Kim Carr (Victoria, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research) Share this | Hansard source

Senator Mason, I trust that you are aware in any event—and if not you should get a further briefing from the education department about these management questions—that the principle, as I have outlined, is that the costs are allocated on the basis of a template, which is based on extensive experience. Individual contracts are taken at the local school level, but the individual schools are involved in extensive consultations with their state authorities and with the Commonwealth where necessary to ensure that local needs are being met.

The costs that I have seen in some of the press reports—erroneously, I suggest, put there by Liberal Party persons—have been predicated on assumptions about different stages of the development of a project. The cost of a fully completed project is different from a project that is run to a lockup stage, which has been one of the flaws in the thinking that we have seen in some of these costs. There are standards that have to be maintained. There are quality provisions that have to be maintained. The Commonwealth is insisting on appropriate value for money for Commonwealth expenditure. (Time expired)