Interview - ABC News Breakfast

JAMES GLENDAY: The first report card into the Education Funding Agreement has been released by the Federal Government, and the Education Minister, Jason Clare, joins us now from Canberra to talk about that and all the day's news.

Minister, welcome back to News Breakfast.

JASON CLARE, MINISTER FOR EDUCATION: G'day mate, it's good to be here.

GLENDAY: I'm going to get to that education announcement you have in a moment. I just wanted to take you to our top story and this ongoing concern about fuel supply.

CLARE: Yeah.

GLENDAY: Jim Chalmers is reported to have said last night that the economic effects of the Iran War could be as damaging as COVID or the Global Financial Crisis. Do you agree with him?

CLARE: Well, I think Jim said it depends on how long the war lasts and how long it takes the world economy to recover from it. You know, there's a war going on on the other side of the world, and we're not in the firing line, we're not having bombs dropped on us, but we are being hit by it, and we're being hit at the petrol station, you can see that wherever you go; you can see that at every petrol station around the world. So, I think Jim is absolutely right when he says all of this depends on how long the war goes on, and then how long it takes the world economy to recover from it.

GLENDAY: Are we approaching the point where petrol or diesel rationing will need to be discussed with the public to prepare them for this; you know, it's not something you're going to be able to spring on people, I imagine?

CLARE: Well, I saw a story about that, I think it's on the front page of The Daily Telegraph, and another paper this morning, this secret plan is a plan that's been around since 2006, I think it was originally set up under John Howard, and that sets out the different sort of contingency measures that governments would take if needed.

We're not there yet, you know, the simple point, James, is that we're not there yet, we've taken the steps to release more fuel from the strategic reserve, we've got to get that fuel out there now to petrol stations across the country, and we're also temporarily lowering the quality of petrol and of diesel so that the quantity of petrol and diesel is higher. They're the sorts of measures that we're taking to make sure that people have got petrol to put in the tank and diesel for farm equipment as well as for vehicles in the cities. But any talk of rationing, I think it's way too soon to be talking about that.

GLENDAY: One thing people definitely are talking about is whether they should work from home if they can. Should people who can work from home start working from home now, do you think, just to make sure that our supply lasts that little bit longer?

CLARE: Well, that's become part of life already. You know, there will be people watching the program now that are working from home right now or will work from home today; they'll drop the kids at school and then go back to home and work from there, it makes life easier for them, and individuals will make those choices themselves working with their own businesses in a way that works for them and works for the company that they work for.

GLENDAY: All right. Let's get to your portfolio. It's been a year since this Schools Agreement was signed. How do you think it's tracking?

CLARE: Well, it's not many years, it's one year, you know, this time last year we signed an agreement with every state and territory to fix the funding of our public schools. It's many years since David Gonski gave us the funding formula to do it, but it's never happened until now, until this Prime Minister. So we're now a year in, this is the first report card, and it gives us a bit of good news, it tells us that the number of kids finishing high school is now going back up for the first time in a decade, that the number of kids turning up to school, attendance rates are going back up as well, as well as the number of people starting university degrees in teaching, that's going up as well for the first time in a while, so that's a good start, but there's a long way to go.

GLENDAY: We saw Victorian teachers walk off the job asking for a very big pay rise yesterday. How do you think the State Government should be handling this? Do Victorian teachers deserve a big pay bump?

CLARE: Well, I think teachers do the most important job in the world, and we've seen in places like New South Wales where you pay teachers more, more people want to do the job. I think in New South Wales now they've got the lowest teacher vacancy rates they've had in 12 years, and I know Ben Carroll, the Education Minister in Victoria, gets that, he's a fantastic Education Minister and understands in his bones how important the work our teachers do is, and I'm very confident that they'll be able to negotiate an outcome here which is good for teachers and good for the people of Victoria.

GLENDAY: It doesn't look like they're that close though, because I mean yesterday there was talk of further strikes.

CLARE: Yeah, always darkest before the dawn, mate, but I'm very confident that they'll get there.

Can I just make one other point. This is something that was seen in Victoria but also New South Wales, and this is how we teach kids to read, and our teachers are key to that. The reading wars are over, we know what works, it's phonics that works, and in New South Wales they've been teaching kids to read with phonics for a couple of years now and doing a thing called a phonics check. Three years ago, it found that one in two kids were on track with their reading, last year that jumped to two thirds. Now that is a massive jump in just three years and that's from teaching kids to read with phonics but also this phonics check for kids when they're six years old.

Now we've got to build on that, and roll it out across the country, and one of the things this report talks about today is the fact that this year for the first time ever every state and territory in every school across the country will do this phonics check in Year 1, and we're going to do the same thing for numeracy as well.

GLENDAY: Jason Clare, thanks for the update and thanks for joining News Breakfast.

CLARE: Good on you.