Shayne Neumann (Blair, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Hansard source

No matter how many times the member for Sturt uses emotive language like ‘fleecing’, ‘collusion’, ‘embarrassing comments’ and the like, the truth is that he gave almost no facts about that. Even audit report 33 from the ANAO does not say what he says it says. What it says is that the BER is actually fulfilling the purpose for which it was created—stimulating the economy, creating jobs and creating vital infrastructure. That is what the Auditor-General’s report finds. The facts are that the member for Sturt does not like that. I think it would have been a very, very unhappy electorate office when he saw that report.

In the electorate of Blair there are 221 projects in 65 schools, worth $108 million. The member for Sturt talked about schools which he claimed were unhappy. Let us talk about some schools in my electorate which are happy: Blair State School, Fernvale State School, Raceview State School. The member for Sturt talked about there being rip-offs in relation to state schools. Nonsense. Let us get the facts out. What would the member for Sturt have done if he were now the education minister? He would have ripped up contracts that were in place. He ignored the reality that 97 per cent of all the projects had started. So we would have had thousands of building workers and subcontractors thrown out of work and many small businesses hurt—and he wants to talk about collusion, about funny business. We would have seen the breaches of thousands of contracts if the coalition had had their way. So they should not come in here under the veneer of legal probity and integrity and talk about what they would have done, because that would be the consequence of their policy. I am just going from what they had to say.

We have 24,000 projects across 9½ thousand schools. Treasury says that this program has saved the jobs of thousands and thousands of Australians across the electorate. I do not know which schools the member for Sturt goes to in his electorate, but the BER is not just part of the Nation Building Economic Stimulus Plan; it is part of our education reforms—improving teacher quality, national partnership, reviewing of funding for schools, the MySchool website and on and on.

We do not support a judicial inquiry. There is already an independent inquiry in place headed by Mr Brad Orgill. The member for Sturt can come into this place and trash the independence of that inquiry, but that inquiry handed down interim findings with 14 recommendations and we have said we will follow them. We have said that we will implement the agreements in relation to the inquiry.

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