Jacinta Collins (Victoria, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Today I would like to talk about health, education, infrastructure and how the Rudd government is delivering in these important areas. Let me take this opportunity to challenge the opposition’s selective reporting and misreporting of progress in several areas.

Health has always been a top priority for Labor governments. It was a Labor government that introduced Medicare and the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme to make medical care and medicines more affordable. The Rudd government continues this commitment to continuous improvement in health care with the establishment of a single unified National Health and Hospitals Network that will deliver better health services and better hospitals for all Australians. This will be the biggest change to Australia’s health and hospitals system since the introduction of Medicare and has involved significant, if unprecedented, cooperation between the Commonwealth and the states.

In education, the Rudd government is committed to delivering a world-class education system to ensure Australians have the knowledge and skills to meet the demands of the 21st century. As part of this commitment, a national curriculum will be introduced in 2011. For the first time in 110 years—for the first time since Federation—Australian parents can be confident that their child is being taught from a world-class curriculum regardless of the school they attend or its location. The Rudd government is investing a record $62.1 billion in Australian schools from 2009 to 2012. This is almost double the $33.5 billion invested in the last four years on funding and school infrastructure. As part of the government’s education revolution, this record investment will help ensure every Australian school is a great school and every Australian child receives a world-class education. The education revolution in Australian schools is an investment in jobs for today, as part of the economic stimulus, but also in jobs for tomorrow.

With infrastructure, through its nation-building agenda, the Rudd government is investing in the future, to build up Australia’s economic capacity and to revive productivity so we can grow sustainably and lift our standards of living. The Rudd government has already delivered the most significant infrastructure package in Australian history, and the government’s microeconomic reform agenda is geared to creating a seamless national economy. To achieve these goals, the Rudd government is actively working with the state governments to deliver, and I would like to provide some recent local examples of this in my home state of Victoria.

An example of this collaborative approach is the very important duplication of the Clyde Road in Berwick in the Casey-Cardinia growth corridor. This road is already duplicated, except for the last kilometre between the railway line and High Street. This is a major bottleneck that the Liberals had 12 years to fix. But they did nothing. When they finally decided to act, in the 2007 election campaign, the funding they committed to the project was a woefully inadequate $25 million, and they never sought to work with the Brumby state government to deliver the project. In fact, rather than support the project, last year the Liberals proposed an amendment to the nation-building legislation that would have specifically killed federal funding for Clyde Road. Yet, despite working against funding for Clyde Road while in Canberra, the Liberals have been supporting the project locally and blaming the Rudd government for the delays.

Since committing that federal funding the Rudd government have been working directly with the state government, and last month Premier John Brumby announced that the state government were committing $25.6 million towards the $55.6 million cost of the project. Finally, after years of inaction by the Liberals, after they had the chance and after blocking and delaying funding in recent times, the planning works for Clyde Road will commence immediately. Construction will begin in 2011 and will be completed in 2012. The Labor candidate for La Trobe, Laura Smyth, has been a strong advocate for the Clyde Road duplication project, because she believes the voters of La Trobe are missing out because they do not have a strong voice in government—someone who will not say one thing locally and vote another way in Canberra.

In education, a good example is Nossal High School. This is another example of the Rudd government working with the state government. Nossal High School is located in the city of Casey’s education hub on Clyde Road, Berwick. It shares this site with the Berwick campus of Monash University and, in the near future, the new Berwick superclinic. The school is named after the eminent Australian scientist Sir Gustav Nossal. Nossal High School, which started in February this year, is the first coeducational select entry school in Victoria and the first select entry school built in the state of Victoria since 1927. It will be part of the selective entry network of schools which comprises Melbourne High School, MacRobertson Girls High School and Suzanne Cory High School in Werribee—due to open in 2011.

Working together, the federal and state governments contributed $3 million and $21 million respectively to this $24 million project, which has delivered a selective entry school that will provide opportunities for highly able students to pursue a focused academic pathway through their senior years of government secondary schooling. Nossal High School has reserved 10 per cent of its intake for disadvantaged applicants. Being on the same site as Monash University and adjacent to Chisholm TAFE will allow for sharing of facilities, joint programs and partnership arrangements. This project delivers an educationally enriched environment for 800 high-achieving, academically gifted students in Berwick and the south-east region of Melbourne.

The Berwick GP superclinic is yet again another example of federal and state governments working together to deliver much-needed projects. On Friday of last week the Prime Minister Kevin Rudd visited the construction site of the new Berwick GP superclinic with the Labor candidate for La Trobe, Laura Smyth. The project is a joint venture between the federal government, Dandenong Casey Division of General Practice and Monash University, and will be located on the grounds of Monash University’s Berwick campus. The Prime Minister was shown the plans for this $2.5 million project, which will be completed in May next year, by Watson Young Architects. This clinic will do more than provide front-line primary care services and integrated healthcare services to meet the needs and priorities of the growing Berwick community; it will provide a strong commitment to teaching the next generation of doctors and health professionals and will focus on innovative teaching methods to support clinical placements for students.

In conclusion, the Rudd government understands that the allocation of funding is not the end of the process of delivering on health, education and infrastructure. To deliver the results our local communities deserve means that funding is only the beginning. It means working with the state governments and local authorities—something the Liberals have never tried to do in these regions. Despite the duplicity of the Liberals in using every effort to frustrate the delivery of some of these important projects to the community—and indeed frustrate here in the Senate—then playing the blame game, the Rudd government has continued to successfully work with the Brumby state government and others to deliver successful outcomes and will continue to do so.