Simon Crean (Hotham, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Regional Australia, Regional Development and Local Government) Share this | Hansard source

I was the minister at the time the August report of the taskforce was handed down. As the member would probably be aware, we accepted all of the recommendations of the Orgill report. There was an issue at the time—Victoria was resistant to putting information out. Its argument was that the information Brad Orgill was seeking was commercial-in-confidence or could have affected the contracts—I forget which specific reason they gave. Nevertheless, at the time I insisted that Victoria make that information available and they did.

Thereafter, the question for Mr Orgill was: once you have it, why do you not simply publish it in the raw form? His argument was that it needed to be put in a form that would enable proper comparisons. I know, for example, that comparisons were made about what one hall cost versus another. But if you actually looked at the detail, whilst both might have been referred to as 'gymnasiums', some places chose, because of the sort of work that they were doing, to have sprung floors—they were entitled to have that provided it fitted within the budget. So the unit cost of that type of thing compared with another was clearly going to be different. What Mr Orgill was very keen to do was to make sure that he got a nationally consistent position. I have not held the portfolio since then, but I am advised that the framework was published in January and that the costs for 3,200 schools have been published so far. All 22 education entities have published and will continue to do so.

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