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

I thank the member for his question. I reassure him that I, and this side of the House, take responsibility for lifting the educational standards of every child and I, and this side of the House, take responsibility for combating educational disadvantage. And why do we need to do that? Because under more than a decade of the Howard government no one ever sat at a desk and thought about what they could do about educational disadvantage. The proof of that is that on the day we were elected and sworn in as a front bench, and as Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister, if any of us had called on that day for a list of the thousand most disadvantaged schools in this country it could not have been produced. The Howard government did not care enough to even ask the question.

In view of that—

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