Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I thank the member for Hunter for his question and for his strong commitment to the importance of education in the development of this country. As the Prime Minister and the Minister for School Education, Early Childhood and Youth have indicated, this government has a very strong commitment to investing in developing the educational opportunity in this country. We have committed to increasing the year 12 retention rate to 90 per cent of the school-age population by 2015. We have also doubled the amount of money spent on schools in our first term of government. To put that into perspective, it took the Howard government three terms to achieve that same landmark. In other words, the difference between our commitment to expenditure on education and that of those who sit on the other side is enormous. And it matters for the country, because as strong education empowers the individual it also drives a more productive economy. That is what the nation should be investing in.

I was asked about the infrastructure that has been undertaken. As part of the stimulus spend, the bulk of the money that we spent on physical infrastructure was invested in school infrastructure around the country. It was not just for the purpose of keeping people in jobs—and we have the best employment record of all the developed countries in the world as a consequence of that action—but also about investing in our future. It was not just a short-term measure; it was about the future. Every schoolchild in the country is benefiting from this investment, despite the carping criticism that you will get from the other side. There has been investment in better classrooms, in better libraries, in multipurpose halls, in science labs and in language labs.

I was also asked about the impact in the regions. It is true that 40 per cent of the total expenditure that has been undertaken on infrastructure has gone to the regions. We understand the importance of bridging that gap between educational attainment in the regions versus that in the cities. I had the opportunity in the non-sitting fortnight to visit 10 regional centres around the country. A total of 375 projects under the Building the Education Revolution program are in these 10 centres, all of them commenced and 70 per cent of them completed.

The point that I would make in conclusion is this: while we have been making that commitment—and we will continue to make that commitment—had those on the other side been elected this expenditure would have stopped. They went to the last election promising to cut the trade training centres and promising to end the expenditure on the school infrastructure scheme. Those on that side of the parliament have no commitment to the future of this country by sensibly investing in education. They come in here and criticise and carp; we get on with the task of investing in the nation’s future.

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