Prime Minister Tony Abbott has made an embarrassing blunder, ridiculing his own government's investment in technology education.
During question time on Wednesday, Labor leader Bill Shorten asked the Prime Minister whether he would support coding being taught in every primary and secondary school.
"Let's just understand exactly what the Leader of the Opposition has asked," the Prime Minister said. "He said that he wants primary school kids to be taught coding so they can get the jobs of the future. Does he want to send them all out to work at the age of 11? Is that what he wants to do? Seriously?"
The Abbott government has already invested $3.5 million in the coding across the curriculum package. While the program does not make coding compulsory, it will develop a suite of resources that support and promote best practice teaching across different year levels, including primary schools. Science and business leaders have long called for coding to be taught formally in schools.
Mr Abbott quickly tried to backtrack, telling question time, "We are doing it Madam Speaker, we are doing it".
On Thursday Mr Abbott further distanced himself from his remarks from the previous day.
"It's now on the curriculum at every level and it's backed up by money which this Government has committed," he told question time. "If the leader of the opposition ever did his homework as opposed to going out there with stunt after stunt, political ploy after political ploy, he would have known that."
It is understood the Federal Department of Education has met with interested parties, including Google, Intel, Telstra, the Office of the Chief Scientist and several university computer science faculties to determine where the government can make the greatest contribution through the initiative.
Coalition MPs have publicly advocated for coding to be taught at the earliest possible stage in the past to ensure children are prepared for the "jobs of the future".
Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull has previously said coding should be taught to children as young as five or six.
"ICT skills such as coding should not be only subjects offered in years 10-12, that's too late", he said.
"We need to expose more students to coding so they are inspired to create, build and develop new technologies rather than just being passive users of it."
By learning how to write code students will be able to form the foundations of computer language enabling them to tell programs how to operate.
Watch: How early should kids learn to code?
Academics and business leaders have welcomed Labor's proposal to institute coding into all schools.
In April, Business Council of Australia president Catherine Livingstone told the National Press Club that Australia is at risk of not keeping pace with global computer literacy standards.
"The imperative for introducing these foundational skills into the primary and pre-primary curricula should be unassailable," Ms Livingstone said.
"As it stands in Australia, the gap between the digital literacy of our young people and that of our competitor nations is increasing. If we want increased productivity and participation, we need urgently to embark on a 10-year plan to close that gap."
Academics have backed the calls from big business for radical reform starting at the primary school level, where countries such as Estonia and the United Kingdom lead the way.
"Many, many more people need to be exposed to coding at a young age," said Leon Sterling, the pro-vice chancellor of digital frontiers at Swinburne University. "Not everyone is going to become a coder, but they need to be exposed to the conceptual part so they understand how computers work at a basic level. This could help encourage future teachers to learn the fundamentals which they can take through life with them."
