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

I thank the parliamentary secretary at the table. Talk about hypocrisy. Do we remember the days of the flagpoles? It was compulsory to have a Howard government supplied flagpole and every flagpole had to have a plaque—every flagpole had to have a plaque under the Liberal program, at a cost of seven per cent of the program. The estimate that we have generated is that seven per cent of the program went towards the cost of plaques. Imagine that: a plaque on every flagpole. In contrast, under our program we are seeing 0.02 per cent of the expenditure on recognition requirements. So let us not have any more of this hypocrisy.

Of course we understand in rolling out a program this big this quickly that there will be times when people want to raise issues of concern. That is why we have set up a complaints mechanism for doing that. As of yesterday we had had 49 complaints from the 9,500 schools around the country. Given how this is being rolled out quickly and the size and the scale of it, 49 complaints, with 9,500 schools and more than 24,000 projects, can hardly be characterised as the opposition would characterise it, as a list of major difficulties.

I conclude by saying this. There is one person sitting on the opposition benches who has at least announced that, because he voted against Building the Education Revolution, he will not associate himself with the projects in the electorate. That is the shadow Treasurer. What I think we should be seeing in this debate, and I hope that the next speaker on behalf of the Liberal Party or the National Party says this, is that they are going to follow Joe Hockey’s example. All they have ever done is voted against this program. All they have ever done is talked it down. Let us see whether they are hypocritical enough to keep associating themselves with this program in their electorates. In the meantime, we will get on with the job of supporting Australians in work today whilst modernising schools for tomorrow. (Time expired)

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