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

I thank the shadow minister for education for his question. I would possibly say to the shadow minister for education that, whilst he might think his job is all about overblown rhetoric, the error comes when you start believing it yourself—and you have made that error today. Perhaps the shadow minister for education might like to tell the 896 secondary schools who succeeded in round 1, with $116 million worth of support, that somehow this program is not working. That program is delivering 116,820 computers to those schools. Some of them are actually in the electorate of the member for Sturt, so he may want to go to those schools and say to them, ‘Well, this is of no benefit.’ But, interestingly, those schools applied, succeeded and got resources from the program. Of course, that was round 1. Round 2 has recently closed, and we had 1,420 schools across the nation apply for computers: 793 government schools, 342 independent schools and 285 Catholic schools. The shadow minister for education might want to say to those more than 1,400 schools that somehow this program is not working. They were invited to apply and did apply, because they want the resources that are available through the digital education revolution. We will process those applications and make announcements at a later stage about which schools have been successful. So round 1 has been completed—

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