Brett Mason (Queensland, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Education) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That the Senate take note of the answers given by the Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research (Senator Carr) to questions without notice asked today.

It all sounded so very simple. The government was going to bring schools into the 21st century, apparently from the Stone Age. They developed this glib promise: a digital education revolution. You might remember during the election campaign Mr Rudd turned up at a school surrounded by adoring teachers and students, grabbed hold of a laptop and said, ‘This is the toolbox of the 21st century.’ He was half right. It is a toolbox, but without any tools. What we now know about the digital education revolution is that the way that Mr Rudd is going to play it is this: he will turn up at the school gates and he will dump some shiny new objects, some shiny laptops, at the school. He will stay there for the media conference, smile benignly and then jump in his Comcar and head overseas again, and the ongoing maintenance costs will be borne by both government and independent schools. These are ongoing costs that will last for years.

What are these costs? For a start, there is co-financing the broadband rollout, because we now know after estimates that the $100 million allocated for that purpose by the federal government will not be enough to provide all secondary schools in Australia with a broadband connection of up to 100 megabits per second. The ongoing costs of broadband access—who will be paying for that? Not Mr Rudd. Rewiring the schools to give them a sufficient number of outlets to power all the computers is a cost of over $100,000 for the average school—who will be paying for that? Not Mr Rudd. The ongoing costs of all the extra electricity consumption, the air-conditioning to keep the computers at the right temperature, the insurance and the security—who will be paying for all that? Not Mr Rudd. The maintenance of all the hardware; repair and replacement of broken, damaged and stolen units; the maintenance and repair of the broadband connection; the software and software updates—who will be paying for that? Not Mr Rudd. Almost 120,000 secondary school teachers will have to be retrained to be able to teach in the new digital education environment—this wonderful, glorious revolution—and who will be paying for that? Not Mr Rudd.

This reminds me of one of those mobile phone deals. Remember Crazy John? He gives you the free mobile phone and what do you do? You get a free mobile phone and then you pay forever for the ongoing costs. The digital education revolution works like this: we give you a shiny new laptop, and Crazy Kev’s education revolution is that you pay the ongoing costs forever.