Jason Wood (La Trobe, Liberal Party, Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Public Security and Policing) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

For something completely different I am going to speak to the House about my concerns over the BER program. First of all, I congratulate Berwick Primary School council president Jason Barlow, Belgrave South Primary School council president Steve Bills, Berwick Lodge Primary School council president Richard Power, and I cannot forget the Principal of Berwick Lodge Primary School, Henry Grossek. They have been staunch in their outright rejection of the BER process and the rip-offs and rorts associated with it. An article by Kimberley Seedy titled ‘Belgrave South students left in the lurch by building delays’ said:

The school received $2.5 million for the project

…            …            …

Steve Bills—

the school council president—

said the entire school community was frustrated by the process. Construction was scheduled to start last December and five classes were moved from the site that will house the new centre.

It was only when we got the local media involved that all of a sudden we had a construction date. The article continued:

Mr Bills said he was angry new buildings had already been built at independent and private schools while they were still waiting. He said there was no flexibility in the building project, and there were many local builders who could have done the work quicker and cheaper.

An article by Jade Lawton of 6 May 2010 quoted Henry Grossek, who said:

… schools were getting poor quality “Bi-lo barns” at exorbitant prices.

At his school they were initially told to rip down a brick gymnasium that had wooden floors and replace it with concrete floors and something not as good.

I have the BER Update from the Berwick Primary School. They are absolutely outraged that their supposedly $2 million project is an absolute rip-off. I have seen what is being built for that money—remembering the school already has the land—and the building being constructed, I think, would cost no more than half a million dollars at best. We took the Leader of the Opposition, Tony Abbott, and the national media with us and I can say that everyone was shocked over what was happening there.

I do not know how many times we have to ask the Deputy Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, to intervene. Henry Grossek was assured in a meeting in May last year that the issues would be resolved. They are not being resolved in La Trobe electorate. Remember, this is parents’ taxes at work. It is a disgrace. The government must intervene and must get these situations urgently resolved.

Mike Symon (Deakin, Australian Labor Party) Share this | Link to this | Hansard source

I rise this morning to talk about a great news Building the Education Revolution project. Last Friday on 7 May at St Luke the Evangelist Primary School in my electorate of Deakin I was honoured, as was the school, to have the Prime Minister officially open the new discovery centre which consists of an IT centre and a library. There is a National School Pride project as well, which was also part of the opening.

The Principal of the school, Deb Egan, has been a wonderful person to deal with right through the project. She has been open about what the school wanted and about how we could achieve it.

A division having been called in the House of Representatives—

As I was saying before we were interrupted, Saint Luke the Evangelist Primary School held an official opening of the Primary Schools for the 21st Century and National School Pride projects undertaken at the school. Attending the opening last Friday was the parish priest, Father James Staunton, and nearly 200 students of the school—the whole school was there—along with just about all the parents and a large number of past students, which was especially pleasing to see.

The school was originally built in 1962 and, like so many schools in the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, it had not had much work done on it since then. In fact, it is the typical old red brick building, with tar covering the ground—not much else. It is all square, very boring and very out of date. The school now has a new library and IT centre with networked computers, where we saw the students learning cybersafety. The school also has a new open-plan library and many other rooms, such as break-out rooms, which students can go to to do other activities during the day.

Looking out onto the school’s oval, we saw that most of it is now covered with astroturf. It has a running track, a volleyball court, a playing field and even a giant chessboard, where I think I lost, playing a game against the students—but it was an interesting experience. The school toilets and the staff amenities have been upgraded. The old square quadrangle that was previously covered in asphalt is now landscaped and has nice green mounds of astroturf for the kids to play on. This is a great improvement to the school and certainly makes a huge difference. I know that the school community is over the moon about it. I think it looks wonderful and is a great example of what can be done with funding from both the P21 and the National School Pride program.

There was also employment for local subbies and builders on the job, with up to 30 working at the school on any one day. Even more importantly, these are only two of the 24,000 BER projects that are currently running Australia wide, and many of those are in my electorate of Deakin. The developments at Blackburn Primary School and Burwood East Primary School will open very soon, and I look forward to being there on the day.