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

The member for Gilmore can scream and shout all she likes, but she is clearly exposed as someone who did not care about this track record of neglect. She should be celebrating the fact that 297,000 computers have been installed, more than were available when the Howard government was in office—a shameful track record of neglect.

The hunt remains for a member over there who is prepared to stand up for their electorate after the budget cuts announced following the three-ring circus, the pass the parcel—the hospital pass—that the Leader of the Opposition and the shadow Treasurer engaged in with the shadow finance minister. Let us just think about the dimensions of these cuts. Trades training centres: gone, including ones that schools were promised last November. We know of course that, in addition to trades training centres being gone, quality teaching money would be gone, money that is bringing the best and brightest graduates into teaching, money that is funding the best teachers to go to the classrooms that need them the most—gone, as a result of the policies of the Leader of the Opposition.

But, obviously, today what would also be gone is the continuation of the computers in schools program. That means 120,000 kids would miss out on a computer. And then, beyond the allocation of these computers, the program would not be continued in a way that would support kids to have access to computers. So it would be back to the days that we had under the Howard government, where kids in the class scrabbled to get to the only computer, back to the days where they did not care that our nation was not ready for the 21st century in schools—back to those days, because they did not care in office at all about Australian education. Let us listen to the words of people who do care about Australian education—and I suggest members opposite might contemplate these. I received an email from a parent, Kate Swadling, who said:

I am writing to express my support of the great work you are doing in Public Education. My son was one of the lucky students to receive a laptop at the end of last year.

As a boy with handwriting difficulties this has made an enormous difference to his ability to work well in class and follow through at home. As a very low income family we would not have been able to afford to purchase such an item and so THANK YOU!

The opposition do not care about that, and there would be no more stories like that if they were elected. Kids like that would miss out as a result of their cutbacks. Let us listen to the words of students themselves. Blake Osmond and Elizabeth Kuskovska, year 9 students from the Illawarra Sports High School Student Representative Council, wrote:

Our Year 9 students received their state of the art … Laptops from the Federal Government. We are writing to thank you on behalf of our students for the investment in us, our school and inevitably our Nation’s future.

It seems remarkable to me that students in year 9 can understand how important this investment is to the nation’s future but the Leader of the Opposition does not understand, does not care and would stop kids like these ones getting the computers they need.

See this speech in context