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

One of the issues raised by the minister in a rather rambling answer in question time this afternoon was the issue of education. I had to concede—I will give the government this—that the education revolution was a marvellous election gimmick. The problem, of course, is that it has been a disaster in implementation. It is becoming a theme of this government that they take policy ideas from the Blair government and from the great state of New York in the United States—great policy ideas but they are disasters when it comes to implementation, as is the notorious computers in schools program here in Australia.

The initial promise was one computer for each student. All of a sudden that marvellous election time promise morphed into access to a computer for every student. And then it got worse. The promise morphed again. What we now learn from the last estimates program is that the government’s aim is to have one computer for every two students.