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

I thank the member for Farrer for her question. I note the fact that in this parliament she voted against the 116 schools in her electorate benefiting from 265 projects—total funding, in her electorate, of $128 million. She voted against every dollar of it, and she voted against every job that it would have supported. She is nodding her head in agreement: yes, she did vote against every dollar of it and, yes, she did vote against every job that it would have supported.

On the figures she has raised about one of the schools benefiting under Building the Education Revolution, I am happy to look at what the member for Farrer said, but I would issue these words of caution: when matters have been raised by the opposition in the past, we have frequently found that things asserted as facts are nowhere near facts. We have also frequently found, when we have tried to follow matters up with members of the opposition—or at least some of them—that they are more interested in making a political point than they are in getting matters resolved for their local schools. But you would expect that attitude to be on display by members of a political party that voted against the biggest school modernisation program in the nation’s—

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