There was drama at Kevin Rudd’s latest policy announcement today when a year nine “school escort” standing next to the opposition leader fainted in the hot classroom.

Speaking from Berwick Secondary College in Victoria, Rudd’s newest component of his "Education Revolution", titled “Mentors for our Students”, would see $5 million being spent on a pilot volunteer mentoring program in 25 communities around Australia.

“If you travel around the country a lot of people who…are highly skilled and qualified but have retired but are looking to keeping their hand in and want to give something back to the community, these are the sort of people that we want to help in our school environments around the country,” said Rudd.

The pilot program would see recently retired trades people and professionals who wish to volunteer their time being placed in secondary schools and TAFE centres with trade workshops.

Each of the 25 communities would receive up to $50,000 per year for four years.

As he spoke on the environment and the need to act against climate change immediately RS, a year nine female student volunteer standing next to Rudd as he faced the media, suddenly fainted and fell to the ground.

The opposition leader was quick to help, giving water and attention to the student as she recovered in an embarrassed state.  The episode contrasts with the actions of John Howard who stood above and watched on as AFP officers assisted a fallen woman during a shopping centre tour earlier this month.

As RS was given a seat and a bottle of water, which she quickly consumed, Rudd called on the Coalition to announce its front bench under a Costello government.

“The Australian people are being asked to go to an election and to vote for Mr. Howard in order to hand over to Mr. Costello and Mr. Costello has a responsibility to tell us who would then be his industrial relations minister and his treasurer,” said Rudd.

In the afternoon Rudd used his visit to a belting factory in Bayswater to comment on the department of Prime Minister and Cabinet’s annual report released today, which shows the Coalition spent $281 million on government advertising in the year until July 2007 alone.

“That figure excludes the amount that the metre has been ticking over since 1 July this year.  We’ve had that metre ticking over at something close to a million dollars a day,” Rudd said.

“That money for that year could’ve been spent on close to a million dental consultations, 280 thousand bed nights in hospital or twenty thousand hip replacements,” said Rudd.

After admitting he could not say how much of that figure was spent on pro-Coalition as opposed to public service advertisements, Mr. Rudd promised all television advertisement campaigns from a Federal Labor government would be screened for containing basic public information.

The Rudd contingent will end the day in Sydney.