Mark Arbib (NSW, Australian Labor Party, Minister Assisting the Prime Minister for Government Service Delivery) Share this | Hansard source

I am very proud to rise again to speak on Building the Education Revolution, one of the absolute cornerstones of the government’s stimulus package. Again, thousands and thousands of tradespeople are working on this program—we are talking about plumbers, electricians and carpenters—and there are flow-on effects to other sectors within the economy.

Can I say to the good senator that of course this is not a program that can be implemented by the federal government alone. We are talking about over 24,000 individual programs in 9½ thousand schools. There is no way that the federal government can do this alone. That is why we are working cooperatively not only with the state governments and the territory governments but also with independent schools and schools in the Catholic system. That is what the government is doing, and the logistical challenges of this are great. If any good senator has ever built or renovated a house they will understand the difficulties in constructing such a mammoth number of schools. That is what the government has undertaken.

But the best part of the Building the Education Revolution is that we are getting school infrastructure that was absolutely neglected by Liberal senators on the other side of the chamber—