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, Minister for Education, Minister for Employment and Workplace Relations and Minister for Social Inclusion. I refer the minister to her previous answer, where she appeared to tell the House that, of the three programs in Building the Education Revolution—the National School Pride Program, the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program and the science and language laboratories program—the only one for which schools made application was the science and language laboratories program. If the House heard her correctly, why did she announce last week that there was a 90 per cent take-up of Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, when it was a program for which they did not make application?

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

I will endeavour to explain this to the shadow minister as clearly as I can. If he had been interested in the way these programs worked, he could have learnt about it from the very first day that they were announced by the Prime Minister and me, when the nation building for recovery plan was announced earlier this year.

Opposition Members:

Opposition members interjecting—

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

I am just explaining the three elements of the program for the shadow minister. He asked me about them. I am presuming that he is interested in the answer. With respect to science and language centres, schools individually applied, went into a competitive round, an independent panel assessed who was going to be successful and 537 schools were successful. In contrast, when the government announced the National School Pride Program and the Primary Schools for the 21st Century program, we said that they would run out in correlation with school size and we would manage the process through education authorities.

We worked through education authorities for the three rounds of Primary Schools for the 21st Century and for the rounds for the National School Pride Program. We managed them through authorities rather than having individual school based applications sent to the federal government. The shadow minister obviously would be aware that, in working with the Catholic education system, the independent schools system and with state and territory governments, we managed the programs through those authorities. They then worked with school communities. The school communities identified projects, and the projects went through in three rounds for the primary schools and in a number of rounds for the National School Pride Program.

I would have thought that that was fairly clear and easy to understand. The shadow minister then asked me about costing assumptions in relation to Primary Schools for the 21st Century. As I have explained, in the management system I have just described the costing assumption was that there would be a 90 per cent take-up—that is, as we managed through school authorities and they—

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

But you’re giving them the money!

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

The shadow minister just called out: ‘But you’re giving them the money!’ That is what he misunderstands. When I say ‘managed through school authorities’, I mean we worked with school authorities to consult with school communities and feed in project details. That is why it was appropriate to make an assumption about take-up—how many schools would choose to participate through their education authorities.

When we come back to the basics, working with people of goodwill, Catholic education offices around the country support the program and their schools support the program. When we work with the independent school system, they support the program and their schools support the program. When we work with state and territory governments, and they work with state schools, they support the program—including the Liberal government of Western Australia—and their schools support the program. At the end of the day, the shadow minister can come into this House and ask the kinds of questions he is asking, but he knows, and the members of the Liberal Party who talk to us and go to their local schools know, that this is being grabbed by schools with both hands as a great opportunity to modernise school facilities and support jobs in the local community. This is part of the nation’s response to the global recession: supporting jobs today. It is the biggest school modernisation program in the nation’s history. It is part of modernising schools for this nation’s future.