Malcolm Turnbull (Wentworth, Liberal Party, Leader of the Opposition) Share this | Hansard source

I move:

That so much of the standing and sessional orders be suspended as would prevent the Leader of the Opposition moving immediately the following censure motion:This House censures the Deputy Prime Minister for her inept management of the $16.2 billion school halls funding programme which has been plagued by repeated examples of waste and mismanagement culminating in a $1.7 billion dollar blow-out in the Primary Schools for the 21st Century component, exposing it as little more than a cynical political attempt to promote the Deputy Prime Minister and the Rudd Government at the taxpayers’ expense and in particular for:

(1)

rolling over to State Governments by allowing them to “cream off” so-called project management charges which divert funds from schools;

(2)

joining forces with her state counterparts to demand schools use their preferred contractor mates, rather than local tradespeople;

(3)

bullying schools to accept mass produced demountables and “one size fits all” projects, rather than what local communities want, with the threat that if they speak out, they will get nothing;

(4)

ignoring advice from Principals, education experts, the Education Union, building firms, planning experts, and the Opposition about how to improve this program;

(5)

providing funding for projects in schools that are closing;

(6)

designing a program that effectively treats public and non-government schools very differently: allowing non-government schools the flexibility to build the projects they want or need, while government schools are forced to work within the rigid and incompetent confines of State bureaucracies;

(7)

forcing all schools in Australia to display taxpayer-funded signs which have been declared political advertisements for the Government by the Australian Electoral Commissioner;

(8)

being the first in line to take credit for any good news stories, but refusing to take responsibility for the litany of problems, or for the waste and mismanagement of such an extraordinary amount of taxpayers’ borrowed money; and

(9)

treating this Parliament and the Australian taxpayer with contempt by failing to take responsibility for this debacle and give the frank answers demanded of a Minister in charge of a multi-billion dollar programme.

In any other government at any other time in our history, a $1.7 billion blow-out in the cost of a major public spending program would be regarded rightly as an unforgivable dereliction of duty by the responsible minister in the conduct of their portfolio, but not this government and certainly not this minister.

This Deputy Prime Minister is scornful of all or any scrutiny. She is disdainful of all or any attempts to hold her to account for the spectacular waste and mismanagement occurring under her watch. Rather than answer legitimate questions—51 of them—about the debacle she calls her Primary Schools for the 21st Century, she has come into this House on a daily basis and dismissed all scrutiny of this program as nitpicking and has accused the opposition of having a lack of perspective. Nitpicking! This is a minister who has taken a $14.7 billion commitment of borrowed money and rolled it out with such indecent haste and with such staggering and wasteful incompetence that it has turned into a public policy fiasco that will now cost Australian taxpayers $16.2 billion.

Not only is this program running away over its projected cost, it is a one-size-fits-all program that ignores the pleas from school communities to give them the buildings and the facilities they actually want and need. Every day, more and more principals and parents feel compelled to come forward with horror stories of faceless bureaucrats imposing on them buildings that cost more than they should and that do nothing to address their needs. As each day passes, we see the squandering of hundreds of millions upon hundreds of millions of dollars in money borrowed from future generations. Every day, this Deputy Prime Minister walks into parliament and refuses point blank to answer questions about the failings in her portfolio.

We have never seen a Deputy Prime Minister more willing to treat this parliament and the Australian taxpayer with such contempt by refusing to answer for her mismanagement, and it is a mismanagement which we warned the government about. Back in February when they proposed this school hall program, when the ‘Julia Gillard Memorial Assembly Hall Program’ was rolled out and announced in this House, we said that we had very grave doubts about the capacity of the government to spend $14 billion—in the days when it was only $14 billion—on school halls through state governments in two years. We proposed instead a different approach that reflected the difference in our values, because the difference between us and Labor is that Labor believes government knows best. The Julia Gillard memorial assembly hall is what you need whether you know it or not—that is the message from the Deputy Prime Minister.

We proposed a $3 billion schools stimulus program based on the Investing in Our Schools program, which would have reached out to school communities and said to them, as our program did when we were in government, ‘What do you need? What do you want? What is the project, the building, the renovation, the equipment that you need? Let us know what it is and we will support it.’ If the government had taken that counsel—and it is not too late for them to take that counsel—then they would at least ensure they would actually have school projects being built that represent what the schools need.

Today we have heard about the Colbinabbin Primary School. The Deputy Prime Minister dismissed that with contempt. That is just a bit of nitpicking, apparently. The President of the School Council, Ramon Rathjen, said:

The choices regarding the expenditure of BER funds have been virtually nonexistent as the one-size-fits-all approach has not satisfied our particular needs.

He went on to say:

We feel obliged to raise our concern in order that funds do deliver value for money.

At Colbinabbin, the school community is concerned about delivering value for taxpayers’ money, but the Deputy Prime Minister is not. What does that say about the values of this government? The parents and citizens of a small school in rural Australia want to get value for money. They want to see the government delivering value for money. They want to see expenditure on projects that are really needed. The Deputy Prime Minister does not care. She dismisses it as nitpicking and accuses us, and no doubt the P&C at Colbinabbin, of having a lack of perspective.

Then we have heard today also of the bizarre funding saga at the Annangrove Public School. Having received an $850,000 grant, the school is told they are going to get a library. However, they already have a library that they are more than happy with. The school asked for a hall and a library was the least desired option offered to them by the education department. In other words, they got the thing they wanted the least.

It gets worse. The library they are getting is essentially a demountable. In February, the New South Wales Department of Education and Training was costing these libraries at $285,000—that is what it said they cost. They are now being charged $727,000 for a library they did not want and do not need—a $442,000 mark-up in seven months. Where has that money gone to? Does the Deputy Prime Minister care? She does not care. She says that is just nit-picking. The school cares; the school is concerned; the citizens of Australia—the taxpayers of Australia—are concerned about this.

So we have seen right through this program the inevitable consequence of Labor’s wasteful, hasty, reckless borrowing and spending. They are spending so much money in such a rush that they are wasting it and imposing on schools facilities they neither want nor need. And who benefits from it? Nobody benefits but the Deputy Prime Minister herself. Whether the school hall is wanted or needed or not, there will be a big sign imposed by law until March 2011 proclaiming the greatness of the deputy dear leader herself. This is a disgraceful waste of public funds and it reflects an indifference to recognising the importance of managing our public finances in the public interest.

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