Sid Sidebottom (Braddon, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion, and I thank her for her recent visit. Will the minister outline to the House the importance of the infrastructure stimulus for schools such as my own and the cost to local communities should it be withdrawn?

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

I thank the member for Braddon for his question. I did enjoy my visit to his electorate, and I note that under the Building the Education Revolution program his electorate is receiving $99 million for 139 projects in 119 schools. But there is a reason that the member for Braddon has asked me this question, and that is we are joined in the gallery today by students from Penguin Primary School, which I had the opportunity to visit when I visited his electorate. Mr Speaker, with your indulgence, I have been given gifts on school visits in the past, but this is the first time that a school has ever given me handpainted gumboots with a penguin on either side. I would like to thank the students from Penguin Primary School for that very special gift—thank you very much.

Penguin Primary School is benefiting from a $2.5 million project under the Building the Education Revolution program. They are having constructed a community learning centre—they are the right size, if that is what you are checking, Prime Minister; the students checked that and got the right size—and library extension. That is going to be great for their primary school. It is of course great news for Penguin because the residents in Penguin will be able to use that shared facility. At the same time, I was informed by the contractor who is building this new centre at Penguin Primary School that he expects the construction to support up to 135 jobs, so that is also great news for Penguin, great news for the electorate of Braddon.

The sense of delight at Penguin is reflected right around the country in schools as they go about the job of constructing their Building the Education Revolution facilities and supporting local jobs. The serious side of this is that the opposition leader has said that he is committed to reviewing stimulus spending project by project. And then we have had fulsome acknowledgements from members opposite, most particularly the member for Flinders, who described the whole program, the $16 billion involved in this program, as a waste. And so we have the opposition that voted against this program—voted against every job, every project, every benefit to schools—now threatening, project by project, to review these and other stimulus measures.

I call on the opposition once again to be honest with Australian students, their parents, teachers and school principals. The Leader of the Opposition and his shadow minister have an obligation to publish the list of school names that they say should not benefit under Building the Education Revolution. They cannot have it both ways; they cannot sign up to Senate committee reports calling for project by project reviews, they cannot go into the media saying that they are committed to project by project reviews, and then not complete the end of that process and tell school communities which of them would get nothing if the Liberal Party succeeded at the next election. It is something the Liberal Party should be honest about. Australian schools deserve to know the truth about what the Liberal Party has planned for their Building the Education Revolution projects.

Once again, thank you to the kids from Penguin.