Helen Polley (Tasmania, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

They were very grateful for the investment that the Rudd Labor government has made. I will take the criticisms, but I challenge you, Senator, to go and visit the schools in your home state and hear firsthand how valued that investment and those dollars are to the Tasmanian community, and more so for our Tasmanian students.

No system is ever perfect. No plan is ever implemented without incident. But this should never stop us from trying. The Rudd government does not shy away from a tough fight—and thank goodness, because we have much to show for it. I am truly proud of having something tangible for my grandchildren to touch and utilise as a consequence of our ambitions and efforts in government. I am proud to be a part of that and I am very proud of the innovative way that those Tasmanian schools are utilising every single dollar that this government is investing in the students, the teachers, the school communities and the wider community in general. Each of those schools is now engaging more with its community because they are inviting the community to be part of their school community.

I am always amazed that it does not matter what this government has done since we have been in government; those opposite always have to look for the negativity. They can never say, ‘Wow, this is a good program,’ or acknowledge the fact that they made mistakes for 11½ very long years. They did nothing but rip money out of education in this country. They put us on the back foot, and now it has taken us to show the way and to invest in the education revolution. This is the beginning of what I see as a very fruitful decade, with more to come. But the thing that struck me was that there are schools that have been using the same libraries since the 1960s. So many of the principals and the project managers were talking in relation to the decade that— (Time expired)