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

I thank the member for Page for her question. The member for Page, in asking her question, is showing, on behalf of her constituents, the common sense and the understanding that you will realise the best possible future if you plan for it rather than just having yourself or your nation drift into a future determined by others. Our nation is here, in contemporary times, and that means that we live in a tough and unpredictable world. We saw the consequences of it being a tough and unpredictable world with the global financial crisis.

And we got the judgement calls right—the government working with employers, working with trade unions and working with the Australian community. We got the judgement calls right to save jobs—200,000 of them—and to keep our country out of recession. That means we emerged strong and resilient from this time of real impact in the global economy, AAA credit rated, with low unemployment, inflation and interest rates, having cut taxes so that you can keep $18,200 before you pay a cent of tax.

But in a world that continues to change, in the scale, size and speed of the transformation we are living through in our region now, we have to keep planning for the future. That is why the government has delivered a clear plan for this nation's future. We did that on the weekend with the delivery of the white paper showing how Australia can be a winner in this century of economic growth and change in the region in which we live.

We have identified at the centre of that plan the need to make sure we win this economic race by winning the education race. The jobs of the future will be high-skilled jobs. Higher-skilled jobs can be higher-wage jobs. It is good for the Australian community to have a future where you can find employment and where that employment is high skill and high wage. But it will not happen by accident and it will not happen if we allow our schools to slip behind the standards of the world, which is why we are so focused on driving our schooling system into the world's top five. It will not happen if we do not have infrastructure at the standard of the world, which is why we are focused on the delivery of the NBN, as well as traditional infrastructure, like roads, rail and ports. It will not happen if we continue not to act on challenges like climate change—if we follow the Leader of the Opposition down this path of recklessness and negativity. We need to ensure that there is a clean energy future.

Australians are an optimistic people. They can have confidence in our plan for the future, and we will get on with the job of delivering that plan.

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