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

Thank you very much and it will not surprise you, Mr Speaker, when I say I have not brought the national curriculum with me. Of course the national curriculum is available through the website of the Australian Curriculum Assessment and Reporting Authority. What you will find when you look at the national curriculum, whether you look at the literature stream, whether you look at any part of it, is that it is conveying to students what has made our civilisation, what has made Western civilisation, including the values that guide us, the democratic structures under which we live, the rule of law under which we live, what brings us together, what explains our history as a nation, what explains our history with Indigenous Australians. As you would imagine, at different levels, as children grow, learn and are more capable of critical assessment, they are asked to reflect on these things, to analyse them, to comment on them and to discuss these questions, which is exactly the kind of education I had as a child.

As well as having a great state school education as a child, which challenged me to think about the great moral concepts of our age, I also had the benefit of a very rigorous grounding at Mitcham Baptist Church, which included endless committing to memory of catechism. I was a prizewinner at it, and it served me in good stead. I have been known to joke with the Leader of the Opposition in the past that one day we will go head to head on our ability to recite sections of the Bible by rote. I think I could back myself in for some large slabs of it.

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