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

a strategy to make sure that people lost pay and conditions. They did give us that, so that is one thing they still stand for and one thing they unambiguously did—they introduced Work Choices to rip pay and conditions out of the wallets and purses of working Australians. They certainly stand for that. But, whilst, of course, they were engaged in industrial relations extremism, what was happening in education? What was happening in education was that the infrastructure of it was being allowed to end up neglected and in disrepair, and, in many schools around this country, students were trying to learn vocational education and training skills in workshops that would have been more appropriate to the fifties and sixties than to the 21st century.

The Rudd Labor government is addressing this problem through our program of building trades training centres in schools. Already we have invested more than $90 million in 34 projects in 96 schools. Whilst the opposition calls out, ‘Play the blame game,’ ‘Blame state governments,’ ‘Do something else,’ we are delivering. And just listen to the feedback, not from me but from school principals who have benefited under this program. Take, for example, Principal Brendan Lawler of St Edmund’s College in the electorate of the member for Blair—and I am sure the member for Blair is very familiar with this announcement. Brendan Lawler said about his trades training proposal, which was successful:

I doubt if we could have had better news to begin Term 3 than the announcement made on Monday by Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, that under the Trades Training Centres in Schools Program, a grant of $2.99M was made to build a facility at St Edmund’s College.

And there is this feedback from Wodonga Senior Secondary College in the electorate of the member for Indi, due to receive over $8 million to build a trades training centre to serve the region. Principal Peter MacLean wrote in his school newsletter:

The announcement is wonderful news for the whole Wodonga community both as an economic boost of great significance and for the long term educational opportunities it will provide.

This of course was the first round. The second round is available for applications now. There is more than $300 million available in the second round—

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