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

I was thanking members of the Liberal Party in the parliament for making it very clear by their reaction to this question that they support the Barry O’Farrell position on school transparency and they do not believe that parents should have more information about what is happening in local schools. They are guffawing at transparency despite the fact that parents around the country want it. Perhaps their guffawing is to hide the fact that when they were in government they talked a lot about school transparency—and the member for Bradfield nods that, yes, as minister he talked a lot about it. The current Deputy Leader of the Opposition also talked a lot about it. But when they were ministers for education for the Liberal Party they got absolutely nothing done—not one thing achieved.

In contrast to that I am pleased to be able to inform the House that this Friday, with education ministers from around the country, I will release the 2009 summary report of the national testing on literacy and numeracy. That will be followed on Monday the 14th with school education authorities starting to supply to parents reports on their individual students’ performance.

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