Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Cunningham for her question and know that she has devoted a lifetime to working in the education and skills area.

The Rudd Labor government obviously has set as one of its highest priorities delivering the education revolution we promised the Australian people at the last election. In these difficult economic days, with the global financial crisis and global recession bearing down on our economy, we have determined that in terms of stimulating the economy there is no better investment than investing in education and training. We made a decision on 3 February this year, when we announced a range of initiatives to assist households and stimulate the economy, that education would be at the top of the list.

Through our Nation Building and Jobs Plan the government will provide a back-to-school bonus of $950. These payments are going out to 1.5 million families with over 2,760,000 children aged four to 18. This back-to-school bonus is to help those families with the costs of returning kids to education and training at the start of this year—and, obviously, every family knows that those bills come in when children return to school.

This back-to-school bonus was, of course, designed to provide immediate short-term support to those families and to provide an immediate short-term stimulus to the Australian economy. Of course, it will be followed with our unprecedented historic investment in schools right around the country. Indeed, when we consider the Rudd government’s Nation Building and Jobs Plan, the single biggest area of investment is in the nation’s schools.

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