Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for her question because I know she does understand the significance this program has to her electorate and she has been involved in many openings of great new facilities within her electorate for the students in La Trobe. The fact is that the BER program is the largest school modernisation program in Australian history. What is derided on the other side as a school halls program is, in fact, building classrooms, libraries, science centres, language labs, gymnasiums, multipurpose facilities and sports facilities. There have been 24,000 such projects across the nation in 9,000 schools. Indeed, this program has been welcomed across the nation from parents and students alike for state-of-the-art facilities that they never could have dreamt of and were never delivered under the previous government.

As an example of how this program has been welcomed I refer to the opening of a completed project in Linden Park Schools. This was a new BER funded project of some $4.775 million and all of it was paid for under the BER—a teaching block with a shared activity area, an early years outdoor learning area, a middle years outdoor learning centre and a significant increase in the school gymnasium.

See this speech in context