Tony Windsor (New England, Independent) Share this | Hansard source

Like most members of the chamber, I support the Schools Assistance (Learning Together—Achievement Through Choice and Opportunity) Amendment Bill 2007. I congratulate the government on putting the program together. Thirty-nine schools in my electorate have been the beneficiaries of funding through the Investing in Our Schools Program. I would like to raise a couple of issues. I do not intend to speak for a long time. The original program, as I understand it—and the minister, Julie Bishop, may correct me on the finer detail—was put in place to operate between 2005 and 2008. The amendment we are looking at today will essentially top up some money but will also rearrange the maximum amounts available to any one school. I am aware that the minister and the department have received various complaints, with people taking issue with the changes—taking the maximum of $150,000 to any one school back to $100,000. That has caused some concern in my electorate and I am sure in other electorates as well.

I ask the minister whether she would look closely at this because there are some very genuine cases where schools have actually taken a little bit more time to plan the process of a particular extension to their school or a particular requirement for their school. We are all aware that getting quotes and those sorts of things does take time. In particular, in smaller schools it is not that easy to just get a quote for an extension to a school library or some other structure of the magnitude of $120,000 or $140,000.

Rather than actually name a school, I would just like to read part of an email that was sent to me from a school. We are not here to barbecue anybody, but I think it demonstrates to the minister and the department that the change in the rules has had an adverse effect on some schools. Other schools in my electorate and a couple outside of my electorate have also made contact in terms of what they believe is unfair treatment of their particular applications.

I read part of the email:

I am dismayed to read the guidelines of the 2007 round of submissions and find that the cap on the funding has been reduced to $100,000. Our school community has been planning to apply for funding for a library extension valued at $140,000. We received just under $10,000 in the 2005 round for a small project and expected that we could apply later for our library, making a total of $150,000, as promoted in the advertised guidelines. Our regional schools property officer, the school council—

and the person who has written the email—

have been working on our plans for well over a year and could have (with a rush)—

and I think this is a key point—

put in an application in the 2006 round. However, we were advised to do our planning properly—

and I think that is quite legitimate—

and thoroughly to maximise our chances of being successful. So we decided to wait an extra year to put our building scope and quotes together properly. At the time, our properties manager rang the department and checked whether there were to be any changes planned to the guidelines. She was told that all should proceed as advertised originally …

I again refer to the original program, which was for 2005 to 2008.

Now we find that the guidelines have changed and our whole project is a no-goer. There is no way we can extend the library with $90,000. We are a rural school with a multitude of disadvantages. It is tough to get tradesmen to come into our town for an emergency, let alone to walk through our plans and prepare quotes. We have worked damned hard to get our vision moving towards reality and we are devastated to find that the rules have been changed.

I can provide a level of documentation to prove that our plans have been in the pipeline for over a year and will do so if necessary, but that is an additional job that the community and I will look kindly upon. I am asking you to consider our case and stick to the original, well-advertised guidelines that we have been working within. We want to apply for our library extension to the value of $140,000 in 2007.

I know people have been in touch with the department and the answer is coming—that the guidelines have changed or that is under the old rules. I am not suggesting that everybody should suddenly be allowed to reapply for $150,000, but I think that consideration should be given where schools have a paper trail showing that they were working towards a legitimate expansion of their school within what they thought were going to be the maximum guidelines.

If you look at the original bill, as I understand it, for 2005 to 2008 the limit was $150,000, so schools would have quite rightly assumed that, if they were putting together their planning arrangements, they would have been able to make those plans in accordance with the rules and extend them into the next year. As I have suggested, the original program was for $150,000.

I would ask the minister at the table, Minister Andrews, whether he would convey this story to the minister. I thought of trying to amend the legislation so that some sort of appeals process could be put in place. That can be done at a future time, but I do not think that there is a need to play games with amending the legislation.

Where there are legitimate cases, there should be an opportunity for those cases to be treated and handled in the correct fashion. That is not to suggest that everybody now suddenly goes back out to $150,000, but where it can be shown that schools have been working diligently to achieve an outcome and have not just rushed a quote in to garner the money, they should be treated with the regard that I think the program was put in place to deliver. Having said that, I believe the program has been successful, and this is the only real blemish that I see on the horizon.

I notice that the Labor Party has an amendment condemning the government for reducing the amount from $150,000 to $100,000. I will not be supporting that amendment even though I have spoken about that very issue. It is the right of government to vary programs from time to time. But in doing so they have to make an allowance for those who had their applications and their procedural processes in train that were going to come forward under the old rules. They should be considered in a compassionate way.

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