Kate Lundy (ACT, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

It is my pleasure to follow Senator Bernardi in speaking on this take note motion. There is nothing more fascinating for the public of Australia, I am sure, than to listen to that speech. How is it that those opposite can stand up and reflect on Labor’s decisions in relation to leadership, having cleaned out two leaders of their own and having ditched a leader on the back of a principle in circumstances that defied their own claims that it was a policy area of no regard—that is, climate change? What we have is a new leader who will take this country forward with pride, dignity and vision.

How is it that those opposite can stand there with any credibility and say that this government has not achieved anything? Our achievements are so comprehensive compared with the 11 years of the coalition government’s absolute neglect of our education system—both secondary and tertiary. Education, research and development and the investment we need to make in enhancing what we build, design and export all suffered under the Howard government. We went backwards on so many national indicators including, very importantly, our connectivity.

We on this side of the chamber know that the economic infrastructure of the future is bandwidth, and yet we have those opposite still saying that they will oppose the National Broadband Network in the face of an agreement by Telstra to participate in it. In the face of universal acclamation of the elegant structure of the telecommunications policy as we have put it forward, we have this lot opposite now saying they will withdraw the investment that Labor has made in the type of technology that will underpin our education system going forward. They will pull those computers out of schools. They will stop the funding flowing to the physical infrastructure of our education system to the detriment of every generation hence that leaves schools in Australia and enters our workforce.

Theirs is a backward thinking party. We know they were a backward thinking government because we experienced 12 years of that under Howard. Now they have the gall to stand up and ask us what we have done. We have done so much. We have built new libraries. We have built new physical infrastructure in schools that changes the day-to-day experience of kids. It inspires them to know that the government of this country values their education. And, trust me, the impact of that is critical. The message that young people received under the Howard government was that the government did not care. That government had no regard for their future—for where they were going to take those children down the track.

I do not have enough time to list the successes of this government, but let me turn briefly to the investment in health. We know the health costs were blowing out. We look at the numbers under the Howard government and we look at the disinvestment. We look at the $1 billion stripped out by the Howard government, and everybody knows that we were heading to a bad place with respect to health services. Only under the Rudd government, and now the Gillard government, has there been a program for health reform involving substantive investment. We have put in place a system that will bring about real change for this country. We are talking about the health of our citizens. Combined, these two issues—investment in education and health—represent two of the very core issues that Australians hold dear.

Under the Howard government, on all those indicators, we went backwards, and you cannot stand up across the opposite side of this chamber and hold up flagpoles and compare them to the sort of physical and organisational investment we are making in our education system. You cannot compare a $1 billion withdrawal of funding from our public health system to our multibillion dollar investment in the future of a national healthcare system coordinated through our states and the federal system to deliver universal health services to Australians. They cannot compare. They know it. They have nowhere to go, and Ms Gillard will make a fine Prime Minister for this country. (Time expired)