Laura Smyth (La Trobe, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth. Will the minister outline the importance for the economy and for families of the government investing in education? What community support exists for the government's investments?

Peter Garrett (Kingsford Smith, Australian Labor Party, Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I thank the member for La Trobe for her question. Families everywhere recognise how important education is. They focus on it because they know that if we are a well-educated nation we will be a successful nation. We will be a nation that is capable of meeting the challenges of the future. Our kids, as they go through school, will have the skills and the learning that will enable them to take up the jobs of the future. That is particularly important. Just as it is absolutely essential that our future prosperity is linked to having world-class schools, our future prosperity also rests very much on managing the national economy. Labor is committed to returning the budget to surplus and we are determined to deliver that, just as we have delivered record investment in education, whether it has been in facilities in schools or in providing computers for kids in years nine to 12 right around Australia.

I am asked what community support exists for the government's investments. It is widespread. In fact it is so widespread that when I looked at the site of the shadow finance minister, www.andrewrobb.com.au, I found that he was instructing his constituents to congratulate everyone who has approached either the coalition government or the Labor government over the last six years to secure this funding. The shadow minister for finance has very conveniently produced a list for his constituents on his website, and when I went to that list, I suddenly found all those investments that the Gillard government had made in education. Whether it was St Paul's Primary School, with the refurbishment of classrooms and corridors, whether it was Our Lady of the Sacred Heart College with the National Secondary School Computer Fund, whether it was Bentleigh West Primary School with the 2009 National School Pride Program sporting ground upgrade—how incredible that the very shadow finance minister who argued against this government taking the right steps to stimulate this economy in the global financial crisis is now producing a list on his own website commending this government for doing the very same thing. If you ever wanted a clearer indication of the opposition's confusion over economic policy and the commitment to education that exists in this parliament, the member for Goldstein's website shows it clearly.