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

A key part of the education revolution is to ensure that our kids have access to the digital education revolution of the 21st century. That means that all kids, not just those in the richest and flasher schools, have an opportunity to participate in the information economy of tomorrow. That means that we have to work hard to do it. What those opposite did, when they had 12 years to act, was simply push it all into the too-hard basket. Nothing happened on high-speed broadband; nothing happened on a rollout of effective computer access within our schools.

When it comes to trades training centres in schools, as we have gone around the country we have seen capital infrastructure in our secondary schools which has not been updated for 30 or 40 years. This is a disgrace. We need to invest to fix it. Adding to that, we have sought, with the Nation Building and Jobs Plan, which we outlined yesterday, to add language laboratories, science wings, 21st century libraries and multipurpose halls to our schools. This is part of building the best education system that this nation can possibly have. We will honour our pre-election commitments on trades training centres and on computers in schools as given.

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