Annette Hurley (SA, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Williams has not been to any. I feel very sorry for him. If he had he might not have come into the chamber, like he has, and criticised them. Anyone who has been to one of those openings has been overwhelmed by the appreciation of the school and the community for the facilities they have been given as part of that program. The two schools I have been to have been in rural South Australia, and they each made the point that, in a small community, it is very hard—very difficult indeed—to raise funds for this kind of capital expenditure. They are very grateful to the government, as building these facilities means that they can now concentrate their fees and their fundraising on improving resources for their students, improving curriculum and doing the other things that schools need to do, rather than saving their money for capital expenditure or making do with substandard facilities.

I know as a former member of a state parliament where the state government had responsibility for the upkeep of those resources how difficult it was to put money aside for that sort of essential maintenance and renewal of school facilities. Too many schools, particularly schools in rural and regional areas, had substandard facilities. This program under this government has set about addressing the problem—and has set about addressing it in a climate of global financial crisis.

The Minister for Education, Ms Gillard, has put in place an auditing program through the implementation task force, which ensures that the taxpayers of Australia are getting full value for money. The terms of reference for this task force are comprehensive and will ensure that, where there have been problems and where there has been outright rorting of the system, that will be pursued vigorously. There is also the opportunity for that program to be stopped if that is found to be the case. So rather than allowing a regional rorts type program to proceed, as under the Howard government, the minister and the Rudd government have acted quickly to ensure that, if there is any problem with the program, it is stopped and stopped now.

Similarly with the insulation program, part of the stimulus program, once the problems were identified—and unfortunately it cost the lives of four young men, and that is tragic—the Rudd government moved in to stem the results of that loss and redress the problems of householders who received the grant under that insulation program. Many of those households, of course, have got perfectly good insulation. They are very happy with it and it is performing the job that it is required to do. But there are households—and we do not yet know how many—where there are problems with either the installation or the safety of that installation. The government has put in place programs to ensure that those problems are redressed, and most certainly that it does not happen again. Furthermore, not content with that, the government has put in place programs to make sure that the workers in that industry are not simply abandoned, that there are programs in place that they can access to make sure that they have the best chance of getting another job—to keep intact the aims of the government’s financial stimulus package.

Senator Williams said, ‘Why didn’t we leave this to growth through the private sector? Why put in a government stimulus?’ Because it works, Senator Williams. That is why it was done. It was done because the private sector was pulling back on their investment. It was well documented that business investment was pulling back, particularly from small to medium businesses. They were not prepared to take the risk, given the global financial situation. In order to stop massive unemployment and in order to stop a decline in confidence in the economy and a spiralling downturn, the government stepped in and performed the role that the private sector was not going to perform. Rather than having the battlers suffer—as Senator Williams said—we have put in place programs to ensure that there will be far fewer battlers than there would have been if the Howard government had stayed in place.

I am astonished at the hubris of the opposition to come in and complain about waste and mismanagement and a lack of activity by the Rudd government. Clearly, it is a case of people in glasshouses should not throw stones. They make themselves far too easy a target. But the Rudd government is not, I have to say, spending too much time with the opposition here; the Rudd government is getting on with the task that it was elected to do—that is, to build Australia’s future. Despite the negativity and the willingness of the opposition to vote against any piece of legislation that is brought into this place, the Rudd government has still had a number of sterling achievements in the last couple of years. Apart from dealing very decisively and officially with the global financial crisis, the Rudd government has funded 1,000 new nurse training places; supported record investment in solar and wind power; very critically, abolished Work Choices; helped to secure our water supplies by buying back water licences from the oversubscribed water of all rivers—not just the Murray-Darling Basin—and therefore helped the health of the Murray-Darling Basin; invested in new cancer research and treatment centres; funded increases in GP training; and worked very hard in general in education and skills development.

I thank the opposition for giving us this opportunity to stand up and run through the achievements of the Rudd government and contrast them with the appalling record of the previous Howard government.