Christopher Pyne (Sturt, Liberal Party, Shadow Minister for Education, Apprenticeships and Training) Share this | Hansard source

I hope the honourable member interjecting can go back to the parents in his electorate, look them in the face and explain to them why the states are pulling out of computers in schools across the country, why parents are being slugged for the costs of services and infrastructure, why the Western Australian government and the New South Wales government have either pulled out or threatened to do so, and why old computers are being replaced with new computers. The honourable member should hang his head in shame and disgrace that he is part of a government that fooled the Australian people last November into believing that they would get a laptop for every student when they now face the prospect of having no improvement in the position that they faced before the Rudd government came to power—except that Investing in Our Schools has been abolished and a $1.2 billion program which was terribly popular and very successful was taken to the guillotine as part of the education revolution and replaced with a damp squib.

The Rudd government and the Deputy Prime Minister like to pretend that they are unaware of these costs. In fact, soon after New South Wales pulled out of the computers in schools program, a comment from the Deputy Prime Minister in the media implied it was the states’ problem to fund the rollout. However, it is on the record that the government is fully aware that the costs of this program are blowing out. It emerged in Senate estimates that the federal Department of Education, Employment and Workplace Relations had provided to the Deputy Prime Minister a report detailing the additional costs for the states but, when asked to release the report by my colleague in the other place Senator Mason, departmental officials refused to do so.

So we have established that the federal department of education has prepared a secret report for the government on the true costs associated with the computers in schools program. The minister has refused to release it and never comments on the extra costs. This government seem to like to pretend they are incapable of mistakes. The reason is that the computers in schools program has become an embarrassment and a shocking indictment of the ability of the government to deliver on their promises.

Now that the coalition has managed to obtain figures for Western Australia it is long overdue for the Minister for Education, the Deputy Prime Minister, to come clean on the costs for all states. No-one—no parent or student—would disagree that it is a very useful thing for a student to have access to a computer at school. The computers in schools program grabbed headlines during the election. This so-called digital education revolution was going to provide a computer for every student in years 9 to 12. Kevin Rudd waved a laptop about and said he would give one to every student. But what sort of government creates a program that completely fails to take into account the costs of the rollout? What sort of incompetent government does not factor in these sorts of costs? What sort of government thinks that the state governments will just gratefully accept the government’s computers and not ask for maintenance, support and technical costs? It is not as though the states are flush with money at the moment. It appears that New South Wales government is in freefall economically, and yet it is being asked to come up with the extra funds that the Rudd-Swan government is refusing to provide.

So how can we trust the government now to deliver on the Education Investment Fund? We cannot, and therefore I am supporting the opposition’s amendments to these bills, which will not only provide for increased transparency and an assurance that projects are supported by the Productivity Commission but especially will provide that all funding commitments depend upon financial commitments from all asset owners and stakeholders to meet the whole-of-life of asset costs. Then again, maybe if Australia had a full-time education minister with an eye on the details, the computers in schools program would not have become such an embarrassing failure.

It is time for the Prime Minister to follow through with his plans for a reshuffle. It is time for the Deputy Prime Minister to relinquish at least one of her portfolios. Education and industrial relations by themselves used to be cabinet-level positions in separate people’s hands. My colleague the shadow minister for employment and workplace relations is in the House today, doing a tremendous job at holding the government accountable in industrial relations, but I am sure he would prefer that the minister had her eye on at least one ball all the time—

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