Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

On 4 June I opened new facilities at Bethany Lutheran Primary School. They received a new learning hub and a new amenities block under the Rudd government’s Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan. Of course, Primary Schools for the 21st Century is a key element of that funding, as is the National School Pride Program. It was great to be there at the Lutheran community. While I was there Neil Schiller, the principal who has been there for many years, commended the Rudd government for this initiative, bringing forward, he said, their school infrastructure program by many years. The builder, Robin Fardoulys, the director of Fardoulys Constructions, told me that 200 jobs were supported across South-East Queensland by this project alone across the life of the project.

We have 64 schools in the Blair electorate. Students in the western corridor and the West Moreton region will never get to study at a local trade training centre if the opposition is elected. In my electorate, Redbank Plains State High School is a very important school, one of the largest high schools in the Ipswich and West Moreton region. It, together with Woodcrest State College and Forest Lake State High School in the electorate of Oxley are joining forces to apply for a local trade training facility in Springfield, a satellite city which straddles the two electorates of Blair and Oxley. I strongly support that application to round 3 of the Trade Training Centres in Schools Program.

If the coalition had their way, there would be no trade training centre in Springfield with these three great schools. Under the coalition this will all come to an end. Under the coalition in the Blair electorate the $3 million trade training centre run in conjunction with the two grammar schools—Ipswich Grammar School and Ipswich Girls Grammar School—and St Edmund’s College would also be at risk. There are also 44 library projects under threat, construction on seven classrooms would stop and some 1,056 students would no longer receive computers which have been promised to them. No school in Blair, no family, no student would be immune from the coalition’s cuts. All of the 64 schools in Blair would be at risk of reduced education funding.

The Leader of the Opposition needs to explain to the parents and school communities across the Blair electorate in Ipswich and the West Moreton region up into the Somerset region why he will not deliver computers in schools or build trade training centres and will cut back the BER funding. He needs to explain to Woodcrest State College, Redbank Plains State High School and Forest Lake State College. He needs to explain to the federal electorates of Oxley and Blair. He needs to come to the offices of Bernie Ripoll, the member for Oxley, and mine in my electorate in Blair and explain to us why those schools will not get trade training centres and why their hopes need to be dashed. He needs to explain why hundreds of workers will not get jobs in this vital local school infrastructure. (Time expired)

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