He had taken over from Peter Garrett as Minister for Education following the Rudd coup and put out the joint release with then Minister for the Arts Tony Burke on 17 August, saying they were ‘proud to announce that Federal Labor will invest $1.25 million in innovative music education programs for Australian students’.
The funding was to support the implementation of the Australian Curriculum: The Arts F-10 through three key music education programs:·$600,000 for the Song Room to further develop ARTS:LIVE;·$200,000 for the Australian Music Centre Catalogue Digitisation Project to help digitise the centre’s collection of Australian musical scores, manuscripts and recordings and $450,000 for the Music Council of Australia to expand their Music Count Us In program.
