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

I thank the member for Moreton for his question. A responsible question about government policy stands in stark contrast to the performance of the Liberal Party, which obviously thinks question time is now for clutching bottles of alcohol and hurling over the dispatch box abuse about important social issues like binge drinking. I am sure the member for Moreton is also very interested to hear that the government’s Better Universities Renewal Fund will deliver to his local university, Griffith University, $16.2 million, an investment in a world-class education system—an education revolution. The government has to deliver an education revolution to make up for the more than a decade of neglect of our education system by the former government, by the Liberal Party and by the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Opposition when serving as ministers for education in that government.

Amongst our major initiatives in this budget is the Better Universities Renewal Fund to deliver $500 million to universities by the end of this financial year. But we are also creating the Education Investment Fund of $11 billion, a fund which will enable the renewal and renovation of both the higher education sector and the vocational education and training sector. These institutions have been allowed to languish as a result of more than a decade of neglect. The Education Investment Fund is composed of $6 billion coming from the former Higher Education Endowment Fund and a new investment of $5 billion. The money is all about improving higher education and vocational education and training.

The Liberal Party have criticised this fund, as they have criticised all of Labor’s investments in the future. But on these criticisms they show themselves to be out of touch with the thinking of those that care about the future of Australian education. In that regard, I refer to ANU Vice-Chancellor, Ian Chubb, who has remarked in relation to the Education Investment Fund:

Allowing us to draw down from the capital will make an enormous difference to the size and scope of the projects we do. We go from spending on maintenance to being able to plan for a world-class future.

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