Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education. I refer the minister to the Auditor-General’s announcement, following his preliminary investigation, that he is now conducting a full performance audit into the Building the Education Revolution. Does the minister welcome the Auditor-General’s intervention and does she agree that it confirms the concerns that many sections of the community have had about waste and mismanagement in the schools stimulus debacle?

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

I thank the shadow minister for his question. I am very happy to welcome the Auditor-General’s performance audit. I am very happy to welcome any level of scrutiny on the Building the Education Revolution program. What proper scrutiny of this program should show, and will show, is that schools around the country are welcoming this program, as schools have been limited in their teaching abilities because of poor school facilities. This is the biggest school modernisation program in the nation’s history. When you speak to principals and school communities, they tell you not only of their level of excitement about the new facilities but also what a difference to teaching practice those new facilities will make. For example, during the winter recess I was able to travel to Western Australia and hold two principal forums over there—and they were not the only principal forums I held in that period. I will give you some examples from the Western Australia forums—and I can hear the member for Hasluck, who was in attendance at one of them. There was a principal who said he had been in teaching for 40 years and would always remember this as the most exciting time of his teaching career. A female principal who came to one of those forums said that, to date, her school has been ‘a school in the community’ but this money is going to mean that it can be ‘a community school’, as the new facilities will be used not only for educating students but also, under the community use obligations of the Building the Education Revolution guidelines, to teach parents as well.

I welcome any level of scrutiny about this program. It has been my wish that a newspaper would interview all 9,500 principals in this country and publish every word they say. It has been my wish that a reporter from a TV station would go to every one of the 9,500 schools and interview the parents and the children and see what they say. It has been my wish that people would sit with teachers and actually talk to them about the difference in teaching practice these new resources are going to make. This is a part of our education revolution. Building the Education Revolution supports jobs today whilst we build the infrastructure we need for tomorrow.

Of course, Building the Education Revolution comes with revolutionary changes throughout education. Transparency has been talked about for decades and is now being delivered. That new transparency is being used to drive new resources into disadvantaged schools. That new transparency and new resourcing for disadvantaged schools is a companion to our new initiatives in teacher quality to bring the best performing teachers to disadvantaged schools. Our new investments in literacy and numeracy will bring new resources—once again, this is driven by transparency so that we know where the biggest problems are—so that kids get the basics in life. This is allied with our agenda in early childhood so that kids come to school better prepared. It is allied with our agenda in vocational education and training and universities, with new money to drive enrolment and educational outcomes, particularly for the most disadvantaged. It is an education revolution throughout, and I welcome every minute of scrutiny of it.