Trish Crossin (NT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today is a day of celebration for this nation. It is the anniversary of the election of the Rudd Labor government. This is the day 12 months ago when people right across this country in record numbers indicated that they wanted a government that actually moved this country forward, that actually wanted to produce outcomes for this country that were based on fairness, equity and balance, and so the Rudd Labor government was delivered.

We produced a report card on what we had done in our first 100 days in office. People ought to be proud of the fact that, as we speak in this chamber today, they can click on a website and get access to a 74-page document that, in every bit of detail possible, outlines to every Australian in this country exactly what we have done over the last 12 months and the programs we are continuing to undertake.

I think people here ought to be very pleased with the fact that this is an open, transparent and accountable government. This is a government that stood on a platform of saying that we would implement every election promise. We have a Prime Minister and a cabinet that are committed to doing that, unlike the people opposite, who were elected on a platform of a number of promises that became ‘core’ and ‘non-core’ promises. When the earth beneath them got a little bit too shaky and too rocky, a promise became a ‘non-core’ promise, a promise that was put on the backburner. But this is not a government that operates that way. This is a government that has given a commitment to actually implement every single one of its promises.

This is a government whose very first act on the very first sitting day of this parliament, in February this year, was for the Prime Minister to say sorry to the stolen generations, people who had waited for that apology for more than 11 long years. This was a government that held out a hand of reconciliation to Indigenous people right around this country, brought them into this building and started to build that bridge that was so badly broken under the Howard government.

And then our very first piece of legislation in this parliament was to start to break down and abolish the abominable Work Choices legislation that the previous government had inflicted on workers across the country. Our very first legislative action as a government was to ensure that Australian workplace agreements were gone and that our commitment to build a fairer and more balanced workplace would start to be put in place. So our very first two actions as a government in this building, back in February this year, were to start to make amends to Indigenous Australians and to workers rights around the country.

In our first budget, we cut taxes to working families and to low-income earners. We have started the education revolution. Revolutions do not happen overnight. They take months, if not years. We have a five-year plan for our education revolution, which includes building training centres in high schools. Why is that? Because the previous government was deficient in the skills training area. It sadly let this country down when it came to people accessing trade training places and developing and building the skills that we need to get this country back on track. We have started with 700,000 new VET places and the creation of trade training centres in schools around this country so kids can get on board, get a taste of trades and start trades as they finish their final years of schooling.

And we have started to install new computers in nearly 1,000 schools around this country. The parents that I talk to are excited about the fact that we will be able to provide access to a computer for their child. Some of them cannot afford it normally and they are looking forward to the day that this government can provide that notebook, the notebook of the future, for the kids in the classroom. We are proud of the fact that we will take students in this country into a workplace of the future that will be based on technology and on computers.

We have implemented the Water for the Future plan to restore the health of the Murray-Darling Basin, something that the government had been divided on for a very long time. Talking about improving our environment, we have ratified the Kyoto protocol. We are not climate change sceptics, unlike the people opposite me. We have actually signed Australia up to an international action to tackle climate change. We have introduced the $480 million National Solar Schools Program to encourage schools— (Time expired)