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

I second the motion, Mr Speaker. This suspension of standing orders should be carried because this part-time Minister for Education deserves the censure of the House, not least because of the waste and mismanagement over which she has presided since February this year, but primarily by the parliament of Australia because of her utter inability and her refusal to be responsible and accountable for the decisions being made to spend $16.2 billion of taxpayers’ money.

She has been asked 51 questions in this House about examples of waste in Building the Education Revolution. She claims that she has received 49 complaints. This is of a piece with the spin that we always get from this government because, at the same time, the Deputy Prime Minister says that the federal government is not responsible for the spending of the money. It is block grant authorities; it is state and territory governments. So, of course, the complaints would have largely gone to the block grant authorities and the state and territory governments. But yet again, this is the spin you expect from the government.

Today she tried to claim that I had said we had 60 complaints in my office. I checked with my staff. We said that we had 60 complaints in our hands alone yesterday. That does not include the hundreds of complaints, the hundreds of concerns, we have received from parents and citizens, from principals, from teachers—from ordinary Australians across Australia—since February. They have come to us mostly anonymously because, as somebody said to me, ‘This government has a mean streak a mile wide.’ This is a vindictive government, an intimidatory government. The guidelines themselves require that principals and parents and citizens’ chairs do not speak out for fear of losing their funding. The Victorian and Queensland governments have made that absolutely clear: if schools speak out, they will lose their money.

Most of the concerns we have received have come via emails, phone calls and letters but they are too concerned about the funding going to their schools and being ripped away from them, even though they may not want the ‘Julia Gillard Memorial School Hall’ being imposed on them, because they know how vindictive and how intimidating this government is. It is not a defence for the minister to say that she has had 49 complaints.

Over the last six months, this opposition has raised issues: about profiteering; about state skimming; about project management costs—$565,000 for six months’ work; about unwanted projects when schools had plans already in place for things they actually wanted; about the fact that public schools have no choice about what they get and private schools are spending the money on things that they want; about uncontrolled spending, as you have heard today about the Annangrove School, which is just another example, and we have raised many; about senseless edicts from bureaucrats, like moving a hall 3.8 metres, which wastes $60,000; about hard-earned money that school communities have raised through lotteries, raffles and cake stalls and stupid edicts from bureaucrats; about one-child schools receiving $250,000; about one classroom costing at least $850,000; about grants going to schools that are closing; about priority being given to $3.8 million for display signs and $3.5 million for plaques; and, finally, about the $1.7 billion blowout in the program, taking money from social housing and from science and language laboratories in needy schools—at least 146 across the country—in order to prop up the ego of the Deputy Prime Minister, who can never be wrong, who can never take responsibility, who will never be accountable and who will never answer a question.

This minister is like the air stewardess on Flying High, or the scout cub leader on Friday the 13th or—for those who do not understand those movies—the captain of the Titanic saying: ‘Climb on board. Everything’s going really well.’ It is only taxpayers’ money! There is nothing to worry about; it is all perfectly safe. But, in fact, this is taxpayers’ money, Deputy Prime Minister. It is $16.2 billion. It is supposed to be the flagship of the government’s spending and it is a shambles. It is a shemozzle and you should be censured by the House for your failure to keep this program under control.

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