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

It may, the Prime Minister is reminding me, possibly be in the member’s mind that this is all located in some G20 leftist conspiracy. The interconnections are not clear to me but maybe to Fox Mulder of The X Files over there they are. Maybe the truth is out there.

The way that Building the Education Revolution works, of course, is that the federal government, to support jobs during a global recession—and I know the shadow minister has not heard of that—determined it was appropriate to provide economic stimulus to the economy. We determined it was appropriate to do that in part through the biggest school modernisation program the nation has ever seen. Seventy per cent of our economic stimulus was delivered by way of productive infrastructure for the future, including modernising schools. Having made that determination, we entered into agreements with state and territory governments, independent schools authorities and the Catholic schools authorities. We have worked with them on the delivery of this program. It is as simple as that. Whether or not the shadow minister is capable of understanding it is quite another question.

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