Computers in schools shame

"Far from popping the champagne corks for computers in schools, Julia Gillard should be ashamed that the program has become another in the long list of Labor education policies that have failed to deliver,"Christopher Pyne, Shadow Minister for Education said today.

"According to Senate Estimates yesterday, only 297,500 computers are operational on desks out of the 1,000,000 promised for every student in years 9-12 in Australia by December 2011," Mr Pyne said.

For this program to deliver as was promised before the 2007 election, the Minister will have to find 700,000 computers before December next year - more than double what she has managed to deliver in three years.

"Further it was found that none of the computers, across the entire country, have access to the promised high speed broadband. The Government has entirely abandoned that part of their promise," he said.

Given this Government's record of failure and broken promises, the Australian people shouldn't put much stock in anything Kevin Rudd and Julia Gillard claim in the lead up to this year's election. They will try and pretend everything is going to plan, when the figures show the real story.

While she is visiting the electorate of Lindsay today, Ms Gillard might explain to the parents and students why only 3118 computers of the 7453 required have been delivered to the community. How is she going to deliver the rest in one year, when it has taken three years to get to this point?

Ms Gillard might also explain why her own department's figures show that in Victoria only 28.33% of the computers are operating on desks, in Western Australia only 22.56% are on desks, 23.23% in Queensland and a mere 15.12% in South Australia.

June 4, 2010

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Adam Howard

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