Paul Fletcher (Bradfield, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

The Commission of Inquiry into the Building the Education Revolution Program Bill 2010 and tonight’s debate are not about whether the government had good intentions. All too often we hear this defence from the government: ‘Oh, we had good intentions; we wanted to do good things.’ But that is not what this bill is about. This bill is about what happened when the government set out to implement a program to give effect to its intentions. What has occurred with the implementation of that program? To use a quote from the current Prime Minister, it is a mess. We have seen more than enough signs that there is something seriously wrong with this program in terms of mismanagement, waste and poor handling of public money. We have seen more than enough signs of trouble, to the extent that it is now appropriate that we take the extraordinary and the unusual step of establishing a royal commission to get to the bottom of this.

I want to put three propositions—first of all, that there is more than enough evidence of there being very serious problems; secondly, that Labor has sought to sweep those problems under the carpet; and, thirdly, that the Australian people have a right to know what has been done with their $14.2 billion. Let me start with the evidence of the problems. We have heard this from the member for Sturt, and we have heard it time after time from others. I want to speak briefly about a couple of problems in my own electorate. Let me quote, for example, the president of the P&C:

What we’re concerned about is that the five classrooms that are over here are costing about $3,600 a square metre. We had a building down here, that was burnt down by arson last year, being constructed with the same materials. That’s costing $1,700 a square metre …

One is a BER building, at $3,600; one is business as usual, at $1,700. There is also the Gordon East Public School, where the new building being constructed is costing $4,870 a square metre. In my introduction to this place, when I asked the then Deputy Prime Minister, who was the minister responsible, about that school, for my troubles I was described as an ‘idiot’. Although I cheerfully note there may be other good reasons to describe me as an idiot, I do note that the P&C of that school subsequently asked the Orgill inquiry to come and have a look. So apparently things were not quite as rosy as the then Deputy Prime Minister tried to assert.

We have seen the evidence of the underlying problem, which is the appallingly poor process by which this money has been disbursed. The New South Wales government was handed a staggering amount of money—over $3 billion—by the federal government. On any view, it is a grave error of judgment to hand several billion dollars to the New South Wales government and to ask them to manage it with anything approaching competence.

I went to a presentation by the senior New South Wales bureaucrat, Mr Angus Dawson, who told those assembled, ‘We were told to spend $3.5 billion in New South Wales within two years or hand it back.’ So is it any surprise that there was very little concern given to the normal commercial discipline of saving money and spending money efficiently, or to something else that parents and taxpayers might reasonably expect—that schools would be given the opportunity to genuinely choose what they wanted? As we have heard, there have been all too many unfortunate examples of schools being left with something which was very much their second choice.

The first proposition is that there is ample evidence that there is a serious problem. The second proposition is that this Labor government has attempted to sweep it under the carpet. The shadow minister, the member for Sturt, has been assiduously raising this issue. All of us on this side have been assiduously raising this issue, but we get these attempts at diversionary tactics. For example, when the then Deputy Prime Minister spoke on a motion on this issue on 2 June, she said:

… if you are going to effectively manage a program you have to support it and you have to believe in it.

Implication: unless you voted for it, you are not entitled to ask questions about how the money is being administered. On our side of the House we absolutely reject that. In fact, when I wrote a letter to the Deputy Prime Minister asking her about the basis on which a decision had been made that a school in my electorate was not eligible to receive funding under the rules of a program she had established, she wrote back and said: ‘I should note my surprise that you are pursuing additional funding under the BER. As a constant critic of the program and as part of an opposition who voted against it, your hypocrisy in pursuing extra funding is extraordinary.’

There is absolutely nothing inappropriate with a member of the House seeking to understand whether the rules of a program dealing with the disbursement of public funds have been properly applied. Those who asked that question were simply subjected to personal abuse. That is an extraordinary way to deal with billions of dollars of public money.

The second justification we have had is: ‘It is all about jobs, so you can forget everything else. Don’t worry about the basis upon which the money is being disbursed.’ Indeed, the then Deputy Prime Minister also said on 2 June:

… in order to effectively manage a program you have to understand what the outcomes being sought for the program are. A key outcome of the Building the Education Revolution is supporting jobs …

I return to the point I made at the outset. This is not a bill which goes to the question of whether Labor approached this policy with good intentions. It goes to the question of how they administered this program and how they dealt with over $14 billion of public money. It is very evident that there are serious problems afoot.

We have seen reports from various inquiries that have already been conducted into this program. That leads me to my third proposition: the people of Australia are entitled to the facts. If even the Deputy Prime Minister’s handpicked inquirer is unable to avoid the conclusion that, for example, there is substance to complaints that have been put to him and if the Auditor-General raises issues in his report, then there is more than enough to indicate to us that there are reasons here to be very concerned.

One of the reasons we need a judicial inquiry is that the Orgill inquiry, even if you approached it in the most charitable way possible, does not have the power to get to the bottom of things. It does not have the power to summon witnesses. It does not have the power to issue search warrants. These are powers that a judicial inquiry would have. We have seen that there are sufficiently serious problems that we do need a body with such powers, particularly because of the climate of fear which, for example, the member for Mitchell raised when he spoke before me.

There is a raft of questions that the people of Australian are entitled to ask about the way that over $14 billion of their money was spent. Why were the most basic principles of procurement ignored in the administration of this program—such as getting three competitive quotes before you go out and spend money? Why in so many cases were schools given very little real choice about what would be built at their school? Why was it made so difficult for schools to manage the projects themselves? In New South Wales, principals were told that they could manage the projects themselves but they would have to assume personal legal liability. Unsurprisingly, very few of them chose to do that.

I want to note the courage, vision and hard work of so many school principals and P&Cs who have worked very hard to get good outcomes for their schools. It is very unfortunate that this program has made it difficult for schools to get the outcomes they ought to have had. Fundamentally, what is of enormous concern is that we have serious signs of trouble and mismanagement. We need a judicial inquiry to get to the bottom of it.

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