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

We have in front of us a Minister for Education who has presided over waste and mismanagement on a grand scale. For months, the opposition; principals like Henry Grossek at Berwick Lodge Primary School and Ian McCluggage at Berridale Public School, whom we mentioned today in question time; chairs of Parents and Citizens Associations like Robert Vella, who was on the television last night and in the papers this morning, whose issues have been raised by us and by himself through the press; the media, most notably the Australian but also the other tabloid press; and building and construction experts like Reed Construction Data—all these people—have been raising concerns about the so-called Building the Education Revolution program, otherwise known as the Julia Gillard memorial school hall program or the school stimulus debacle. However you like to describe this program, it has been a debacle, a fiasco, a shemozzle, and we have a minister who absolutely insists that she will not be held to account for her failure to perform as a Minister for Education.

We have raised issues that cover many subjects, including profiteering. Many months ago, we raised issues about Cleve Area School, in the electorate of my colleague the member for Grey, where classrooms were disappearing. In March they were promised eight classrooms for $2 million. In April they were promised six classrooms. In May they were promised four classrooms. In fact, in May they were offered a collection of transportables which included decking. In three months, they had halved the buy of $2 million, halved what it would actually mean on the ground for them at Cleve Area School. We have other examples, like Cattai Public School, where they built a COLA, a covered outdoor learning area, last year for $90,000 under the Investing in Our Schools Program. They have just been told that they will be able to build another covered outdoor learning area, of probably the same size, for $200,000—a 120 per cent increase in 12 months. So we have uncovered profiteering.

We have uncovered state skimming. The South Australian government has reduced its infrastructure spend in state schools by 12 per cent, when every other year, as you would expect, it has increased its spending on infrastructure in schools. South Australia is not alone. The Victorian government, the Queensland government and the New South Wales government, at least, are using money from the federal school stimulus debacle to prop up their own infrastructure programs, removing promises that they had made—most particularly promises made in Victoria before the Victorian state election which disappeared off the table when the federal government came along with all their cash.

We have uncovered inflated payments to project managers. In Queensland, some project managers are being paid $565,000 for six months work, a king’s ransom. We have uncovered waste, like the $3.8 million being spent on display signs, 2.8 by 1.8 metres, to praise the dear leader and Madam Dear Leader for their greatness. These display signs are so large that I hear that when they are transported to country schools they are being used for barbecue grills because they cannot find any other use for them, and the poles are being used for point markers in AFL football because they simply refuse to waste their time erecting them in schools of 10 or fewer students, where hardly anybody is going to see them and they do not see it as a good use of taxpayers’ money—and why not? We have seen $3.5 million wasted on plaques so that the Deputy Prime Minister can have her plaque on every single Julia Gillard memorial school hall across Australia as part of Building the Education Revolution.

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