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

As soon as passage of the bill was secured we issued guidelines and commenced consultative activities around the nation to answer questions about this program. In fact, the very first of those was a stakeholders forum in this Parliament House addressed by the Prime Minister and me. At that very first stakeholders forum a person asked: if you have already secured funds from another source, can you use those funds to work with a grant from the Building the Education Revolution program? The Prime Minister and I—at the very first stakeholders forum ever held on the Nation Building and Jobs Plan—said yes. What we also said was: ‘Of course, we would want to be satisfied that there was not a substitution effect, because the aim of this program is to get extra money to schools and to support jobs around the country. So we would want to be assured that there was no substitution effect, but that partnering, that top-up, can be done.’

Since that very first stakeholders forum in this Parliament House I personally would have been asked this question several dozen times by representatives of independent schools and Catholic schools that have engaged in some fundraising: can we put our money with your money and make a bigger project? The answer has always been yes, yes, yes. Obviously the same question was raised in relation to the Eatons Hill State School community hall, and the member for Petrie provided the answer that I would have provided if I were there, that the Prime Minister would have provided if he were there and that every member of the Labor Party would have provided if they were there, which was: yes, that can be done.

Is there some confusion about these things? Yes, when you are engaging in the biggest school modernisation program this nation has ever seen. Yes, some local schools get part of the information wrong or a bit of wrong information and they need someone to help them out with it. Do you know what that job of helping out is called? It is called being a member of parliament. There are two categories of members of parliament in this House. There is the Labor Party and the Independents doing their job competently and there are those fools opposite who are opposed to expenditure on their local schools. Remarkable!

See this speech in context