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 case of the Tyalgum Public School in New South Wales, which received a library off the back of a semitrailer, under Building the Education Revolution, at a cost of $850,000. When the library was offloaded it did not fit the foundations that had been laid for it and was, and remains, unusable. How can the Australian people trust a government that cannot deliver to a school a prefabricated library that fits its foundations to reform Australia’s public hospital system?

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

I thank the shadow minister for education for his question. I would note, of course, that since the launch of the national curriculum the shadow minister for education has not inquired about it. Maybe that is because he is aware that teachers across the country are blogging about the hollowness of his response to the national curriculum—about how truly galling it was to see someone treat a major national reform with such contempt that all he did was have a staff member work out the word ‘Indigenous’ and then criticise the curriculum.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Deputy Prime Minister will address the question.

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

In answer to the shadow minister’s question, can I say this and say it very clearly to him. I do not think you, Mr Speaker, are going to be surprised when I say this, although maybe the shadow minister is going to be surprised, but I do not myself deliver demountable buildings. I do not myself lay concrete foundations. That is true; he is correct in that. I am not individually building each of the 24,000 projects around the country. What we as a government are doing, through our guidelines and our auditing systems, is monitoring the rollout of Building the Education Revolution. When there are problems—and there was a problem with the construction of the foundation at the school that the shadow minister mentions—then, of course, they are rectified. That problem is being rectified by the contractor who made the error. That is being rectified at no additional cost to the government. That is what one would expect a contractor who has made an error to do. That would happen if one was engaged in Building the Education Revolution, if one was a businessperson engaged in building a commercial building or if one was a householder who was building a home renovation. An error was made and that error is being rectified without an additional cost to the government.

It does seem to me to be really bordering on the pathetic that, on a day in which this nation received unemployment numbers of 5.3 per cent as a result of the economic stimulus that enabled hundreds of thousands of Australians to go home at the end of a working week with a pay packet in their hands, the best the opposition can do is point to one error by one contractor, out of 24,000 projects in more than 9,000 schools, that is not costing one extra dollar. It says everything about the shadow minister for education, everything about the hollowness of this opposition. They do not care about jobs. They do not care about health. They do not care about education. They do not care about cost pressures on families. And of course their greatest achievement this week is Tony’s new tax on everything a family buys.

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Order! The Deputy Prime Minister will in future refer to members by their titles.