Julia Gillard (Lalor, Australian Labor Party, Deputy Prime Minister) Share this | Hansard source

I very much thank the member for her question because it will enable me to clarify some claims made about the Building the Education Revolution Program. On the claim made by the member about Berridale Public School, I am very happy to answer that claim—very happy to answer it. The details of this are actually very obvious and could have been obvious to anybody who made some basic inquiries.

There has been a comparison published about construction at the Berridale Public School of a toilet block and there have been some suggestions that the construction costs for this mean that the construction costs for the new library there are somehow not right. I inform the House that the toilet block there is 36 square metres and the new library facility is 162 square metres. They are not comparable buildings. When you go down to the square metre cost, on the square metre cost you find that one comes in at $4,766 and the other comes in at $5,500—not significantly different.

Then on the question of comparison with residential construction, I inform the honourable member that there are different building codes and different standards for school construction than for residential construction—different glass, different safety standards. All of the things about the building are different and more costly because it will be there for children.

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