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

I know that the member for Sturt is trying hard in his new position as Manager of Opposition Business but I think he has missed his true calling, which would be as a teller of Australian fiction, because the story he has just put to the House is exactly that—a story. There are no facts behind it and the only thing that is fuelling it is the hypocrisy of the Liberal Party when it comes to this matter.

Let us calmly go through the facts, not the hysterical rantings that we have heard so far. Fact No. 1: the Howard government had a program called Investing in Our Schools. The then Prime Minister, John Howard, brought that program to an end by way of a press release. The then minister for education, Julie Bishop, in and around the time of the 2007 election, said that the Howard government, if re-elected, would remain committed to an Investing in Our Schools Program. But when the Liberal Party submitted their Charter of Budget Honesty figures, they did not put any money next to the program. So a frequent misrepresentation from the Liberal Party is that, if they had been in government, Investing in Our Schools would have continued—not true.

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