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

On the question, can I say to the shadow minister that if he has any evidence that he believes should be investigated then we will investigate it. If he has a clip from the Sydney Morning Herald recording allegations from the Australian Education Union—which he knows nothing about and which he has not checked in any way, shape or form—we will investigate it. All he has done this morning is roll out bed and read the newspaper, and thought that that was enough for a question. The Australian people and his colleagues on the backbench, who are looking a bit cross-eyed at this point, will judge him on the weakness of that performance.

Meanwhile, we will get on with the job of delivering an education revolution to this country, including all of the things the opposition have opposed: the Building the Education Revolution; the national curriculum they want to rip up; the My School website, which has been described as a white elephant; our new money to disadvantaged schools—they have never used the word ‘disadvantaged’; our new money for teacher quality—they have never done anything about teacher quality; our new reforms, meaning that we pay the best teachers more to go to the disadvantaged classrooms that need them the most; our new reforms to bring the highest performing graduates into the teaching service; and new reforms to spread literacy and numeracy.

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