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

I thank the member for Hindmarsh for his question and know that on behalf of his constituents he is very focused on jobs and opportunity and on making sure that every child gets a great education. I know that he personally has been a very big advocate for disability care.

On Tuesday night in the government's budget we laid out our choice for Australia's future. We laid out clearly before the Australian people the future that we want to build for them. It is a future that would be fairer because it is a future that would include disability care. It is our way of supporting Australians with disability, their carers and families and of giving peace of mind to every Australian that, should the worst happen to either them or a member of their family, disability care would be there. We laid out before the Australian people very clearly the decisions we had made to fully fund disability care over a decade. Those were not easy decisions but the right decisions for the nation's future.

On Tuesday we deliberately chose a smarter future for our nation, investing $14.5 billion extra into school education, seeking to work with states and territories around the country on a two for one funding deal to make sure that every Australian school—all 9,500 of them—has the resources that they need in that school to get those children a great education tied with a plan for school improvement that we know will work because we have seen it work in Australian schools. We outlined our choice for a stronger economy in the future, an economy in which we support jobs and growth—decent jobs, jobs with good working conditions, jobs that Australians will want to do and be able to build their lives around, jobs of the future during this century of change in our region. These are jobs that will require us to have the best of infrastructure, the National Broadband Network and a clean energy future.

In laying out your choices, you show the nation what you believe the nation should become in the future. Tonight is the turn of the Leader of the Opposition to do the same—to lay out his choices for the nation's future and particularly to be transparent with the Australian people about his plans.

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