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

Of course the government are committed to an education revolution and we are doing that because we want every child in this country to have a world-class education. I know the members of the opposition are in a sour mood today, because last night they had their big shindig—listening to Memories, The Carnival is Over and Yesterday while having glasses of red wine—and this morning they have woken up a little sore in the head and with a sour taste in their mouths, but if they could just try and concentrate for one moment. While they are living in the past, we are committed to making sure that the children of this country get a first-class education in the future. We are committed to overcoming the neglect of more than a decade of the former government—six years of it under the personal administration of the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. For a reason best known to themselves, they are all pretending to be characters from Fawlty Towers today. They picked the wrong show; it should have been Seinfelda show about nothing! They all would have fitted into that because they did nothing in government.

Let me tell you, Mr Speaker: the Howard government released 24 reports on teaching and 76 on school education and it did nothing of substance to make a difference to the quality of education in Australian schools. The Rudd Labor government are getting on with the job of investing in Australian education—our $1.2 billion digital education revolution, our $2.5 billion investment in trades training centres in schools, our $577 million investment in literacy and numeracy, our $534 million investment in early childhood education and our $500 million we have already delivered to Australian universities to help them renew their ageing capital stock because they were bearing the burden of a decade of neglect, six years of it under the personal watch of the Leader of the Opposition and the Deputy Leader of the Opposition.

But we want to do more and, in doing more, we have created the Education Investment Fund, an $11 billion fund to renew the capital stock of our universities and our vocational education and training sector. I am asked about the risks to this new fund. The risk to this new fund is the smash-and-grab raid that the Liberal Party has engaged in on the surplus. In pursuit of luxury cars, they are putting at risk our ability to invest in our educational institutions, particularly vocational and higher education institutions.

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