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Thursday, 24 November 2011
Page: 9593

Senator ABETZ (Tasmania—Leader of the Opposition in the Senate) (20:40): We have canvassed this issue at some length, and I have done so at estimates with questions on notice and even in the open Senate because, as I have said before, the employees and employers for whom this Dr Culvenor provided training said it was exceptionally good. He did have a component of face-to-face and practical experiences, which is what made his methodology so good. The online training was just something I introduced as a separate component. I thought Mr Rudd was delivering laptops. I could have mentioned that in the censure motion today as another failure by the government, but when you have such a wealth of examples to draw upon you forget some of them. In relation to the laptops in schools, why on earth was that seen as such a dynamic, brand new idea in 2007 and something that was going to revolutionise education? Indeed, it was part of the education revolution. That is how the NBN is being sold—people can learn online. But now, all of a sudden, they cannot for work health and safety training. It unfortun­ately does not mesh with the government's other propaganda in relation to these schemes of the NBN, laptops for every student et cetera.

Let's move on. In terms of HSR training, if someone is working on an offshore rig and has to go to training, are they still paid their full pay and allowances?