students. That would work out at $1.125 billion. We could get them to further divide that. How much a week? Our interest payments currently are $260 million every single week. That is how much this nation must find. What about a day? It is $37 million. Or an hour? It is $1.5 million. In fact, in the 15 minutes that we are allocated here as our speaking time on each bill, the interest repayments that this nation must pay on its debt is $375,000. In the 15 minutes I will speak on this bill this nation will have to raise $375,000. That is just the interest on Labor's debt. The scary thing is that we have to do that forever—every 15 minutes of the day, every day of the week, every week of the month, every month of the year forever until we start paying back the principal debt. What is even worse is that 75 per cent of that has to go overseas.

Of course, the other mathematical concept that we could embed in our educational curriculum is that of probability. The question could be: what is the probability of a Labor government delivering a surplus in the next 50 years?

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

Mr Frydenberg interjecting—

Yes, I know there is a lot of debate on this. It is going to be very tough question for the students to answer. We would simply go back to history. We know that there was one that they fluked about 25 years ago when the member for Longman he was not even born. They fluked one 25 years ago. So, maybe in the next 50 years there is a very good chance that lighting might strike twice and we may actually have a Labor government delivering a second budget surplus in 50 years.

Not with Chris Bowen as the shadow Treasurer.

Mr Ewen Jones interjecting—

I know there are a lot of doubters in the chamber. There are a lot of people willing to take money on that. These are some of the economic sustainability concepts that could very well be embedded in our education curriculum.

I congratulate the Minister for Education for what he is doing, but I just want him to make sure that we are actually doing the right thing and not taking some of these things out, because these are very important things, all jokes aside, for our students to understand. They need to understand the damage that was caused by a reckless and wasteful government with reckless, wasteful and politically motivated spending for the last six years. That is one thing that we need to make sure our students are aware of. I commend the education minister for the fine work is doing not only on this bill but on many other areas in education policy. I commend this bill to the House.

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