Kevin Rudd (Griffith, Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

In preparing for the address to the National Press Club, the departmental advisers came forth with a list, I thought, of 24 reports on teaching quality prepared for the government which preceded us. And I would ask the people of Australia: what happened to those 24 reports? What happened in terms of the implementation of the recommendations which came from them? What happened?

What I can say is that this government has not an excuse for inertia but a clear plan for the future. If those opposite were serious about those reforms, if those opposite were serious about the recommendations that came to them before, they would have done one of two things: they would have put their money where their mouth was and engaged the states in a real dialogue about investing in the school’s future or they would have simply stumped up to the dispatch box and said that, for them, it was a political stunt. Absent co-investment is what it added up to. There were 24 reports—somewhat analogous, I have got to say, to all those warnings that the Reserve Bank gave the previous government about the challenges of inflation. It goes to a character failing of the previous government.

There were all of these reports rolling in the door but, at the end of the day, the previous government of Australia was not faintly interested in taking those recommendations forward and making something of them in terms of a reform agenda for the future. Worst of all, at a time when there was cash rolling in the door through the resources boom, the previous government did not use it to invest in the school needs of the future but instead squandered it through one act of consumption after another. Those opposite should hang their heads in shame.

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