REMEMBER WHEN

GOLD COAST BULLETIN Thursday Nov. 15, 2007

OPPOSITION Leader Kevin Rudd broadened his commitment to an ‘education revolution’ by promising a computer for every school student in Years 9 to 12 and a pledge to train 450,000 skilled workers during the next four years.

With former Labor prime ministers Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating looking on, an upbeat Mr Rudd said at Labor’s official campaign launch in Brisbane that he would not try to buy his way into office unlike Prime Minister John Howard.

Despite starting 30 minutes late, the launch was much shorter and punchier than the Liberal Party’s longwinded affair.

The biggest cheers among the crowd of 700 were reserved for Mr Rudd’s commitment to abolishing WorkChoices laws and to ratifying the Kyoto Protocol.

He said the promises Labor made at its launch would be a quarter of the $9.4 billion `feeding frenzy’ Mr Howard offered voters two day earlier.

Part of his vision was ‘skilling Australia’, in which a Labor government would fund 450,000 training places across the country.

It would include an extra 65,000 apprenticeships and would concentrate on people who needed to update or lift their existing skills.

“To have an immediate impact on our skills shortages and inflationary pressures, we must get those on the margins of the workforce back in the workforce now,” he said.

“A federal Labor government would support up to a further 65,000 apprenticeships over the next four years.”