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

You think it’s so funny, don’t you, you marginal seat members over there from Western Australia. You think it is a complete riot, don’t you, because it is not your money; it is taxpayers’ money, so who cares? Who cares if taxpayers do not get value for money? The member for Hasluck does not care. She has lost before and she has come back. She is in clover. She has won again. She thinks: ‘It’s taxpayers’ money. Let’s live high on the hog.’ ‘Let’s live high on the hog,’ the member for Hasluck says, ‘Who cares about taxpayers’ money?’ That is what you think, isn’t it? Well, we care. The opposition care. Even the Australian Education Union care. You have not even got them in your corner on this.

So Henry Grossek stood up to them and he got them to change their position, and more strength to his arm.

The Auditor-General will also find ideological and bureaucratic hobbyhorse peddling, like the absurd situation where you can have air conditioning in a new building but if you want to put air conditioning in an existing building then you are told that you cannot; you have got to knock the building down. There are examples of schools knocking perfectly good buildings down because they do not have air conditioning and building new buildings so that they can get air conditioning. I am told that, when they ask the bureaucracy why they have to do this, they are told that air conditioning is inefficient, bad for the environment and bad for climate change and ‘We’re not encouraging air conditioning.’ So schools are knocking buildings down so that they can build new buildings with air conditioning. But the minister cannot hear those concerns. They are not really out there. If she pretends it is not happening then it is not really happening.

We have examples in New South Wales, in Queensland and in South Australia of schools that are closing down being granted money, through either National School Pride or the BER, when they are closing down as soon as 2010. How are you going to move the running track? How are you going to move the revegetation, as you claimed was capable of being done?

I finish where I started. Ross Fitzgerald got it right on Monday. This minister is all style and very little substance, long on rhetoric but very short on delivery—all foam and no beer. Ross Fitzgerald hit the middle of the target. The minister should resign and hand the job over to someone who wants to be a full-time minister for education. We do not need a part-time minister for education anymore. She can keep her other portfolios. The minister should hand over her job to someone who wants to be a full-time minister for education—not just a part-time one, using schools and students for her greater ambitions to seek higher office. (Time expired)

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