Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

My question is to the Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Education. I refer the Minister for Education to her computers in schools program. Minister, given that the Labor governments in the ACT and South Australia are simply replacing old computers with new and the New South Wales government has simply pulled out of Mr Rudd’s education revolution, will the minister now concede that the ‘computers on every desk’ policy was poorly thought through and that the education revolution has failed before the first shot has been fired?

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

I thank the shadow minister for education for his question. I would possibly say to the shadow minister for education that, whilst he might think his job is all about overblown rhetoric, the error comes when you start believing it yourself—and you have made that error today. Perhaps the shadow minister for education might like to tell the 896 secondary schools who succeeded in round 1, with $116 million worth of support, that somehow this program is not working. That program is delivering 116,820 computers to those schools. Some of them are actually in the electorate of the member for Sturt, so he may want to go to those schools and say to them, ‘Well, this is of no benefit.’ But, interestingly, those schools applied, succeeded and got resources from the program. Of course, that was round 1. Round 2 has recently closed, and we had 1,420 schools across the nation apply for computers: 793 government schools, 342 independent schools and 285 Catholic schools. The shadow minister for education might want to say to those more than 1,400 schools that somehow this program is not working. They were invited to apply and did apply, because they want the resources that are available through the digital education revolution. We will process those applications and make announcements at a later stage about which schools have been successful. So round 1 has been completed—

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

with $116 million allocated to schools, something the Liberal Party laughs at: imagine giving $116 million to schools to assist them with computers! Doing something of benefit to schools is something that they cannot conceive. Because they did so little that benefited schools over 12 long years, it is beyond their comprehension.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

Mr Speaker, I rise on a point of order. I asked a question about the Labor Party’s trade-in policy on schools and computers, and I would ask the minister to come back to the question, which is—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will resume his seat.

Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

has this policy—

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The member will resume his seat.

Arch Bevis (Brisbane, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

You thought it was more important to give them a flagpole!

Harry Jenkins (Speaker) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

The Deputy Prime Minister is responding to the question.

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

I think we can thank the member for Brisbane for the interjection of the day, possibly the interjection of the year! I say to the shadow minister for education that if he actually stopped talking for a second and started thinking he might want to consider that a program that has already delivered $116 million worth of computers to schools is a success. A program that in its second round has applications from all of 1,420 schools is a success. A program that will deliver $1.2 billion in new resources to bring computers and digital education tools to secondary schools around the country is a success.

I can understand why the shadow minister for education is asking questions like these: he knows that the former government left this nation with a legacy when it came to education that the Liberal Party should be ashamed of—falling backwards in international testing, less than 50 per cent of secondary students learning history, no national curriculum, employers and others complaining about the lack of quality in education and in grammar teaching and basic English language skills, no computers in schools program to make sure the children could learn with the learning tools of the 21st century, no trades training centres in school programs to lift retention rates and retention rates which are poor by the standards of the OECD and our competitors. Yes, we have inherited an education system full of flaws and bearing the consequence of more than a decade of neglect. We have systematically set about bringing an education revolution to that system, including our digital education revolution, which has been welcomed by schools around the country. If any Liberal member wants to contact my office and say that they want to tell their schools to send the computers back, I will be very interested in their names.