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

The Deputy Leader of the Opposition says she understands this. She needs to explain it to her shadow minister for infrastructure, who clearly, from his questions, does not. This investment of $385 million in total—because of the Education Investment Fund investment and because of the leveraging of funding from extra sources—will, according to the Chairman of the Education Investment Fund, support 2,000 jobs through the construction. But beyond that, when the building is finished, it will house 330 staff. What this means, according to the Deputy Vice-Chancellor of the University of Sydney, Professor Don Nutbeam, is that there will be a 10 per cent increase in the number of staff in order for there to be the people to work from this brand-new facility. You could not get a better example of what economic stimulus in the form of infrastructure can do: jobs today through construction, jobs for the long-term through the people who will work in the building; government investment leveraging private sector investment; government investment and private sector or non-government investment working together to create a facility which will address some of the major contemporary challenges for this nation in terms of the health challenges of obesity, diabetes and cardiovascular disease.

Members opposite, day after day, come into this House and oppose infrastructure. In doing so, they are opposing vital projects like this one. They are opposing the jobs in construction; they are opposing the long-term jobs the facility would mean; they are opposing the additional investment that the government dollars are leveraging: a completely catastrophic economic formula for the nation.

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