Catryna Bilyk (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

and the nation. Thank you, Senator Polley, for that interjection. We still have not heard from Will Hodgman. He has got till Friday night, as Saturday is election day in Tassie and South Australia. Will he have the moral fortitude and the courage to stand up to Tony Abbott? I do not think so. The people of Tasmania should be very bothered by that.

Those on the other side of the chamber are unreliable. They voted not to invest in schools and education. They voted not to invest in the infrastructure that was so greatly needed through the global financial crisis. The stimulus package that we introduced helped save Australia from the worst parts of the global financial crisis. We on this side are working for a modern Australia and a modern economy. I ask those on the other side: what would Australia be like today if we had not intervened and if we had not had Building the Education Revolution, for example? They have no vision and they are out of touch. They just knock things for the sake of knocking things; they oppose things for opposition’s sake. They oppose everything that comes along.

They had their 12 years. Let us be reasonable about this. They had 12 years and they could have done a whole lot of work in the education area. They could have given some money to some of the schools that needed new facilities. But no, they would rather hoard it and not spend it on education. Nationwide our children have been missing out on all these benefits that the Rudd government is now introducing.

What do those opposite want to do? They want to introduce a big new tax. Of course they do not want to call it a tax; they want to call it a levy, because that is a little bit different. The big new tax on business will have an impact on Australian families, and anybody so naive that they do not think it is going to happen is, once again, living in the little alternative fantasy world that those on the other side insist on living in.

Let us talk about the historic and fundamental change to the future of Australian education. The My School website, for example, has opened up transparency and consistency in reporting of schools. Previously this did not happen. The Rudd government is delivering on the changes that will help build a better future for our children and for our nation. Let us have a look at the My School website. It will help us distribute around $2.5 billion in funding through the national partnerships. The My School website has allowed people to go onsite and compare their school with like schools so that they can see how well their school is performing. There have been comments to Julia Gillard, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, in regard to the fact that really positive outcomes have already started happening because of the My School website. Some parents had been concerned about how their school was performing and they have now been able to verify their concerns and take action.

The Rudd government has committed a total of $1.5 billion to assess the low socioeconomic status schools. We have committed $540 million for literacy and numeracy and we have committed $550 million for improving teacher quality. Around 2,500 schools will benefit directly from these programs. The website data has identified 110 schools which would have missed out on this funding, schools that would not previously have picked up this funding. Julia Gillard, the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education, has done a fantastic job in the short time that we have been here—compared to the length of time the opposition were in government and did nothing. She has come in and made fantastic progress in reforming the education system, as I said, so that our children can get a decent education and our children’s children can get a decent education, and that is one of the most critical things, I believe, for our children to achieve.

At the beginning of March she also released the final consultation documents for Australia’s first national curriculum. This will allow students to move around Australia knowing that they are studying at the same levels as students in other states. In our society today where people are moving fairly frequently, not just within their own areas but also interstate, I think it is an absolutely wonderful program. This is a significant milestone for Australian education.