Jackie Kelly (Lindsay, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

With the upcoming New South Wales state election this Saturday, I rise to draw the state’s attention to the use of public resources by the Premier of New South Wales. He has faxed to all the schools in my electorate his Labor policies on schooling. I would like to table that. It is a statement on Labor’s ‘strong record on new technologies’.

Leave granted.

This is the document in which Morris Iemma claims that he will be connecting classrooms. Yet in the third round of the Investing in Our Schools Program for my area, 12 schools had ICT upgrades, which is basically the installation of computer labs. In the last two rounds it would have been a similar number. As usual these promises will only be delivered in the fourth year of a Iemma government—by which stage the federal government would have fully kitted out every school in my electorate with ICT upgrades. It is this fraud by the New South Wales government that has got people so frustrated. It is the most unpopular New South Wales government in my memory.

Further to that, Bernie Riordan is mailing out, to the New South Wales Department of Education and Training’s mailing list of students, letters against the NECA Group Training company, saying: ‘Don’t vote for AWAs.’ So this government is in cahoots with the union movement in defeating legitimate negotiations on AWAs, and yet no investigation has been conducted by the Iemma government into who gave Bernie Riordan that list. Was it an authorised disclosure? How did the union get hold of such information and why wasn’t that made known to the company?

Further to that, we also saw the Leader of the Opposition visit my electorate today on a last round of beating the stumps. They must think they are in trouble in Penrith because there he was, pumping the pump with Morris Iemma today. He breezes in through the back door. There was a welcome committee there for Kevin Rudd. A number of people were out the front. They included media, local constituents who wanted to meet him, schoolkids and a few protesters. But Kevin Rudd came in through the back door and he left by the back door before Morris Iemma had even finished speaking.

This man is a coward and he should be held accountable. How many times have I had the Prime Minister come to my electorate and, when there are protesters, John Howard goes up the guts of the protesters every single time? I have never seen John Howard run from protesters like this little weasel did today. He absolutely went in the—

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