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

The shadow minister says—he is priceless; I am very fond of him—‘And there wasn’t a blow-out.’ Yes, there was a blow-out. There was a blow-out when your deputy leader was Minister for Education, Science and Training.

Let me explain to you the nature of the blow-out. Having costed the program at 80 per cent, more schools wanted the money than the costing allowed. So what happened was that the then minister for education, currently Deputy Leader of the Opposition, went back for an additional $181 million. That is the ‘blow-out’, if this terminology is going to be used, in the cost of Investing in Our Schools—18 per cent. It was a blow-out of 18 per cent, presided over by the Deputy Leader of the Opposition whilst the current Leader of the Opposition was a member of cabinet. I cannot recall whether the current shadow minister was in the ministry or trying to get into the ministry, but it was a blow-out of 18 per cent.

Of course, percentage wise, this is a far greater cost variation than anything that has happened with Building the Education Revolution. The then minister for education, now the Deputy Leader of the Opposition, had to go back to the budget and come back out with $181 million, whereas this is a reallocation within an envelope that we promised the Australian people—$42 billion. So it just amazes me that any member of the opposition would have been out criticising a costing assumption of a 90 per cent take-up for Primary Schools for the 21st Century when they sat on the government benches and put out a program with an 80 per cent take-up and a blow-out of 18 per cent and then had to fix it.

Then, of course, on the question of fixing that blow-out, what did they do? They changed the guidelines to cut the entitlement to—you guessed it—government schools. Schools had been able to apply, government and non-government, for $150,000 and then, to manage the consequences of the 80 per cent take-up rate assumption, the former government changed the guidelines so government schools could only get $50,000 less as a maximum.

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