Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

Therefore the challenge lies in making sure that kids from working families have decent opportunities for trades training in schools. The previous government just waved goodbye to that and for 11½ years did fundamentally nothing for hundreds and thousands of young Australian kids wanting to pursue a trade. Kids wanted to pursue a career in the motor trades, a career in carpentry or other careers in industrial design, but there were no real opportunities available to them. They had to wait for an alternative government to stand up here—and I recall doing so—at the dispatch box in the budget reply and say, ‘Enough is enough is enough: this government, were it to be elected, would be committed to delivering trades training centres to each of Australia’s 2,650 secondary schools.’ We have committed funding for doing that into the years ahead. It will be delivered, as we undertook at the last election, because we are a government committed to honouring our undertakings to the Australian people, unlike those who preceded us, who categorised their promises into that which was core and that which was non-core, because they did not believe in the promises they gave in the first place.

See this speech in context